I did not realise how a table can soak up the people who sat at it, can eat up all of the events that surrounded it, and then release them all again like a battery. I was going to say I hadn’t realised this happens until just about now, a couple of days ago.

But what I really realised this week was that every time I think of Shirley Rubinstein and Alan Plater, I think of them at a particular table. It was a dinner table, longer than it was wide, and I ate with them at it many times, but we also just talked there a lot.

Alan died in 2010 and when Shirley died in 2017 and I was at the funeral, I was standing by that table when I asked to go see Alan’s office one last time. That was a tremendous space, you’d love it: just saying that makes it sound large and I don’t mean that, I mean it was perfect. Somehow a split-level office, with Alan writing in the lower part, Shirley working in the upper. You had to go through Shirley’s bit to step down into Alan’s and even visiting it, it felt like climbing down into a nest.

Just stepping down into it, you felt ready to write.

That split level office must surely still be there, though I’ve no idea who lives in that house now or what they may have done with the office. But the split-level part, that has to still be there.

Whereas I thought the table was gone forever.

Earlier this week, though, I was at a school and by more chance and social media algorithms than I’d have thought possible, an old friend found out I was going. And that I would therefore be about 15 minutes away from this woman I hadn’t seen in so long. Hadn’t seen since Shirley’s funeral in 2017.

I might even forgive Facebook’s machinations for how it meant I ended up having a great time with her. But throughout the afternoon, as deep into conversation and tea as I was, there was also this.

She now has Alan and Shirley’s table.

I choked when she told me.

I stroked it, actually stroked it. And absolutely had to sit at the same spot I used to.

Days later, telling you, I’m actually teary.