If what's happened is what Jenny secretly suspects—that the neighbor has run the cat over in his driveway—they would like to predigest the news and tell Philip themselves.

Bakelite is made from a basic concentrate, whereas they have made a material called “carbolite” from acid concentrates.

The old tractor finally wore out.

Now we are liberal with our innermost secrets, spraying them into the public ether with a generosity our forebears could not have imagined. Where we once sent love letters in a sealed envelope, or stuck photographs of our children in a family album, now such private material is despatched to servers and clouds operated by people we don't know and will never meet.