When an elderly Wuhan man in a wheelchair pushed his sick wife into the Yangtze River and killed her on her request, he never thought he would be a murderer. The 70-year-old man, who was arrested and charged with murder, told the court that he only wanted to free his wife from pain. “I only wish I could die for her ... How could I have wanted to murder her?” the man had said. His neighbours also made appeals in vain, many of them said he did not know he might be breaking the law. Still, the Hannan district court sentenced the 70-year-old to four years of jail for euthanasia in August.

When a female friend of mine questioned Robert Wright, the author of The Moral Animal and one of the prime popularisers of this position, about some of his unshakable convictions in the male-female contrariety, he opened his eyes wide, stared at her, and said, manfully, You don’t know what it’s like.

Like I’ve said, John, you’ve got to get the two bridge leafs to come down very slowly to a complete stop in order to trigger the tongue locks. This is what holds the two leafs of the bridge firmly in place. Otherwise, the bridge leafs will start bouncing, and once they start bouncing, you’ll never stop them from goin’ straight up in the air.

I mopped up the kitchen floor so it was spick-and-span.