White flags waved from the windows; flowers were flung down in profusion; not a voice was raised but in huzzas—not a hand but in applause.

He fell into himself, his half-closed eyes looking into an edgeless nowhere.

Just as our combined anticipation was starting to build to a blood-boiling crescendo, the swell lines disappeared from underneath us, intercepted by the coastline of approaching islands to our north.

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.