When my daughter was a baby I knitted for her a pair of woollen bootees in red, green and yellow stripes. I liked them so much I kept them safely and sentimentally for 40 years. But in the end I was defeated by moths. The bootees are now just a tragic bundle of bright, broken stitches, a cluster of airy spaces held together by scrappy twists of coloured wool. They are perhaps also a kind of description of memory, a flawed tangle of broken threads, having the power to stimulate vivid images and deep emotions that have lain cradled in mystery for years and years, clouded by the wash of daily events, day after day after day.

‘Lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal.’ I have always liked the language and rhythm of those lines from St Matthew’s Gospel. Moths, rust, thieves. Perhaps I am laying up treasures in heaven, perhaps thieves are busy at work on my possessions, perhaps the roof nails are rusting—but I have, in any case, decided to declare war on moths.