"Events, dear boy, events" was how Harold Macmillan pictured his greatest worry, things happening that he simply had n't planned for and so could n't control. But I think it's one of these phrases you can export and use in other places. I like it because it catches the randomness of life, things happen without any warning, turn away they're not there, turn back, and what do you see. Exactly

Yet, it's a double-headed turn of phrase; there's the sudden appearance side, arbitrary and often accidental, and then there's the stones in the road side, where this time it's event prefiguring event. And that's just how I'm interpreting Macmillan's four words now.

I've gone back to reading Thomas Hardy almost thirty years on from when I read him last. All down to a series of events: first a friend told me that Tess of the D'Urbervilles was her favourite novel, the one she enjoyed writing about more than any other; then I donated a heap of books to a charity shop in Sheffield, in which there was seam of Thomas Hardy novels, and I remember flicking through them, looking at all of the underlinings and annotations I'd put in; whilst last week I took a train through Hardy Country, where it all came together, the landscape, the green rolling Fields, broad heaths, the sense of lush magic and intense passion.

Events, dear boy, events