A child is an individual, to whom his parents respond; not just a bundle of responses to his parents. The child really is father to the man. Ivan Cameron's life will have given shape to his father's, and to the way we see his father. The little boy has marked British politics, and leaves to his name more than he ever knew.

Too much is said, and too glibly, about the ennobling effect of grief. Grief disables too, and can dog and haunt a person. But there are giants, old enemies whom it is good to learn to fight whenever in future they threaten to overcome us, and one of them is Despair. It is a pity John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress is no longer widely read. Mr and Mrs Cameron have had their battles early with these giants of Bunyan's imagination.

But I did not care for the House of Commons's impromptu memorial ceremony yesterday, which may now become a precedent for whenever a party leader suffers a close personal loss. The House is there to look outward to the nation as a whole, not inward. Parliament marks the deaths in action of British servicemen in Afghanistan with a simple one-line acknowledgement, and should do no more for sadnesses closer to home. I know many Members who have faced awful tragedies in their families and who have not asked (as I'm sure David Cameron did not ask) for this to be discussed in the Chamber. The case for full-blown statements from William Hague, the Prime Minister, Vince Cable and the Speaker was not evident to me; a single sentence from each would have been enough. And there was no case at all for suspending Prime Minister's Questions.

When the House gets going on anything touching human tragedy, it can work itself up into something disturbingly close to relish. I'm sorry to say that; but I've seen it too often over the years not to recognise the habit. Magnanimity in another's loss flows easily.

Optic Cable

On Tuesday I attended the Oldie magazine's Oldie of the Year awards lunch at Simpson's-in-the-Strand. It had been an honour to serve on the judging panel and we chose splendid winners, but I'm ambivalent about the entire concept of an “oldie”. As a category the only thing that unites those of us past middle age is physical and mental deterioration.

We certainly aren't better mannered than the younger generation. One woman kept tugging at my sleeve to pass her more chocolates, while a guest seated between me and Beryl Bainbridge told me, three times, that it was the thrill of her life to be seated next to Beryl Bainbridge.

To the other side of me was Vince Cable, the Liberal Democrat Treasury spokesman, whose prophecies of economic collapse had earned him the judges' “I-told-you-so of the Year” award. We were all seated at Ryanair proximity to each other, and when I swivelled round to face Mr Cable, who was telling me about prospects for the British economy, our heads were so close that my focus went haywire and I experienced what in how-to-kiss manuals is called “the Cyclops effect”. The wise, balding seer appeared to have a single eye in the middle of his forehead, adding greatly to his mystique.

Press 2 for outrage

Columnists should not use our columns to pursue private battles with public utilities, so you will read no details here of my tedious struggle with British Telecom's pesky “fault line” service. But... aargh! The horror! The endless calls, the waits - if I hear Mendelssohn's Fingal's Cave overture one more time I shall scream - the automated multiple choices offered by faux-cheery recorded voices, the lies, the excuses... a nightmare in which my one slender thread to reality is a patient, intelligent lady in an Indian call centre: helpless witness from a distance of several thousand miles to a hopelessly dysfunctional corporate machine. I have wanted to fall on her neck, weeping.

And the automated voice messages (“Your fault has been rectified” - lies!) and now the automated text messages (“an engineer is attending on site” - no, NO, he isn't!)...

Enough. When the world ends in a radioactive glow, and as toxic raindrops softly fall and dead telephone wires sing in the nuclear wind, and all human life is gone, then scattered among the debris will lie abandoned mobile telephones, lighting up with lonely pings as BT text messages blizzard across their broken screens: “an engineer is working on the fault”, “we are still aiming to repair the fault”, “thank you for your patience”.

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