Anyone who writes about life must think about death. It is not being morbid to do so. As Steve Jobs said in an address at Stanford University in 2004 which has become famous since he himself died prematurely at the summit of his life as the greatest design and marketing genius of his age: “Death  is vey likely the single best invention of life. It is life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new.” It serves no purpose to flinch from this simple fact of life.

Of course, that is true of death in general, death in the abstract. It is not so easy to face up to one’s own personal extinction. “I like to think that something survives after you die,” Steve Jobs said. “But on the other hand, perhaps it’s like an on-off switch. Click! And you’re gone.” It is said it is as impossible to gaze at one’s own death as it is to gaze at the sun at high noon in a cloudless sky. And much of one’s life is spent in the desperate game and hurly-burly of averting one’s gaze – working and playing, planning and scheming, getting and  spending, loving and hating, building and tearing…..