LAST WEEKEND, IN a bid to compress a wet Sunday, I drove my two young boys out to the seaside suburb where I’d lived a decade earlier. At the fish and chip shop a familiar face greeted us from behind the counter; his smile as wide as ever, his English as faltering.

‘How are your boys?’ I asked. ‘Must be at college now.’ I remembered them just starting primary school, already working the cash register, or off to the side, bent over their homework.