‘Hey dad, you’re mentioned in The New Yorker,’ my daughter writes me in a text message, followed by a link to the article. ‘How do you know that?’ I ask. ‘A colleague forwarded it to me.’ The article is written by Joshua Rothman and is called:...

Just go to the shed It's always a little disorienting to realise how much of life is dictated by psychological avoidance – by the effort to avoid having to think about, or deal with, things that evoke discomfort. (All right, I mean my life. But I have it...