Insurance? It’s a mystery tour to me. Seems like they get their prices by throwing a few number blocks in the air and then settling on the red ones. Some companies, like plumbers, give you such an astronomical price that you wonder if they do it to make sure you won’t buy..

Of course, as one gets older, the more expensive it gets. I’m talking about travel insurance here, but it can apply to driving too. While with driving, the risks do get higher as our faculties and reactions slow down to the same speed we now drive. Younger drivers toot for no apparent reason. At the same time, if I’m an example to go by, we hardly drive the great distances these days. Preferring to risk all with a train journey. Just the ticket these days with draughty platforms to wait on as your connection is delayed by yesterday’s heavy rain. Which was the case recently on my trip to Wales. When I looked disgruntled, the smart platform woman just said, ‘We’re lucky to have any trains at all after yesterday’, as if I should be on my knees with gratitude.

And with travel insurance one has to disclose the variety of conditions you might have. A stay in hospital two years ago put my costs up well over the price of a flight to California. As I recall, I spoke to an actual person on the telephone at the time, and I could hear him breathing in through his teeth when I mentioned the word ‘hospital’ and that this sale might be tricky.

Recent forays into ‘Quoteland’, this time for my other half, who is remarkably fit, brought estimates that were so varied that I suspected ‘Plumber Prices’ and others that were low enough to worry that this was from ‘The Wafer Thin Insurance Company’.The higher prices were in four figures, prices so high I wondered, ‘Who buys this stuff?’ , a phrase once used, some years ago, about my cartoon work.

I mumbled something like ‘some people’ in an apologetic and wounded way.

You’d be hard pressed to insure against an insult.