The day I walked past the Savoy happened to be September 7 2009, the day on which Samoa became the first country in decades to switch from driving on the right to the infinitely more sensible, and demonstrably safer, practise of driving on the left. (I’m not joking about it being safer: this is statistically true. Nobody is quite sure why, but the suspicion is that it’s because we are right-eye dominant, by and large, and our way of driving uses the right eye more. Or maybe foreigners are just thicker than us.) I had been reading up on the subject. I’d been reading about how most countries used to drive on the left, because it’s the logical side to get on a horse for right-handed people, and about how almost all the countries that still drive on the left had a strong British influence and are islands. I was mulling over these things and then it struck me: this couldn’t go in a novel. A novel with a disquisition on the difference between driving on the left and on the right would be… well, let’s just say I wouldn’t be in a hurry to read it.