“In my next life,” I hear a young boy declaring, “I’ll be a Spitfire.”

“Say what?”

It’s his oupa asking. The two of them are sitting at a small table in a coffee shop in town. Oupa is nursing a cappuccino, which sticks to his moustache, and the youngster a pannekoek and milkshake.

“A Spitfire, Oupa,” he repeats, “a fighter plane.”

“It’s amachine, jong. You must be a living thing.”

“But Oupa, you said