'One of my most vivid memories, though, is the weekly visit from "the Arab with the eggs", as we called him. The arrival on our doorstep of this mysterious figure never failed to thrill and terrify me. There he would stand, wrapped from head to toe in layers of what looked like grey blankets, his swarthy face barely visible beneath his Arab headdress'

A memory of the time Harold Pinter claimed that "cricket was better than sex"

Standpoint senior editor Miriam Gross tries seven times in vain to negotiate the hopeless beaurocracy of British Gas's customer service department