The axis of the earth sticks out visibly through the centre of each and every town or city.

Wherever you stand feels like the middle of things, and it feels that way to everyone else standing somewhere else. Your street, your work, your family trouble occupy the whole foreground because you are the one standing in them. That is not vanity so much as the shape of being a person somewhere.

Useful to remember twice over. Once when your own concerns swell past their size, and once when you are tempted to think someone else’s small town, small job or small worry is actually small. Their axis runs right through the middle of it.