I always did leave doors open behind me and I still do. It is good to be able to see any available exit and shutting a door has forever seemed rather severe and final, the click of the handle denoting some permanent entrance into a headmaster's study or a doctor's consulting room. Bad news happens behind closed doors. I lock my front and back door but no other door within any of the three places I live is shut. When I was a child, one or other of my parents, who both had known life before central heating and who both now paid the bills for it, would shout after me as I left the room, 'Born in a barn?" But I was happy to be slandered, or to think then of what that would mean. It wasn't a comparison with Jesus that I was seeking - his barn birthplace was, in any case, a stable, with scary horses and other heavy-duty stuff, wise men crowding in and meaningfulness. But to be always on the point of going out - I liked that thought.

-Tim Dee