SmallMonkey has chosen his Extra Curricular Activities (ECAs) at school and blow me down if, after years of being uninterested in anything ‘craft’-ish, he has gone for stained glass and Chinese calligraphy. I find this selection a bit weird but whatever makes his homesick little heart happy. Fortunately Singapore has plenty of art galleries in which he can display his new talents and earn enough money for sweets at the school canteen.

SM loves the canteen – he now prefers me not to pack snacks so that he can ‘buy stuff’. I give him three bucks a week and that’s his lot: we are all happy about how much he loves this little slice of independence (and SM loves the end results), but I can see the dentist’s bill looming.

I have picked out my own ECA, too, started it last night. On Saturday I met a woman at a small dinner party who talked me into joining her school choir. ‘Its OK,’ she said, ‘just a bit of fun.’ And it seemed my mouth had its own plans that night because it immediately formed the word ‘Yes’ – I recall it as a slow-motion thing like in the films, a time-delayed karate punch of a response to a mad idea.

What’s odd is that I would never, in all my born days, arrange to meet a virtual stranger in a random school car park after dark and sing loudly in front of a load of other strangers (sober). I did time in school choir for years, have staggered about after various weddings doing the New York New York cancan, and played my imaginary air guitar in Lucky Voice Karaoke a few times, but vodka has always played a large part.

Well sometimes there just isn’t a hip-flask to hand, and in fact when your own reality has been turned on its head and the world is quite literally upside down then you can pretty much do anything you want, I am finding. Go on, ask me to do something bonkers: there’s a good chance I’ll do it.

Anyway I booked the cab (SmallMonkey suitably open-mouthed at me ‘going to sing with some strangers’) and took a chair on the end of the Alto row, and I’m very glad I did because the strawberry margaritas in the local bar afterwards were close to perfection. We might even skip the music bit of things, next week.