Dexi is a latchkey kid, with a working mum who is too exhausted to pay him much attention, but he has plenty of company. There’s Box and Cox, builders and odd-job men (one works nights, the other days, and they sometimes get their contracts in a terrible tangle); Widow Shoo has too many children and too much to do - so the baby occasionally gets hung out with the washing; Mr Tring, the despairing composer, sees sparrows on telephone wires as crotchet-shaped.

This book is a triumph of wit, warmth and careful composition from one of our most creative and versatile contemporary children’s writers.