The joke that I’m most proud of delivering takes a bit of context to set up.

Early August 2019, and my family and I were in Boston for the day. Earlier that day, we had taken a guided tour of the Boston Tea Party Museum. At one portrait, our guide, resplendent in period dress, explained the hidden messages of family portraits of the era. If children were painted barefoot, for example, that was a sign that they were deceased. These conventions were well practised enough that a stranger could step inside a house and gaze at the family portrait above the hearth and remark, “Ah, Mr. Lapwroth, I see you have ten children. But alas, you’ve lost two. My sincerest condolences.”

A few hours later we were walking through a different part of Boston, one with markets and street musicians and roads closed off to vehicular traffic. My mum gestured to a trio of girls playing violin, viola, and cello. “Look,” she said, “they’re out here in the sun playing barefoot.”

I did not miss a beat. “That means they are deceased.”