22 JANUARY 1994, Page 30

The Astrakhan

It was one thing to wrap the astrakhan about your person, strutting out as if all verse that had ever been depended on a coat of such expensive cut that no one meeting you would dare recall the enterprise of going naked.

Quite another, though, to drape it on a chair then find your cat asleep there in the lamplight when you'd finished writing, take a pair of scissors, cut around that shape as if all love depended on it, leave her purring on a patch of most expensive cloth and wear your coat again without a second thought.

John Mole