in a crowded theatre. Well, or a crowded anywhere, I suppose, if it comes to that. Unless of course there actually is a fire, in which case you should probably shout just as loudly as you possibly can, at the top of your lungs, like, “FIRE!” It’s just if there isn’t one that it’s criminal, I guess because you could cause panic and start a stampede, and people could get trampled on or even crushed to death, and then it would be all your fault and you could be sent to prison. I was at the dentist when I made this discovery. Sitting there with Mum, reading a magazine and trying to take my mind off the horrors to come. I am a bit of a wimp about the dentist. Mum knows this, so I think she was quite surprised when I gave this little bark of bitter laughter, like, “Huh!” She said, “And what have you found that’s so amusing?” Well, obviously it wasn’t the idea of people being crushed to death. But all the same it did strike me as funny, cos quite honestly, with my family, you could bawl through a megaphone at a thousand decibels and it wouldn’t cause panic.
