Best to leave the pistol on the wall

In recent times, we might be forgiven for thinking we were living in a Russian play. When Irina, the youngest of Chekhov's Three Sisters, says, "How are we supposed to go on like this?" most of us would probably just shrug fatalistically and look glumly at the other two sisters. Besides being a playwright, Chekhov was master of the modern short story, and often wrote offering guidance to fellow writers: "Don't tell me the moon is shining," he would admonish them. "Show me the glint of light on broken glass." Isn't that incitement to vandalism or burglary? His most famous piece of advice is called 'Chekhov's Gun': "If in the first act you hang a pistol on the wall, in the following act it should be fired. Otherwise don't put it there." Now he's graduated to wounding and manslaughter. Clearly Chekhov wasn't a fan of red herrings, so it's probably just as well he didn't live long enough to read Agatha Christie, although their lives did overlap. To Chekhov, little grey cells were where dissidents ended up. Incidentally, isn't it strange that there are around 200 species of herring, and not one of them is red?

We are all living with drama now, after a fashion, although in most cases not a fashion we hope will catch on. Modern dramatists would have us believe that talking solves everything, especially when we gather in the study (or train carriage) to listen to Hercule Poirot's brilliant explanation of how the culprit murdered the deceased. There's usually a woman or a will involved, sometimes both.

But much of the time talk is cheap, especially compared to a picture that is worth a thousand euros. Yet when we are feeling low, various people offer us ways to get high on words. Talk to a counsellor,