A kiss is just a kiss – but a hug is something far more intrusive

Kissing used to be the great social pitfall. One approached friends and strangers alike with vigilance, never quite certain what degree of physical contact might be expected. A hand proffered for shaking might be used to reel you in for a forcible embrace. Someone to whom you were newly introduced might fasten their lips to your cheek. I was once kissed by a woman who had just fired me, and have never forgiven myself for not shoving her briskly into the nearest pot plant.

Just as we have mastered the social kiss, along comes an even more formidable exercise in uninvited close contact: the random hug. One of the innumerable close friends of Meghan Markle, who have generously shared their insights into the Royal bride-to-be, has claimed that Miss Markle is in the habit of hugging the “guards” at Kensington Palace. According to the gossipmonger, when questioned on the practice: “She literally said, ‘I’m American, I hug’.”

The Queen’s Guard must be quaking in their bearskins, and so should any of us who are wary of hugging. An embrace from the right person is a lovely thing, but when the gesture becomes ubiquitous (and inescapable) the currency is fatally debased.

America may be the cradle of the commercial cuddling industry (the website of cuddleuptome.com in Portland, Oregon, features a selection of wholesome young women, mostly clutching soft toys, and a hopeful-looking chap with a chinstrap beard), but even there, they are beginning to have second thoughts about promiscuous hugs. Last year the Girl Scouts of the USA posted on its Facebook page a reminder to parents that their daughters “[Don’t] Owe Anyone A Hug”.

Quite so. And the same goes for the rest of us. Before bearing down on anyone with arms outstretched, it is worth bearing in mind the advice of Garrison Keillor: “An embrace,” he wrote, “is too intimate to be conferred on mere acquaintances.”

Garden sheds, like cars, are part of the mythology of masculinity, offering a potent mix of brooding solitude and unlimited opportunities for idiosyncratic customising.

But what if you were to combine the two? Like the chimerical offspring of Alan Titchmarsh and Jeremy Clarkson, Kevin Nicks of Chipping Camden has done just that. On Saturday he broke his own land speed record for a motorised garden shed, reaching 101mph on Pendine Sands in Carmarthenshire. Photographs of the occasion show the shed, a modest, shingled construction, prettily embellished with pot plants on its dashboard.

In a BBC interview, Mr Nicks said that his shed was a remarkably smooth drive – more comfortable, in fact, than his S-class Mercedes. And so much handier for keeping the lawnmower in.

During the Second World War, my grandmother’s piano was blown across the room by a bomb blast. It survived, and decades later I learned to play on its indomitable keyboard. When my grandmother acquired her piano, music-making was a common domestic skill. But now learning an instrument has become a privilege – a state of affairs that has inspired a group of professional musicians to campaign for every primary schoolchild to be taught to play an instrument. Music, they say, is an indispensable part of the human condition. They are right: like reading and maths, it should dwell at the very heart of the school curriculum.

read more at telegraph.co.uk/opinion