***

Why is it worth trying to remember even just the odd line of poetry? One reason is for the occasions when you discover it provides the words to describe or even enhance the moment.

I was recently in Cambodia, standing at the top of one of the magnificent temples at Siem Reap. As the sun went down, the surrounding roar of birds diminuendoed to a churchlike hush and then silence. It brought to mind the wonderful end lines I had read a few days earlier in John Fuller's "Concerto for Double Bass": "But close your eyes and it is sunset / At the edge of the world."

***

Sentencing Chris Huhne and his ex-wife Vicky Pryce each to eight months in prison, Mr Justice Sweeney declared: "You have fallen from a great height." I cannot see this. Huhne fell from a little height.

Even among the leadership of his own party one expects falls to go deeper. Recent Lib Dem top brass have included alcoholics, adulterers and a former leader accused of attempted murder. It is not only when compared with these that Huhne's fall seems slight.

To me his sorry tale has a single moment of interest: the point at which he decided it would be better for his career in the party to swap what promised to be a minor inconvenience for a little lie. That a career in the Liberal Democrats could ever be worth this is not the point. Irrespective of the party or the pointlessness, in that moment of decision lies all of human folly.