I've been lugubrious lately, sorry. (Not an anagram of Bela Lugosi, but close to it.) So I was trying to recall something I've read that made me laugh out loud even while reading silently to myself, and I came up with two off the top.

One is a funeral scene from The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1984) by Milan Kundera (b. 1929), the other a weaning party for a child addicted to her soother, in Digging to America (2006) by Anne Tyler (b. 1941). A man loses his hat and it flies into the open grave and he wonders how to cope with it. The child will not give up her "binky" without an heroic struggle. Both scenes, as I say, caused me to laugh out loud.

I used to have a dog and he made me laugh, or at least, smile, every day. Children do that, too, make you smile, if they and you are lucky, I've been writing about laughter in my book and I came up with a line that I think is mine: "Remembered laughter is present laughter." If it isn't, don't tell me.

Now you tell me one.