My first coherent memory is of brightness and movement, running on a wide flat beach at Shell Bay. I am singular, and dazzled. I am not quite three. An expanse of white light, my parents behind my brother and me, the sea a low brilliant line, far away. Something catches my eye: full-stop. I crouch to pick up a small oblong shell, even whiter than the sand, chalk-white, crisply detailed, covered with regular indentations, which to me are identical to those on my new summer shoes. I name it with absolute certainty: 'Look, I've found a Tennis White.' Everyone except my brother is very pleased with me, though I have no idea what I have done, no idea it was a metaphor.. I have better things to do. I run on.

Animal luck - for ninety-five per cent of us at least - is movement. Unlike plants, animals wriggle and slide, is movement. Unlike plants, animals wriggle and slide, ooze and flip, sprint like cheetahs through the Kenyan sunlight, pivot as swallows do, climb like buzzards, dive like otters. To seek out food, track down a sexual partner or parade before them, escape our enemies on a speedy wave of adrenalin. Or just move for the joy of it: dolphins spurting through blue air above the sea, foals racing across a field.

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