The news report this week of someone shot dead in their garage hardly penetrated my consciousness, so used are we to the reporting of such gruesome events. A couple of days later, I received an email from a friend in Queensland with nothing more than a link. I followed the link and found to my horror that the man shot dead was Dr Luping Zeng whose skin cancer clinic I have been attending for the last six or seven years.

One can only grasp the horror of the killing of an innocent person when you have known them so well.

Dr Zeng was unfailingly polite in his manner and supremely professional in his work. His family will be devastated, but hardly more than his many patients and colleagues at the Watford clinic.

It is difficult to comprehend that a 17-year-old has been arrested for Dr Zeng’s murder. What was the 17-year-old doing with a gun? And why did he think he had to use it on a much older small man whom he could have manhandled out of his way?

Where is this taking us?

Many people my age are asking the same question.