Years ago, I saw a film, I think by a contemporary Greek film maker, maybe Theo Angelopoulos, black and white, about an old woman who woke up after years in a coma into a world which would be overwhelmingly strange. Her solicitous family tried to shelter her, pretending the world was still back then. They dug up old newspapers. They hunted down food that no longer existed and found old labels and reconstituted her past.

In an unguarded moment, she left the house and went out on the street. The modern world was so frightening, she came back inside and said, “I can’t live in this world. Put me back in the coma.”