In the event, however, Labour – in Mr Corbyn's characteristically flat phrase – "hung on" to 98% of the total of councillors it had chalked up when the same seats were last fought in a solid performance in 2012.
The niggling doubt was that he worried too much that a flat phrase would sever his imaginative connection to the world, and not enough that all his carefully chosen words didn't necessarily add up to a novel.
But in so careful a paragraph, what's with the flat, extraneous phrases like "the wind had died away to nothing" or that "intent on breakfast," tucked unnecessarily into that lone, stark cat?
Yet the otherworldliness of his writing, the way each of his books seems to form a completely enclosed universe, makes what he publishes unusually seductive, compared to a lot of current British fiction at least, with its flat transatlantic phrases and desperation for reader empathy.
'A far better source,' he grinned, 'someone at the heart of the problem.' Then with one flat Dublin phrase, he swept my friendly prodding away: 'The mother!' His look dared me to contradict that authority.
He has used the phrase "flat out" before - the last time on February 25 when, exasperated by questioning in the House of Commons, he attempted to forestall a difficult discussion about Iraq by telling everybody he was working flat out.
The resulting sentiment led to a new phrase: Flat is the new up, up, up, up, up, and so forth.
Leo Steinberg coined the phrase "flatbed picture plane" for the Rauschenbergs.
She read the part from a score and sounded as tentative as she looked, coming up flat on her final phrase.
Best of all, none of it got in the way of the singing from an excellent cast (though Ms. Netrebko did have to sing a phrase lying flat on her back).
