At JG’s insistence, RA reluctantly drove him, and my other undergraduate friends from Birmingham University AR and PS (the boy with the beautiful eyes), to meet us. The journey from the Isle of Man took them 6 hours, and they only had time to stay with us for one so – admittedly – RA did have a point.

The following day we returned the favour and travelled south to visit RA, who now lived with his wife C and their three children in a beautiful penthouse flat within a massive shopping mall in Reading. RA and C were expecting me and TPR at 7:30pm for dinner. We were late. Added to this, we had accidentally invited some other participants, including my school friend JP (now JC), her husband GC, and Stephen Fry, to the meal. The mall was enormous and packed with shoppers, and no matter how hard we tried, it was impossible to navigate our way to the lift to take us to the flat. Eventually we ended up outside the mall again on a fairground roller coaster masquerading as a train headed to the south coast where, we believed, we would find RA and C. The route offered fabulous views of the blue sea of the channel, white cliffs and sea stacks. I tried to take photographs with my phone, but the the roller coaster motion was too fast for this. By the time we arrived we had picked up even more uninvited guests, including my cousins SA, NA and FA, and their (late) parents. I banned the whole family from the meal on the grounds that dead people would not be welcomed. Stephen Fry, however, was still allowed to come, so long as he brought a stacked of signed business cards to share with everyone there.