What was it with TPR and clothing? Here he was cycling towards town along Morningside Road in Bruntsfield on a sunny day wearing a navy blue T shirt – and nothing else! His response to a request to please put on some shorts was “It’s too hot, and there is no need for me to cover up. Nobody will be interested.” If only he knew the truth.

On another occasion TPR was cycling down from Craigleith to Comely Bank. We’d just been for a swim in the QM pool, and I was now struggling on foot to keep up with my cyclist husband. I gave up and jumped on a bendy bus, expecting to reach home first. The bus then embarked on a massive detour to London. It took in all the sights, including Ollivander’s Wand Shop in Diagon Alley. I was quite enjoying my trip up to the point that the driver announced that he was a terrorist and the vehicle was now hijacked. I reached for my iPhone or Blackberry to call for help, but of course I didn’t have either because I was on my way back from a quick trip to Corstorphine for a swim. A couple of strangers at the back of the bus offered me their phones: one an inoperable relic of the mid-90s, another so new that it had not been set up for use. I wondered if it would make more sense to tweet an SOS, but hesitated over which of my many accounts would be the best to use. Then the “terrorist” came to talk to us on the back seat, confessed that he really was a bus driver, and hoped we understood that he was just having a laugh. His drunken demeanour spoke volumes.

GW was helping me collect everyone together. She discovered that the best route to (that boy from school again) ST was through a hospital ward. I felt a bit embarrassed following her past rows of sick people in bed, and I tried hard not to stare at the poor patients. We found ST working on his PhD in an outdoor tent/cubicle about the size of a portaloo. I felt very sorry for him to have to toil in such poor conditions, especially in the cold weather. It was curious that he was wearing a white T shirt branded with the SSFC shield on one side and a cartoon of the Scottish Falsetto Socks puppets on the other. Surely the Socks didn’t exist when we were in the sixth form (1979-1981)? Or perhaps I’d missed a school reunion at which the Socks had topped the bill? If this proved to be correct, I would be dreadfully disappointed.