I should have known not to ask Belle how she was. The stress of conference planning was all too evident in her manic facial expressions. Now I’d given her full rein to reel off an unnecessarily detailed response about the paucity of delegates, and how the future of the whole conference series was in jeopardy. I muttered something about looking forward to the afternoon’s closing paper and escaped with the excuse of finding a seat.

Despite Belle’s fears, the room was filling up nicely – largely with Norwegians. I settled into my place beside a gang of external work colleagues, all ears for the presentation. The moment that the speaker displayed his first slide (revisiting his keynote speech on Wikipedia from 1996) those around me started to misbehave: DC lit another cigarette; PG struck up a loud conversation with his immediate neighbours; and a rotund middle-aged librarian picked a fight with a woman in front over the potency of her perfume. I was ashamed to be surrounded by such rude people, and then horrified when the conference staff identified me as a ring-leader.

Down in the front row sat my mother, invited along to learn about my world of work. Instead she witnessed my public humiliation.