It was very sweet of the organisers to remember me, but I really didn’t deserve any recognition at all at the engineering teaching awards ceremony. I suspected that BB was behind this. The biggest clue was that it was one of his Indian PhD students who had coordinated everything (with the exception of wrapping up my box of Hotel Chocolat chocolates, which he regarded as women’s work, and instructed his wife to do). Even more surprising was that my former office mate SM was honoured. He worked at a different university all together and, as a professor of media and cultural studies, knew nothing about engineering. In the event SM didn’t collect his award: he was out of the country on holiday in Spain. After the awards were all announced we were taken on a special tour of Edinburgh and Glasgow. Many of the roads had been blocked off to accommodate us all, and a number of the road signs were changed for our amusement. The one that I liked best pointed to the ‘Glasgow School of Spelling’ – in reality, the University of Glasgow.

Associated with the engineering awards was a campaign to win further research grant income for the Institute. I was called back to Edinburgh from annual leave with a brief to charm a number of business contacts into supporting our important projects. It was difficult for me to see how I could contribute. I wandered around outside and watched a young man practise tennis shots. He was singing David Bowie’s ‘Andy Warhol’, but changed the lyrics to ‘Matthew Taylor looks so strange’, presumably because that was his own name. I also came across two QM graduates. One was ET worried about her forthcoming higher exams. The other – LM – complained about her lowly career as a care assistant in a nursing home for aged celebrities, owned by the Scottish comedian Limmy. TPR was nowhere to be seen and again I wished that he would carry a mobile phone. I missed him so much.

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KA was dripping in sweat and covered in dust from digging beneath the foundations of her terraced house in Hexham. She explained that she was building a new basement. Soon they would have 25 additional bedrooms in a house that started off with three.