‘Gloria Swanson?’ confirmed TB (aka Texas T). ‘Recurrent dreams about a silent movie star means only one thing. Your future career lies in Hollywood!’ In response I led him to the far end of the bar away from our family members and the smattering of work colleagues. There I whispered my secret.

JB whipped out a black felt tip pen and drew a grid on the blank sheet of paper. ‘We’ve read the summary of your research idea’, he said, ‘and now I’ll show you how to categorise the content of the sources that you have identified into a literature review’. I was a little puzzled as to why my work merited such close supervision. Then I remembered that the last person to edit my file was (the inexpert) TPR.

**Postscript, 1st March 2011**
TB has been in touch to tell Dreamaticus that his grandfather’s surname was Swanson – spooky…