Kev F Sutherland was our new boss. For our first task we set up a stall in the Pleasance Yard and prepared to sell as many tickets as we could for that night’s performance by the Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Theatre. It was a pity that we got the orientation of the stall wrong: there were three entrances to the yard and we mistakenly positioned the display to face the one that was least popular. However, eventually a friendly stream of puppet fans found its way to us. I glowed with pride when I overheard one young man say to his girlfriend “Your Fringe experience is incomplete until you have seen the Socks”. Other than a bit of trouble with a teenage boy who told Dave that he was a parent in a bid to prove that he was over 16, our experience of working for the Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Theatre beat the tedium of our earlier careers.

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Admittedly it was the rainy season. However, PM’s decision to wear a fur coat on holiday in the Caribbean (with me, TPR and our school friend ST) was still most peculiar. Indeed, owning a fur coat at all was rather strange. What had prompted her buy one in the first place? PM’s explanation was that fur is the clothing of choice amongst the woodcock shooting community of the Scottish Borders, of which her husband S is the keenest of sportsmen. My disapproval intensified. The only positive thing I could find to say in response was that I liked PM’s brooch: a bright four inch long enamel red letter box topped with the Danish flag.

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JC and I were now such good friends that he invited me to visit the holiday home that he had bought with NI. I liked the open plan of the ground floor and the views over the hedge to the sea, but the walls needed a good lick of paint.

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CS changed her plan. Instead of flying from Canada to California she would drive, just so that she could stop off in Chicago and visit me on the way. So it was a terrible shame that we never managed to find one another in the complex campus building. I sincerely hoped that she would forgive me.