While most colleagues met for Friday night drinks in Bruntsfield, I discovered that the senior staff held a private reception on a secret campus. I set off to investigate. I spotted current and former colleagues through the windows of a beautiful conservatory. These included SC, as well as Professor PS. I hadn’t seen PS for years – not since he’d left Edinburgh for London about a decade ago. Another colleague joined me on my mission and we began to explore the entire secret campus. We ended up in a luxurious hall of residence room where we settled into the big double bed to watch the Simpsons and snooze. As we sneaked away we believed that we had got away with our illicit stay – not even our partners would know of our tryst – but then a bossy member of staff appeared out of nowhere and cornered us. As far as she was concerned, I was an out of control drunkard and we both deserved to be sacked on the spot.

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I was suffering from cabin fever. We’d all been crammed into the Islay hotel bedroom for about five days. By now my parents were so worn out with this version of holidaying that they were happy enough to sleep all day, regardless of the mess that was accumulating around them. I could tolerate it no longer and dragged my nephew PF and niece AF away from their books to take them to the beach. There we bumped into SC and TM with their daughter A, still a six month old baby. Periodically TM burst into song, recalling his rock star past. I do not know what crime my nephew committed on this outing, but when I later took my place at the meeting in the police station I was determined to use to academic status to fight his cause. Heaven help anyone who dared to underestimate me.