The scenario was familiar. I was sitting at the table of yet another dreadful meeting listening to grey-haired men say nothing of substance.

When I finally grabbed a fleeting opportunity to speak the Chair nodded wisely, but only for a few seconds. Then he launched into an explanation of the relevance of bell curves to social informatics as a preface to a long, irrelevant tale about a book manuscript that was stolen from Oxford and eventually rediscovered in France. Our Chair boasted of his skills as an international literary crime-fighter and the Oxford don’s equivalent of the sonic screwdriver. Brain-power and a small pink torch were the main resources deployed to locate the stolen goods.

A woman on the other side of the table actually looked impressed. When I raised my eyebrow in question to Belle she whispered in reply that the stranger was a BBC arts correspondent. We both reached for our iPhones to see if we could find out the woman’s name.

Meanwhile my friends were showing off their two babies at home in Leith. The little girl looked the picture of innocence, but I knew that she was nipping her baby brother on the sly.