I took a last minute decision to call into Tesco to stock up on supplies for my office. By the time I reached the till I had bought far more than I could carry, largely due to the purchase of an enormous multipack of Diet Coke (on special offer). I asked the check-out girl if I could arrange for my goods to be delivered. “Yes”, she replied, “just as soon as you leave my seat and get back to the customer side of the till.”

Later I was speaking to the dimmest of conference audiences. I made a final attempt to explain the concept of evidence based practice and how it spread from medicine to other domains. My analogy centred on the dress code of (1) female corporate lawyers and that of paralegal staff and (2) women tutors within schools of computing and their admin support.