The Right Honourable Godfrey James Macdonald of Macdonald, 8th Lord Macdonald, Chief of the Name and Arms of Macdonald, High Chief of Clan Donald and 34th hereditary Chief of Clan Donald popped out to post a letter. Just ahead of me in the Post Office queue, he clearly believed that dying his hair chestnut brown was sufficient to allow him to go out in public incognito. I immediately saw through his disguise and struck up a conversation about family holidays to Kinloch Lodge in the late 1970s and early 1980s. His lordship gave a friendly response, but I suspected that he was lying when he said he remembered me. This was confirmed when he asked after my stockbroker father who lost his city job in the 1987 crash. Lord Macdonald did, however, remember the recent visit of JM and his companion to the hotel on the Isle of Skye.

Meanwhile my father stood in the background with his pink kid leather notebook recording all the details of our conversation, busy annotating the genealogical data that he had already gathered about the Macdonald clan. Most surprising was that Lady Claire Macdonald was not from Lancashire as previously reported, but a native of California.