Everything changed when I accepted the new role at work. Now my tiny office was crammed full of students and admin staff. It didn’t help that everyone brought along their own favourite items of furniture to help make the room more homely. (Most of it was trashy, but I did covet the miniature oak barley-legged table that belonged to PM.) The one person with enough space to work here was LC. This was because she bagged the empty table behind the screen. I would have to find a way to persuade her to give up “her” spot to me.

Once everyone had settled down I walked between the tables to check that they were happy in their work. This reminded me of reading room patrols from my earlier career in an English polytechnic library. Despite the crush, it appeared that everyone was able to study.

The real challenge of my new role came when I had to deal with students who could no longer afford their fees. I sent them off to a massive lecture hall on the outskirts of New York where they were expected to “register”. Since this was all new to me I accompanied two of my charges on their trip. I wanted to witness first-hand how this system worked.

The state of the hall reminded me of a refugee camp. Some other students already there recognised me. They called out my name for help. This was really embarrassing: I knew that I did not have the means to respond to their cries. I felt terrible after telling one of them (a grey-bearded man dressed in bizarre purple robes) that he had to bear in mind that he was not the only pebble on the beach. At one point I even pretended to faint – just so that I could hide from them for a while.

Then I saw my colleague PL across the room, looking fabulous in a full length sky-blue satin ball-gown. By all counts it looked like she was in charge, so I asked if there was anything that I could do to help. She explained that if the students agreed to contribute 600 photos each to the University’s repository of images for marketing, all their debts would be cleared.

Afterwards I caught a Lothian bus home again. How remarkable it was that my local service now ran a franchise in the US.