The party of external examiners included an elderly man from Sheffield University, a woman from Loughborough, and a dark-haired systems librarian called Mike Hirst. They all seemed friendly enough although none were interested enough to acknowledge (or perhaps question) who I was, even when I invoked the name of my colleague and mentor ED. They were much happier reminiscing about two earlier visits to the University. On both previous occasions they had examined the PhD students of a now-retired professor called M. It took some time before I realised that the M to whom they referred was my mother. How she had kept her high-flying academic career a secret from us all for so long?

Then the woman from Loughborough emptied out her handbag to reveal that she carried a replica of my sister J’s Baby Ted wherever she went. Had she inside knowledge garnered from my mother of the secret Baby Ted graveyard that I discovered in a drawer at the White House in Stockton-on-Tees circa 1975? This was all a terrible distraction from the business of the day.

I had hoped to hold the viva pre-meeting in one of our smaller offices, but this had recently been converted into a kitchen. The public spaces on campus were too busy for our purposes so I offered my own office, claiming that it was nearby.

The “short walk” to my room turned out to be quite a trek. We left one building, crossed two busy roads, and then faced 16 concrete steps up to the base of a tower block (not unlike the University of Birmingham’s Muirhead Tower). The elderly examiner struggled with the steps and I could tell that he was not pleased with me. It didn’t help that while we were walking over I got caught up in a game on my Blackberry where you were meant to answer simple questions about television soap operas. Needless to say, I was hopeless at this. Before long I started to worry about how much I was spending on premium phone lines.

One hour late my colleague BB finally arrived to act as internal examiner and so I was free to leave the party.

It had warmed up outside while we had been waiting. I took off both my pairs of tights, then skipped back to the main building and my e-mail.