Although the conference had changed format for 2012, it still attracted the same crowd. AA and I waved greetings to everyone we knew as we crossed the main exhibition hall on our way out to check in at the hotel. EH and ON, busy setting up a stand, grinned back at us and shouted their greetings.

At the exit AA pushed her way through the revolving door, complaining loudly that that she would really rather remain for the rest of the week in the Princess of Wales’ private apartments at Kensington Palace. However, I wasn’t to be fooled into believing that she was hob-nobbing with royalty. I knew that her stay in the royal palace over the past couple of days was a complete fluke. The vouchers that she had found in her purse on her way up to London were for rail tickets, not grace and favour accommodation. How she had ever persuaded anyone otherwise was really quite astonishing.

The conference hotel was supposed to be only a short walk away, but this turned out not to be the case. AA led the way, marching faster and faster into the distance ahead of me. I struggled to keep up with her. The only way to match her pace was to shove my small aluminium suitcase in her direction and pray that it had enough momentum to make it to the hotel on its own. This, of course, was ridiculous, and before long I was obliged to retrace my steps to hunt for my lost luggage. Then I fell into a boggy stream and almost drowned in my pathetic attempts to haul myself out of the water and clamber back up the collapsing peat bank. (My pink woollen skirt, incidentally, was ruined.)

I never retrieved my suitcase. Instead, I walked uninvited into a German family’s house on the French border and stole the camera that I found on top of the television in the sitting room. Then I gave careers advice to the most precocious three year old I had ever met. In flawless English he announced his plans for the future. I could only agree that his options for postgraduate study were excellent, although it was highly unlikely that the research groups that he admired so much would still be in existence by the time he finished his first degree.