I took up my new post so quickly that there was no time to organise a leaving do in Scotland. I didn’t even have time to arrange any temporary accommodation, so we lived out of our car for our first few days south of the border.

I didn’t care. I loved it here, as did TPR, who spent his first night on campus dancing with the same students with whom I had held assignment tutorials earlier in the day. We would settle in properly in no time. I already knew most of my new colleagues, and was familiar with the layout of the department and its procedures from previous visits. I couldn’t wait to catch up with AM when she returned from her trip to Paris.

All I needed to do now was to make sense of some of the University’s quaint financial procedures. For example, the University took care of all your spending on meals. You recorded an estimate of the cost of your projected food consumption in an old-fashioned ledger, then each month this figure would be deducted from your salary. If it turned out that your estimates were inaccurate, a simple readjustment could be made.

I could not imagine how I would ever be unhappy here.