For a reason that I could not understand AA and IR had clubbed together to buy me a celebratory present that comprised a collection of green cuddly toys and some rather bizarre clothing, much of it the same colour. Rather than hand all this over to me in person, they left it in a locker at the far side of security at Edinburgh airport. The only way for me to collect my haul would be item by item each time I took a flight. This would take months due to the strict hand baggage rules enforced by the airlines. If only the pair of them had chosen a locker beside the check-in desks instead.

On the first day that I set off to visit my locker I ran into a newly-retired colleague. My delight turned to shame as she berated me for failing to treat annual leave cards as confidential documents. We never had a cross word when we worked together and now I wondered if she had secretly hated me for the past ten years? I wandered off, my head hanging in shame.

However, I soon cheered up when I spotted GG by the check-in desks all dressed up and looking super-glamorous. She was meeting the rest of her family for a photo shoot. This sounded so much more interesting than how I would be spending the next hour or so: making a decision as to which lucky green teddy would be released from the locker as my companion on the 09:15 flight to Heathrow.