TPR signed up as Dr Who and appointed me as his assistant. To make the role his own, he took his canoe whenever he went. This meant that there was not enough space for me in the Tardis, so I always travelled separately.

My own Tardis was a little basic, the size of a phone box with a concrete floor and a dirty top window. However, the sensation of flying through the air off to my new adventures (writing taxonomies with P and E at the Corstorphine branch of the British Library) was really something else.