I had been invited to participate in a competition to develop marketing materials to publicise the recent merger of two firms. We worked in groups of three. I was partnered with MJ and AC. If only I hadn’t given my best idea away to the group sitting next to us, we would have won the contract.

My suggestion was a relatively simple campaign that involved the production of about five lines of black text on grey backgrounds to be posted to advertising hoardings across the country. Each line of text would be a quotation from a famous film or book, the first to illustrate an initial meeting between two people who eventually fall in love, and the last the confirmation of this. So, for example, “Reader, I married him” would be an appropriate final quotation that could be combined with quotations from other works from the earlier stages of relationship development. The idea behind this was to show that two great firms had met, fallen in love, and would now live happily ever after.

Afterwards AC and I walked to Kings Cross station to catch the train back home to Edinburgh. He didn’t seem too bothered that I had given away our best idea. Instead, he was more interested in discussing the architectural deficiencies of Oxford Street and the possible location of my “lost” bike.