Now that it was December I no longer objected to the Christmas displays in the shops. I was even becoming more tolerant of the members of the sect who queued up every day in their drab black uniforms for the special church services at the Tron.

I was deep in thought about the tyranny of religion when I suddenly wondered out loud what day and time it was. “Thursday, 11:30am” announced a man next to me. Thursday 11:30am? Was it still term time? Yikes, I shouldn’t be wandering around town: I should be in the front of a class of final year undergraduates!

In some respects it was inevitable that it would come to this. I’d had so much fun over the previous three days – country walks along the River Dee with TPR, revisiting old haunts in Shetland (where I met a freelance Radio 4 editor who worked on Melvyn Bragg’s In our time), learning how to use a professional camera with KT, and astonishing strangers with my poor knowledge of cinema (trumping all with my claim “I have yet to see The sound of music“) – that I had completely forgotten that I had teaching commitments on campus. Indeed, if pushed, I might not even have admitted that I had a job.

Then, with great relief I remembered that my colleague BB had offered to give a guest lecture in the morning session of my class this week. So long as I reached campus by 13:00, all would be well.