I launched myself into the purple flume with no idea of what I would land in or on at the bottom. My eventual destination turned out to be an art exhibition at the Baltic curated by staff from Northumbria University.

As I slid the last few metres into the exhibition space a woman stepped forward and welcomed me by attaching a name badge to my top with a pale green glass-beaded pin. Although she knew who I was, I was clueless as to her identity, but I guessed that she might have something to do with the chairs laid out in lecture hall format in readiness for some presentation or other.

Then the star of the show arrived. The invited speaker was my pal RB, all the way from New York! The main prop for her talk was not her vast back catalogue of fine art photography, but a stick of celery.