I spied Matt Smith sitting at a table preparing his presentation. Up until this point I didn’t consider it an unusual prospect to be sharing the stage with him. Then it dawned on me that this was Dr Who! I swooned. Would it be rude for me to ask for a photograph with him, and for a stack of autographs? (It was a shame that he was just wearing an ordinary suit rather than his Dr Who outfit.)

Meanwhile I had a very busy day ahead of me at the Aberdeen conference, as did my MacAir. In the first session I lent my machine to OM. Then an organising committee minder collected me for my own mid-morning presentation in another wing of the plush university venue. I was also down to give a third paper at the end of the afternoon. Locating the various presentation files on the computer and in my e-mail turned into quite a treasure hunt.

In between all these commitments I got into a number of scrapes: I almost dropped a valuable camera lens into a loch; I became lost in Leith with BR; and I got all tangled up in my outfit of white cheesecloth wrap dress over a red long-sleeved T shirt. To top it all, I was bitten by a really enormous pine marten (about the size of a grizzly bear) who objected strongly when I tried to photograph him in a field with three foxes.