I was trapped at yet another dreary conference for PhD students. By Day 2 most people had given up on the programme and headed back to their offices to get on with some “real” work. Unfortunately for me, I was obliged to sit through a series of technical papers on random topics in which I had no interest whatsoever. Of all my colleagues only RGJ remained in the auditorium, accompanied by her two pre-school children.

“Someone really needs to do something about the format of these events”, I thought, just as the session chair asked my opinion of training events for doctoral students in chemistry.

To make best use of the time I started writing a paper on the delivery of CPD training to Scottish librarians, then shared this with my former colleague JW, who was seated next to me. Another welcome distraction was to pass breakfast items along the row. For some reason these foodstuffs were highly relevant to the paper currently being delivered on stage.