Just a couple of hours into my new job and already I had the Director of Communications and Information Technology bellowing down the phone at me to lay off his staff. I didn’t think that asking two questions about my new e-mail account was such a crime, but when the director’s rant collapsed into intermittent gulping breaths of a furious man having a heart attack I decided I needed to go and sort this out in person.

“I’m on my way over to you”, I said “Please could you tell me your room number?”

“We’re off campus in the converted church building on Strathearn Street” he replied.

“Where’s that?” I asked, “Is it to the east or west of the main campus?”

“You can find it yourself” he grunted, then slammed down the phone.

I grabbed my bag and headed out the door. My best bet was that the converted church would be to the east of campus. However, no matter how hard I looked, I couldn’t find Strathearn Street. There were plenty of churches – inside one there was a wedding party dressed as pirates – but none that looked like the headquarters of a university computer services department.

Then I remembered that I had a map application on my iPhone. I thought that this would help locate the desired destination. What I hadn’t counted on was that all the useful apps on my phone had been wiped. All that remained there was a rolling advert for weekend breaks in Amsterdam, and multiple photographs of red squirrels.