I left my MacBook Air under my desk at the British Library and chased across the reading room to intercept the young man in a navy blue suit who was carrying a briefcase.

“Nick!” I shouted. He spun round and looked at me blankly. “Oh, you are a bit younger than I expected”, I said as he approached me. “Anyway, are you straight and single?”

“I’m both”, he answered with a broad grin beneath his tangle of fair hair. “What were you thinking of (and how do you know who I am)?”

“A date”, I replied, “(Oh, and SH gave me your contact details)”.

To my amazement Nick was keen to go on a date with me. He hesitated over heading to his island home first to get changed, or to go straight out for dinner. In the end we swapped mobile numbers and agreed to meet up later.

The date itself was not as intimate as I had hoped. Nick, who by now had admitted to me that his real name was Karl, brought along his best friend Doug. In retaliation I invited VE and TPR. To save costs we joined a larger party that had already paid for a group booking for a log cabin on the Isle of Skye. However, this turned out to be a false economy because we could only bear to spend one night with the others. This was largely because we could not stand the bossiness of Lynn, their dark-haired toothless leader. TPR also struggled to get the rest of them to understand that attitudes to science had progressed since the reign of Queen Victoria.

I retreated to a wooden shed in the garden to get changed, and to plan how Karl and I could find a place where we could be on our own.