I quite enjoyed behaving as if I were a poverty-stricken invalid. I barely made any effort to work, and TPR gladly cooked me the special meals that I demanded. I regularly attended a charity service that helped clothe the needy, certain that it would soon provide me with a brand new cashmere coat at no cost whatsoever.

One day towards the end of a holiday, and in the blazing heat of the far north of Scotland, TPR (who was looking after me with the utmost care) and I came across a budding rock star standing beside a jetty. I recognised the young man straightaway. He was called Simon Smith, and a former student of mine. I pretended that I was already a big fan of his music, but he soon saw through my fake enthuiasm for his band and, before long, it dawned on him why my face was familiar to him.

Simon immediately invited me to a reunion of his classmates. These included MG, who chatted with me at the dinner table and told me all about her son. Best of all, surrounded by the former students I was able to work out who had graduated in 1996, and discovered a bunch of people who remembered my colleague DR, and her sister CM.