While JA was making pastel button-sized icons out of icing sugar, PL ran some sophisticated programs on his laptop. To begin with they worked silently side by side. Then PL started interrogating JA about his PhD.

This raised so many questions:

• What were the icing sugar icons for?
• Why was JA going to the trouble of making them when you could buy them in the shops?
• When did PL learn computer programming?
• How did JA ever survive his PhD viva?