The committee was due to meet in my study. I arranged the furniture so that everyone would fit in: two seminar table arrangements, with the smaller one inside the other.

As people arrived I took drinks orders (three instant coffees), and instructed Mr Hendon to write up an agenda on the flipchart that I had provided. (I was a little surprised that the agenda was not already fixed, but as a non-member of this group I was unfamiliar with its practices.)

When I came back into the room with the coffees everyone had disappeared. The committee members had all got the wrong date for the meeting and so had left without a word to me.