With very poor knowledge of the geography of the south of England I had hoped for more help from the red-uniformed staff on the newly-appointed Virgin East Coast service.

The overweight guard pulled out a section of an Ordnance Survey map from a polythene pocket in a ring binder and made an attempt to locate Suffolk. The man next to me pointed out that the town wouldn’t feature on this section of the map: it was too far north. Meanwhile I argued that we should be looking at the area around Lyme Regis in Dorset.

At this rate I was never going to reach the funeral in time. But then I remembered that it hadn’t yet been organised, not least because the person in question wasn’t dead – yet.