Newcastle city centre was packed on the first Saturday after the January pay-day. We should never have agreed to meet my mother and sister S there.

As things turned out, we didn’t manage to find one another. This was because TPR and I ended up wandering through the terraced streets of Jesmond then spent the afternoon in a biology student’s flat on the beach.

My mother and S could not contact us because TPR had (as usual) forgotten to pack his mobile, and my iPhone was out of power. Even if they had got through, my mother would not have managed the walk from the city centre to the beach to meet us.