NP marshalled everyone to spend over £1000 each on a ski-ing holiday – in the Philippines.

I travelled out with TPR but soon lost him in the transfer between the airport and city centre hotel. He had all the details of our accommodation so I was at a loss to know where to find him again.

Eventually I discovered from staff on a service desk that we were in room 475, and that my route there would be by a shaking metal lift and bus. I wondered whether the very tall man (easily over eight feet in height) next to me in the queue would be heading into town too. (Another woman in the queue said that she could easily fit inside this man whole. I corrected her and said that there was room for both of us.)

I found myself surrounded by friends on the bus ride into town. My former student MJ, sitting next to FK, spoke in Malay to the driver (who was in tears for most of the journey). Some school friends were there too (including JC).

However, the party mainly comprised TPR’s former work colleagues. They were under the impression that this trip was an incentive holiday. I was hoping that this was not the case, not least because the bus ride was so long and I was concerned that we risked repeating our experience of a visit to Rome two decades earlier, not so fondly remembered as ‘view from a coach’.