TPR threatened to accompany me to the ball naked. Happily, instead, he dressed in his dinner suit.

However, he did have a big surprise for me. He had rounded up my two best friends from undergraduate days (HJ and SL) and four others from our early twenties (NY, SY, AH-S and CH-S) to join us at the celebration. Everyone was very smartly dressed. The women in our company were even wearing hats.

We left our hotel on foot for the venue. Along the way we wondered at SL’s language prowess: she now was fluent in French, German, Spanish, Italian and Latin.

I was surprised that nobody commented on the small white monkey that was bouncing along beside us all. Its tiny hands were clinging on to N and S. Perhaps everyone else just assumed this figure to be a child rather than a primate?