How could this be a holiday if I were sleeping at the lecturer’s desk in front of a class of thirty, all of whom were also extremely angry that the week of sunshine, sea and sand that they had been promised was actually an intensive knowledge management course? I saw that one girl had written in her notebook ‘I did not come here to work’. Nor had I.

True, we at the seaside – the beautiful beaches of the Outer Hebrides – but access to them was extremely difficult down ladders and ropes from the cliff edge beneath the huge old house that accommodated us.

While we were in residence, TPR and our friend JM worked on a coded message for mass dissemination. Towards the end of our stay, it was published on the front page of the New York Times. Positioned in the right hand column next to the main story about Donald Trump, the story looked like a report of the graduation of one of Trump’s children. It was, in fact, a coded call to arms to run the ex-President out of town.

Unfortunately the students did not really understand the significance of the newspaper piece. Disappointed at their lack of interest, I wandered down to the dining room. Here I selected a luxury yoghourt and a pain au chocolat for my breakfast (but not a huge piece of chocolate cake, unlike the enormous woman in a green tent dress who wobbled next to me at the buffet table).