Barefoot and carrying a towel, I arrived at the British Library ready for action.

A small Chinese woman whipped the towel out of my hands. ‘This is soiled and completely inappropriate for our criminal purposes’, she scolded.

In the end the plans for the heist were abandoned. The gang members were more interested in the opportunity to catch up with one another than they were in committing a crime. It had been so long!

I was particularly taken by a body builder in blue lycra who offered to use me as a set of weights.