The suburb of Northfield in Birmingham had smartened up considerably since the late 1980s. The tumbledown garages behind our old street had been demolished and replaced with a row of neat new houses.

Our old house had been vastly extended at the expense of garden space at the front and back. This allowed for the addition of some astonishing new features including a Georgian portico at the front door, and granite statues and gargoyles attached to all the street-facing walls. The house was so huge inside that the most efficient means of getting from one room to the other was by bike.

On the day that we arrived there, RG was hosting a Champagne party, with my old boss SS nominally in charge of proceedings.