My sister S drove the rickety old grey Land Rover. Her passengers were my other sister, her husband, their daughter, and their daughter’s partner. They carried hardly any luggage having ‘gone minimal’ after their recent house clearance experiences.

This meant that there was plenty of room for them to carry the last few contents of my office: my Marvel comic collection, and two big print orders (both sets of journal article reprints). I directed them into town and on to campus via the by-pass.

Their arrival interrupted a conference session during which authors of the papers listed in the programme were meant to make short informal presentations. The session was in complete confusion because (a) authors of co-authored papers were arguing over who would speak; (b) not everyone had a full set of papers in their delegate packs; (c) nobody had been appointed session chair.

I was implicated in the chaos as someone that others expected to take the lead, and as a co-author named on three papers, including one with CI.