It was pouring in Edinburgh and very difficult for me to navigate the puddles on my way to my 9:15 exercise class on campus. There was a real risk that I would arrive late. Along the route I heard the cries of animals in distress. By the side of the wood, inside a wooden hutch, I found two cats and a clutch of kittens. On the outside of the structure were various screens that relayed scenes from the interior. These allowed the curious to observe the cats’ antics in real time. I wanted to photograph the kittens, but all my attempts were hopeless.

I was late on campus, as feared, and bound to miss my strength training class. I made matters worse by stopping EH in the corridor to enquire about her recent ski-ing holiday. She answered that this went reasonably well, but she hated carrying her skis from her accommodation to the slopes and back again each day. The two-hour trek along the motorway twice daily was excessive.

I struggled to find my office because I had forgotten that I’d agreed to move to the D corridor, and that all the rooms there had been renumbered. I eventually reached my room at the far end. My immediate neighbours were unfriendly engineers who thought nothing of using my room as a short cut to other parts of the building, wandering in and out of my space, even when I was changing into my gym kit.

I also despaired at the state of my room. It was so full of tables, shelving and books that it resembled a tatty public library. I wondered if moving me here and dumping all these items in my room was simply a plot to infuriate me sufficiently that I would resign my post? One of my external colleagues – an emeritus professor at the National Library of Scotland – thought so. She encouraged me to take up another such appointment at the music school instead.