My former colleague JB strutted around the party in a white leather, silver-studded, flared Elvis-style jumpsuit, taking our calls of ‘Rocky Raccoon!’ and ‘Davy Crockett!’ with good humour. In short, he looked amazing and he knew it. I was delighted when he agreed that I could photograph him and send the image to KA.

At the same party, I found myself left with the washing up because I lost a bet with TPR’s old boss ZM. My school friend KG (KMcL) was my partner for this task. As she dipped the crockery into the sink, she enthused about a television documentary on the production of sugar beet in Cyprus. Now she understood the reasons for the high price of sugar.

When KG started her review, I was only half-listening. I thought that she was talking about a radio documentary about reading that I had heard that morning. To save her embarrassment, and even though I had not seen the television programme in question, I agreed with everything that KG had to say about industrial agricultural production in the Mediterranean.