I’d devoted months to seeking out and inviting old undergraduate friends to the reunion that was due to start at 6:30pm prompt. Now, with just under an hour before the start time, absolutely nothing was ready in the venue. The room was in disarray and we hadn’t prepared any food. I wondered if there was time to drive to Tesco and buy some mini pork pies?

Nobody else seemed to be bothered about the urgency of the task, not even JS who was supposed to be the joint organiser of the reunion. That afternoon she had sat about with everyone else who had come early including AH (without CS), R and O C-I (who nearly hugged the life out of me), and MW (an old Edinburgh friend of ours from the 1990s, who only knew the others by reputation).

We were all surprised when CA turned up on the date of her daughter’s graduation. She told us that she had decided not to attend the ceremony because she thought a degree from the University of Gross (a new institution resulting from the merger of two failing universities in the south east of England) was worthless.