Four years later than anticipated, finally I was the guest of honour at a dinner to mark my retirement.

Former colleagues and long-term friends joined the celebrations. The locals included MS and IH from work. From further afield came university pals NF and JG, convinced that they had also booked a holiday in Edinburgh as part of their trip north, even though the postcode for their AirBnB indicated Duns.

I came in for some criticism from some former students at the event. They complained that I ‘forced’ them to rewrite sections of their Masters dissertations prior to submission. I countered that editing was a necessary part of the process of preparing dissertation work for examination.