Dreamaticus

British Airways’ new welcome service for first class passengers coming into Heathrow Terminal 5 was second to none. A smart uniformed man met you off the plane and guided you through the terminal, ensuring that you by-passed all the queues. He also kindly held your hand on the mid-air motorised walkway all the way to the point where you fell through the beaded fibre optic curtain into the departure lounge (in reality a field) for your connecting flight.

Unfortunately the BA minder left you at this point and you were now left to your own devices for the rest of your journey. I sat on the grass between two young men while I waited for my flight to be called. They were catching tiny transparent water-filled balloons. I soon worked out that this was a game in which you were meant to match a pair of identically-shaped balloons to win a prize. This was just my kind of thing and I immediately joined in. However, the distraction of catching balloons meant that I left my handbag unattended and before long one of the young men stole it. I caught him just as he was pulling the credit cards out of my purse. I confronted him with a reminder of my influence over the employers of south east Scotland. If he ever hoped to find a decent job when he left college, then he needed to start behaving like a responsible citizen.

When I eventually made it back to Edinburgh I discovered that very few colleagues were still at work, and someone had switched the hard drive and keyboard of my computer. All that I could see when I booted up the machine were dozens of files that belonged to a mysterious stranger called Jon.