I went to an old school reunion in Cambridge, where I met people I haven’t seen for thirty years, including someone I shared a flat with for a year and the first boy I ever kissed. Although boy would be pushing it a bit nowadays, as he is father of two teenagers and an eminent cancer research Professor with a lab named after him.

It was enormous fun, reliving our teenage trips punting on the Cam and retro 70s picnicking on Grantchester Meadows (baguettes and brie, cheesy pineapples, quiche, scotch eggs). I was not alone, I think in having a couple too many Blue Nuns. And a couple of us ended up in the river – intentionally, I have to add.

But like everything I seem to do at the moment, it was sort of research, because novel #2 deals with meeting people who meant a lot to you a long while back, and what sort of feelings are resurrected, whether things that were serious back then are now material for today’s jokes, and how our pasts are part of ourselves, physically, intellectually and emotionally. I have to say, it felt like meeting part of the material that is me, seeing those people again. And we laughed: a lot.

I stopped myself scribbling notes in my moleskine, but only just.