I went on a walking tour of Oxford colleges to indulge my fetish for old buildings. Abel chose retail therapy instead. As I stood among a group in the Quad of the New College,* my phone buzzed with a text message.

Girl on tour heads through the door marked ‘strictly private’. Finds herself in Master’s study as he returns. He decides to introduce her to the college’s traditional means of dealing with disobedience.

This improved the already excellent tour a great deal. I could picture the chastened girl walking back through the cloisters, with the students lounging there giving her knowing looks…

*So called for being the oldest, obviously.