He laughed. ‘Ah, right, yeah, good one. So, you have five seconds to defend them.’

She took a deep breath. ‘Well, the way they mix musicianship with aggression, I think that’s unique, and they … they define the scope of what metal can do when it’s fused with hip-hop and pop.’

‘Ha!’ Dan said, nodding, pleasantly surprised. ‘Excellent. Really, excellent. You’ll go far.’

She beamed. ‘What’s yours?’

‘Comsat Angels,’ he said. ‘Look ’em up.’ And he swung out of the café into Cockburn Street and headed down the hill to the station.

So, he was on the London-bound train, his mobile office, a place without distractions where all he could do was listen to music or write. Twice a month these days, sometimes three, he’d make this journey, and years ago, when he was young and hungry for work, he’d disappear down there for days and days, dossing in Kentish Town with Rocco and Kim, who freelanced at the NME, Rocco a writer, Kim a photographer, and between them they got the occasional subbing shift for Dan, although writing was what he wanted: a picture byline, a staff job. He’d dropped out of Durham University after only a year there, and he was lost for a while, drinking and smoking with Rocco and Kim and their sketchy friends. There was a big, friendly guy who ran a Jamaican restaurant just off Kentish Town Road, with a sign on the wall that said ‘A Friend with Weed is a Friend Indeed’, and he kept them in cannabis and fed them rice and peas when the post-high hunger descended. But that was then; these days he had meetings to attend, gigs to see, deadlines to meet. He had a narrowboat home, too: a permanent mooring on the Regent’s Canal, a rock ’n’ roll solution to the crazy cost of bricks and mortar in the capital. Nothing nicer than sitting on the towpath with a beer, nodding at the neighbours whose boats were nose to tail with his own.

He had three nights ahead of him on this trip. Three meetings, two gigs, one pressing deadline. But as usual he’d managed to build in some loafing time, keeping tomorrow night free to hang out with his friends Frank and Lisa on their boat before bed. So, one gig tonight, another Saturday, then home on the slow Sunday train, King’s Cross to Waverley, working all the way; he never took the overnight sleeper, hated those narrow bunks and the sway of the carriage, and arriving in Edinburgh at half past seven, feeling like shit. What he liked was a daytime journey, a table to himself, a seat facing the direction of travel, a power point to charge his laptop, and a – admittedly patchy – stream of free wireless connection to the internet.