The last notes of the Hikers’ Song had just died away for the sixth time when, much to the relief of the Shock Troops of the Birth Control Crusade Debating in Gemini, or more prosaically, and less ominously from their point of view, Room 3, a door at the back of the platform opened and the President, Acting President, Secretary and Honorary Treasurer of the Union marched in with solemn tread followed by Tom Camidge, whom we last saw defying Ben Nevis in his own stronghold, Winifred Gosnay, his fiancée, whom we last saw zipping up her shorts, and several more of the sixteen hikers attacked on the braes of Strathdiddle and imprisoned in the dungeons of Glenbogle.

Amid a volley of cheers, the echoes of which made one of the Shock Troop debaters in Room 3 get badly mixed up in the defensive tactics he was expounding, Lord Buntingdon rose to address the meeting. If he had been in hiker’s garb he would have seemed with his melon-shaped face a fit mate for one of those fruitarian females on the reredos behind him. However, as we know, he had ruled against shorts for the platform party, and his confirmed bachelordom was in no danger.