Of the two couples, Tony and Tania are the most nauseating—but it is a close-run thing. They must be the wrong side of forty, but act like teenagers and are so deliriously in love it is very sick-making—it makes me wonder whether anyone ever looked at Jake and me and thought that. Tony is an eye surgeon and wears bottle-bottom glasses. Tania is a chocolate taster for a Knightsbridge department store whose name is familiar to all Americans. How jammy a job is that? Despite her profession, she has a figure like a bird—and I’m talking tiny little sparrow here, not hulking great vulture. They finish each other’s sentences and he eats all her vegetables, while she eats all his fattening stuff. The woman is quite obviously some sort of metabolic freak. They hold hands all the time and giggle at each other as if sharing private jokes. I’m feeling very excluded here, but of course, they’re completely oblivious. I’m glad my tent isn’t pitched next to theirs because they’re probably going to be at it all night.

I suppose on all of these group-type expeditions there are going to be people you are never going to want to see again in your entire life. And Felicity and Felix are such people. They live in Hampstead—celeb central. Felicity is a voice coach and over-pronounces everything and talks as if she’s addressing the back of the stalls. She insists that she’s had all the top stars—metaphorically speaking—although she can’t name any of them because of client confidentiality. Oh, that old chestnut. She does however mention the ‘Welsh Beauty’ and the ‘Dimpled Hollywood Legend’ more times than I’d consider discreet. She looks theatrical and I can just see her and Saffron sharing homeopathic elixirs. Neither of them is as young as they think they are. Felicity’s husband, Felix, is a conceptual artist and I feel very threatened by him because I don’t understand conceptual art at all. I’m one of these Barbarians who thinks it’s a load of old nonsense, but can’t argue enough to defend my stance, which even I will admit is largely based on ignorance. I thought that awful multi-coloured ceiling panel affair which won the Turner Prize a few years ago looked like something out of a 1960s working-men’s club—but I fully understand that I am deemed to be missing the point. They both look too avant garde to have been bothered with that fuddy-duddy institution of marriage or to trouble themselves with a holiday in a tent. Strange. And when the Sherpas clear away the delicious soup and replace it with a spicy, pungent chicken dish, a speciality of Nepal, Saffron tucks in with gusto—which just goes to show that you can never judge a book by its cover.