It actually tasted even worse than it sounds, and the texture of the bits that didn’t taste of anything at all was indescribable. I’m not sure what the dessert was because, having dished it out, I wasn’t feeling inclined to experiment with my health any further. Then the full glory of the coffee burst upon me and it all began to seem like some hellish nightmare, but then, so did my entire life lately.

It seemed even more ghastly when I was marched, biliously, to the Great Hall, a minor aeroplane hangar with dodgy acoustics, where the chairman stood at the microphone telling bad jokes for ages before he let me anywhere near it.

When I finally had the talking stick, though, I went into automatic and whipped through my usual ‘who I am, what I write, and funny anecdotes’ spiel in a spirit of ‘let’s get it over with’, because after that it was going to be more a case of ‘I’m an author – get me out of here!’

My talk was followed by lots of questions from the audience of the ‘I’ve been writing for thirty years, how do I get my first novel accepted?’ kind, to which there is no easy answer … or even any answer, except that there is always hope.

Then the chairman thanked me, adding that the bar was now open, and I was astonished that no one got trampled to death in the rush. Certainly by the time I got there the queue was a mile deep, due to my having been detained and interrogated by the committee just like the Spanish Inquisition but without the fun factor; and by Moira, who gave me the list of next day’s events so I could join in, though frankly I thought I’d got beyond ‘Plotting for Beginners’, or ‘Self-publishing the Easy Way’. But ‘Postmortem Procedure for Crime Writers’ sounded interesting if you had a strong stomach, and I thought it might prepare me to face dinner with more stoicism.

I gave up on the bar and I’d had enough of the committee, so I retired to my haunted chamber where I spent most of the night with the light on and the TV murmuring for company, while people I couldn’t see trod the creaking floorboards.

I had just managed to drop off with the dawn when I was jolted out of bed by that damned klaxon again.