I didn't come all this way in my second-best hat to be fobbed off

I bump into an old colleague I've not seen in a while (you'll remember him Tom). He's been retired a few years from his old Yorkshire stomping grounds and, like most of the retired people I know, he's a damned sight busier now than he ever was at work, freed as he is from compulsory unproductive activity.

These days he's doing work with the library equivalent of International Rescue, helping to plan the Third World's response to the need for public library services in the United Kingdom.

Up to a few months ago that would have been funny.