You know how you look down the list of correspondents in your in-box and see how you react to it? And you know how sometimes it contains the name of someone you'd find it difficult to speak to if a huge asteroid hit our planet and destroyed all but the two of you? Well, more than a frisson of electrified horror shot through my torso as if I'd just come into contact with the wire surrounding Guantanemo Bay when I saw a name from the past among those wishing to make contact today. My response to the aforementioned consisted of two words - although neither the first nor the second were what you might have thought. (I do have a modicum of decency, you know.)

The event did, however, remind me of a most wondrous moment when I was at school in Bath, which, for reasons that will become clear, is near a place called Kelston Roundhill.

A few of us were trying to arrange a 'Brains' Trust', involving three boys on one side and three members of staff on the other. We had persuaded the school chaplain to join the staff team, and we invited the head of English to do so.

"Who else is appearing?" asked the latter, a man for whom I had great respect and affection.

"The Chaplain," we replied.

"Gentlemen," he said, "I would rather 'do naughty things' (verb omitted as this is a family blog) with a monkey on Kelston Roundhill than sit on a Brains' Trust with the Chaplain."

Wonderful. And that's more or less how I felt about my correspondent today. Although it certainly wasn't, I promise, our own excellent chaplain.