It was the morning after Freddy Furlong’s farewell party, and I was suffering the effects of an assortment of wines, brandies, whiskies, ports and fruit liqueurs, mingled with semi-digested oysters, plovers’ eggs and a dish that Freddy had claimed was made from octopus, although nobody at the club had believed him. My brain had turned into porridge; my skull was threatening to split into more pieces than the Austro-Hungarian Empire; and somebody had decided that what my stomach really needed was a spot of incendiary bombing. In short, I was not a well man.