It all started when my good friend Alan Boyce told me he was in the ‘departure lounge of life’. He was 48 I think at the time. I was 46. Well, if he’s in the departure lounge, I’m at least in the taxi on the way there, I thought. I looked back into the not-so-distant past and clearly saw the moment the driver had come to pick me up. He had opened the door, and I had got in. No grumbles, no protests from me. Off we had set.

I had been cruising through life for a long time, resigning myself to the routine: work, drink, eat, smoke, repeat. The realisation that my trip to the departure lounge had already started came as a shock. I wasn’t ready yet. And I still had a number of other adventurous trips to complete before embarking on the final one.