"Everyone has a zone of genius, you just have to find it"

IT’S 8.45am, Notre Dame University, South Bend, in my son’s off-campus student house. On waking, I look up at my sister, who’s sitting up in bed and gazing around as if she’s just been told the punchline of a joke she doesn’t understand.

“I forgot where I was for a moment,” she says, “then I looked at the vent and remembered: Josef Fritzl’s dungeon.”

From the bed we tossed a coin for last night, she looks down at me where I lie across three sofa cushions laid end-to-end on the dungeon floor, with my feet in a cupboard: my already extensive experience of student accommodation has quite literally plumbed new depths.