“Good morning Baffin Island!” – those were the first words I heard this morning; they came from Chris, naturally, as he drew back the curtains and looked at the world outside. I kept my eyes closed because I was still disentangling myself from a strange dream about strange houses at the time (we are looking at winter accommodation in Spain).

My husband may look like a mild-mannered “playboy- politician”* but in actual fact he is a frustrated meteorologist and a closet geography teacher (well, a bedroom geography teacher in this case). He keeps a globe of the world lamp (you could say it was a “Light of the World”) on his part of the dressing table, which is a very useful tool for a geography teacher, and it doubles up as a kind, and therefore romantic, light at bedtime.

“Where is Baffin Island?” I asked, still with my eyes shut but rallying. Where’s the harm in pandering to his little obsession?

“Canada, above Alaska and very close to the North Pole” he gushed, pleased that I was interested enough to ask, even if my eyes were still closed tight.

“Like Russia’s version of Siberia?” (Well, I was half-asleep. You have to show a bit of willing even if it doesn’t make perfect sense.)

“Yes,” he said, knowing exactly what I meant.

“Why is it called Baffin Island?” I continued, “Are there some animals called Baffins that I’ve never heard of?”

“Baffin was an explorer, silly! It’s a very cold and remote place, quite large really,” Chris walked over to the globe (I was now awake and able to open my eyes), “Yes, here it is… a part of Canada but so far North that it is even closer to the Pole than Siberia.” He traced his finger across to Siberia.

“Fancy that,” I said, keeping up my interest.

“Not to be confused with Puffin Island, the island for asthmatics – it’s quite a wheeze!” He came back to bed and continued, “If the explorer was called William, the island would be called ‘Puffin’ Billy’!”

We laughed (and wheezed and had a coughing fit).

“With all this political correctness nowadays you can’t call Eskimos Eskimos any more. I think that it came from the French because the plural of Eskimo is Eskimeaux” he had moved on to another line of thought, not disconnected. (I told you he is a closet geography teacher!)

For a moment my mind went back to when I was seventeen and living in London, and I met an Eskimo (he didn’t mind telling me that he was an Eskimo). I asked him for a kiss because I wanted to know what it was like to kiss an Eskimo (as you do). He was eager to oblige and it was very educational – you see it wasn’t just a case of rubbing his nose either side of my own quickly, as children do when pretending to be Eskimos (well we did!); actually, it was quite sensual, he rubbed his nose slowly DOWN one side of my nose, then the other, until his lips found mine… at which point I pushed him away because I had already got the idea.

I didn’t tell Chris about my slip into memory. You don’t have to reveal all – do you?

“Mongoloid Nell doesn’t sound as pretty as Eskimo Nell – does it?” Chris asked.

And the conversation went on in the same funny vein for another twenty minutes; if only I could remember more… but I’m afraid I had barely opened my eyes from strange dreams about houses, and I can’t remember; except for something about Siberian bungalows perhaps being called “bungaloids”…

* A true quote from a former lover (of Chris’s, not mine!)