Ten years ago, five ex-Oxford students were sharing houses in London, and the prospect of middle age – mortgages, marriages, families – was a remote gleam on the horizon. But one of their number could see it coming, and suggested that a fund should be set up, as a sort of lifeboat once the seas of middle age got too stormy, which would pay for a holiday for the five, as a way of returning to those halcyon days.

And bizarrely, we all agreed. Due to a profound reverence for the work of Michael Caine, we called ourselves the Self-Preservation Society. And each month we paid in a small amount to our fund. And after nine years we managed to agree that Mongolia was the place to go. (Largely because a sixth ex-Oxford student had travelled the world a few times, and we simply HAD to go somewhere that he hadn’t been).

The famous five:
Al: “Hang on lads, I’ve got a great idea” – because it was his idea.

Al works for L’Arche in Germany
Stu: “Known as Big Stu, for obvious reasons”

Stu is a founding partner of Gecko
Paul: “Don’t put him down because he’s a man of learning. He’s very important to the job”

Paul does something .complicated in the City.
Ian: “Will it take the weight?”

Ian is a patent attorney and
Sam: “I think we’d better arrange a funeral”

Sam is your friendly blogger with a collar.

Now, it was going to be straightforward. We were all going to fly to Beijing. But Stu was bringing his theatre company back from Moscow on the day we travelled, and being the responsible type, he wanted to make sure they all got back safely. So he flew Moscow – London – Beijing, and joined us after a day.

Whereas the other four all met up at Heathrow, in various states of unbelief, and feeling very concerned that Al was going to do something silly – concerns which seemed fully justified when he got into vigorous debate (that’s a euphemism) with the lady at the check-in desk. But it was cool. We got onto our flight OK.

And then we were off, preserving ourselves.