I want to thank all the members who helped me in my research for a novel I was writing set on the liner Queen Elizabeth in the 1960s. ‘ Cherry Ice’ has recently been published by Penguin and it carries the following message in the Acknowledgements: – ‘Thanks are also due to the worldwide membership of the Globetrotters Club – very helpful via the Web in my search for the precise amount of the British Sterling travel allowance circa 1964, when no amount of studious research could provide me with a definitive answer. Not even Her Majesty’s Treasury nor Customs and Excise could provide the solution – in fact the latter came up with five different possibilities in a hilarious letter I shall always keep to make me smile in times of angst.’ – from Jill Laurimore