It turns out that the kebab stand has long since been ploughed into the ground and been replaced with a Starbucks, but there's a McDonald's still open about 100 meters down the road. Joss points to the brightly-lit golden arches: "Shall we?"

At the question, he looks up with a small smile. "Officially, I died in 1349. I came down with bubonic plague--the Great Mortality, we called it then. My father sent for a a local holy woman to cure me; she didn't so much cure me as turn me. I woke up in a plague pit with three bodies on top of me. That month was not kind to Ely Cathedral."