I have been living under a false identity for the past 25 years.

It’s not quite as Bourne Identity as it sounds – unless the Bourne Identity was set on a university campus in the East Midlands.

When I was approaching the end of my university life I quite fancied the idea of continuing my studies, partly to add a few more letters to my name, but mostly to put off the onset of real life that was lurking around the corner.

Having enjoyed a blissful three years as a student, the idea of carrying on for a bit longer seemed appealing.

I half-heartedly sent off for information about post-graduate courses at various universities but soon realised this would cost money I didn’t have, and maybe I’d be better off knuckling down and getting a job after all.

Somehow though, I think I was accepted by Nottingham University for a year-long MA course in American Literature – without even applying there or going for an interview.

I vaguely recall leafing through a prospectus, and expressing some interest in the course, but that’s as far as it went.

I left university, moved to London, temped for a few months, realised I couldn’t survive in London on an unskilled temp’s wages, so moved back home to find a proper job. In all that time, I never set foot in Nottingham.

So I was surprised when I started getting regular correspondence from Nottingham University, as ‘a valued member of the alumni’. Over the next two decades I received newsletters about developments at the university, and the American Literature department, and chatty updates on what others on my course were up to. I even got invitations to reunions.

I didn’t even get that much mail from the university I actually went to!

It was quite amusing, then mildly annoying. It reached the point where I’d see the Nottingham University logo on the envelope and chuck it straight in the bin. I did once briefly wonder if maybe I had actually gone there to do an MA. I think I’d have remembered though.

A quarter of a century after casually leafing through that prospectus, I still get mail from Nottingham University. I’ve moved house several times but the alumni-trackers have managed to trace me to my current address.

They keep me up to speed on alumni and the current crop of undergrads, ask for funding contributions and invite me to seminars and get-togethers. If I was famous they’d be claiming me as their own and inviting me back to hand out degrees!

Maybe I should go along to a reunion and see if anyone remembers me...