The Italian mafia in charge of the super expensive luxury hotel took an instant dislike to my beautiful new husband.
Could this be down to his stunning good looks: the dark olive skin and gorgeous green eyes inherited from his Iranian father and British mother? Or perhaps it was all simply because of his long black beard?
Perhaps they thought he was a terrorist? Whether or not he was about to bomb the hotel, he didn’t deserved to be shunned by his hosts.
Two things annoyed me when I checked the weather outside to see if we could move some stones from the old rockery.
First, the ground was covered with six inches of snow. Second our neighbour had built a footpath from his garden all the way across our lawn.
I was also surprised to discover that we had acquired two extra ponds.
AC was teaching a stranger to unicycle in our hall.
After the ‘class’ I invited the pair of them to stay for lunch, even though I knew that this would cost us a fortune.
The cycling student hesitated, then said that she would just pick up a sandwich on Edinburgh’s Broughton Street. However, and much to my annoyance, AC persuaded her to stay.
Sir Stephen Fry set a terrible example to the young men on the River Tees boat cruise. As well as gorging on takeaways and failing to clear up his mess afterwards, he persuaded a fit, young personal trainer to experiment with recreational drugs.
The only safe place to shelter from the naughty knight was the butcher shop run by the Docherty family on Stockton High Street.
The fiery sunset behind Edinburgh castle was all the more vibrant on a day when the city’s street lighting was out of order. TPR, BMcC, and I rushed out of the flat with our iPhones to photograph the display.
When TPR and BMcC returned indoors to check that evening’s boeuf bourguignon, I popped into our neighbourhood garden to inspect the ‘improvements’: a huge pond at the west end, washing lines strewn with bedlinen hanging our to dry, and a small shop complete with a butchery counter. Someone had even rigged up a wooden mechanical roof to crank over the garden in case of rain.
I had only intended to visit the garden for a couple of minutes, but soon fell into conversation with the neighbours, telling them about my recent skiing exploits in Courcheval. I was delighted when TPR’s cousin G joined us, although I felt sorry for him when he admitted that he had come into the garden to escape from the terrible atmosphere at home.
To cheer up G, I invited him home with me to say hello to his cousins. I think that he would have stayed for the beef too, had we had invited him to eat with us.
We were such good customers of Edinburgh’s Broughton Market that the staff were perfectly comfortable when we popped into the shop after-hours to pick up some pastries. JH, however, still disapproved of our ‘cheek’.
Provisions acquired, we set off for the show. The route took us through open countryside then straight up the side of a hill by way of a huge, wobbly rock face. We all travelled on sheep-back, with our legs securely wrapped around their bodies and our hands tightly clutching their horns.
We were a little late in reaching the theatre at the end of our journey, and the show already underway when we shuffled into our seats.
At first I thought that the opening act was a hologram. The others corrected me. The performer was a real-life, and very convincing, Bruce Forsyth impersonator.
I was both working at, and a customer of, a shoe shop in Millwall’s south London football stadium. My boss asked me if I’d graduated from the ‘Morley College of Violent Librarians’.
PB and I were enjoying our trip across India in our old school VW Beetle. At some point, however, I took an incorrect turn and we ended up on the white cliffs of Dover.
KJR and her Texan husband T gatecrashed my final year honours class.
The students waited patiently while I fielded KJR’s questions. This was a tricky task now that she spoke with a strange Americanised North East English accent.
Eventually one of the students piped up to remind me of my role so I started the class. The day’s exercise was to communicate occupations through drawings. The first student to attempt this task was Chinese, and completely misunderstood the instructions.
We skied into the underground car park.
It looks ages to find my poles afterwards. I’d flung them all the way to the far end of the car park when our skis hit the tarmac and brought us to a complete standstill.
Dreamaticus 