Mrs Snell, scissor blades, and a delicious vampire kiss (Rousse)

Posted on November 12, 2026 by Dreamaticus

Lynda Snell confronted the tall, dark, handsome vampire by waving a clutch of scissor blades at him.

My own approach was far more enjoyable. I tempted him with a delicious kiss. The moment that our lips touched, I fell in love.

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Speakers stranded at the station (Rousse)

Posted on November 12, 2026 by Dreamaticus

I begged the train manager to take heed of my plea, even though he was about to go off his shift for the day. In my hurry to pull up my white jeans before boarding the train to the town where I was due to deliver my presentation, I’d left two of TPR’s speakers on the station platform.

Would it please be possible for him to contact the staff at the railway station that we had just left to ask if the speakers could be kept safe until someone – perhaps my brother-in-law MCF – could collect them for me?

Otherwise I would have to give my talk without amplification.

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Ageing backwards (Rousse)

Posted on November 12, 2026 by Dreamaticus

I admired my youthful reflection in the mirror, delighted that I was ageing backwards.

With my glossy dark hair and perfectly smooth skin, I was well on the way to transforming myself into my former PhD student MM.

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New President for Divorced Dads’ Society (Rousse)

Posted on November 11, 2026 by Dreamaticus

I was appointed new President of the University of Edinburgh’s Divorced Dads’ Society – even though I was neither divorced nor a Dad.

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Trapped in a cellar with a deaf-mute killer (Rousse)

Posted on November 5, 2026 by Dreamaticus

I was trapped in a tiny, dark, windowless pantry cellar with a tall balding man in a white chef’s outfit.

I tried to explain to him that DM had given me permission to fill a bowl with red cabbage coleslaw. He responded by moving his lips with an expression of anger across his face. I could only conclude that he was a deaf-mute intent on killing me.

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Mistress – filmed in front of a live studio audience (Belle)

Posted on November 5, 2026 by Dreamaticus

My (imaginary) husband had moved his mistress into the house and I had moved into a small box bedroom in the attic. Then the two of them decided my new bedroom would make a great place to read bedtime stories to her children.

I angrily told her how unfair this situation was. She stood up and made a gracious speech acknowledging I was right and saying she would make alternative plans. As she swept out of the room, a studio audience began to applaud her. As if I wasn’t the wronged party.

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Dealing with lift scroungers (Rousse)

Posted on November 1, 2026 by Dreamaticus

‘How convenient that you chose to be dropped off here after our weekend away. Once again, I bet that you have assumed that I will give you a lift home?’ snarled DM at LB.

Poor LB looked aghast. None of us had ever witnessed DM in this kind of mood. Dare I now make my confession to her? I felt that I had no choice.

‘I need to tell you something’, I began. ‘I forgot to pick up your quilted coat when we left Pitlochry. I could drive back there tomorrow and collect it then, if you like?’

DM gave me a big hug and told me that this was no problem. She had plenty of other coats, and could easily find another way to recover the one that I forgot.

DM clearly just had it in for lift scroungers.

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Robot drawing exercise does not live up to undergraduate expectations (Rousse)

Posted on October 31, 2026 by Dreamaticus

I was running out of ideas for filling the time in my Knowledge Management class. In desperation, I asked the students to draw the robot that appeared in a piece of fiction that I had asked the class members to read the previous week.

When I left the classroom to find some more large sheets of paper for the drawings, I overheard the students’ plans to put in a complaint about my poor teaching.

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A mother on the Paris Metro (Rousse)

Posted on October 31, 2026 by Dreamaticus

The walk across the Champs Elysées was much more rural and far longer than  I remembered. I thus decided to return to my Paris hotel by Metro.

By complete coincidence, I bumped into my mother on the station platform. She had travelled all the way to France by herself to see me, and was completely confused by the public address system that had just announced the cancellation of the next train.

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An alcohol-free night with the Coren Mitchells (Rousse)

Posted on October 30, 2026 by Dreamaticus

I’d never tried Guiness Zero before, but here I was swilling it at the invitation of Victoria Coren Mitchell in the big Victorian house in London that she shared with her husband David. Their two little girls already were in bed, but very much in evidence from the children’s books scattered about the rooms.

The three of us watched an old pilot television series on tape that starred my two hosts – plus my sister-in-law SS.

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