It was my first day on the job as a newly qualified police officer in Florida.
I’d pulled over a vehicle for a traffic infraction. The driver stepped out of the vehicle and took off running. I radioed for back-up and the dispatcher asked “which direction is the suspect running?” and I realised I had no idea. Northbound? Westbound?
I had a compass in my pocket for just such an occasion. Only then did I realise I had failed to watch the YouTube video ‘How to use a compass’.
All the animals had escaped from Edinburgh Zoo.
I spotted a hippopotamus lumbering along a New Town crescent, then a gnu carefully picking his way along a cobbled street.
A family of three gorillas seemed more at home, queuing for a Fringe performance in St Andrew Square.
The ‘scolding’ season was upon us again. All my friends were preparing the special scolded cheese dishes, marking the age-old tradition of housewives using up excess dairy products at the end of spring. DTJ proudly showed me her two creations before I dashed off to an afternoon gathering in Leith.
We enjoyed the party, but soon the weekend drew to a close and we had to head home to prepare for the week ahead.
TPR declared that two of our party of three would travel by cargo bike. He pulled one down from the communal cycle racks, plonked our companion in the back, and mounted the driver’s seat. This left me with the short straw of hunting down a bus home on a Sunday night.
We’d had so much fun at the fine art themed escape room experience that we returned to the venue the following week. This time, however, instead of a small game for six, this experience was for an entire cinema audience, with all the play based around the kidnap of a sweet little blonde-haired, blue-eyed, American girl.
It all started with the screening of 101 Dalmatians. The host regularly interrupted the film to call out clues, occasionally directing them at named members. To prove your identity when called, you held up a printed A4 sheet of paper that displayed your name. (It was rather embarrassing for anyone who had left their seat to go to the lavatory at this point in the process.)
I was planting daffodil bulbs when the detective reached me. He knew that I knew that the body was buried nearby. However, neither of us expected to find it so easily.
The corpse was neatly packaged in the type of clear plastic box that you might use to store bedding or out-of-season clothes. With the lid secured with masking tape, it lay just four inches below the surface of the soil. The detective dismissed his colleague who had come to the scene with a pickaxe.
Only a couple of us knew the circumstances of the murder two years earlier. We were determined that perpetrator AO not be identified. The easiest way to deal with this would be to pin it all on Rob Titchener, now conveniently dead.
Alternatively, the man who flicked cigarette ash on our precious silk Singapore rug was a worthy candidate for the role of murderer.
I knew that I had overstayed my welcome, living out of the contents of two large black bin bags in the spare room of my new, elderly friends.
My gift of three pretty decorated saucers cut in half was probably not adequate compensation for the kindness that they had shown me. In fact, I was in the bedroom deciding on the next saucer to slice (perhaps the sunflower one?) when my visit was brought to an abrupt end.
My hosts’ family members had reported me to the police for an act of fraud. Somehow, I had sold the couple’s cottage in the Cotswolds and pocketed the proceeds. Given that I didn’t even know that they owned another property, my arrest came as a terrible shock.
DMcN didn’t pursue a career as a dentist, but instead joined the civil service. We caught sight of her dressed in a tailored black suit, coming out of a meeting carrying a dossier of government papers.
She stopped dead in her tracks on recognising old friends from her undergraduate days. We all stepped forward for a group hug and tears.
Then, resuming her professional stance, the top civil servant brushed herself down and set off on her mission again to deliver her clutch of precious documents.
A woman opened the shed door, pulled out my bike, and rode away on it.
TPR explained that he had given it away to her because I hadn’t been using it.
‘That’s because it is winter’, I responded, doing all I could to hide my distress.
I lost TPR and LF in the maze of a Paris RER station on our way back to the main venue of the incentive holiday. Â When they boarded the train heading in the right direction, I went the opposite way.
Since TPR was carrying all our valuables – train tickets, bank cards, phones, and cash – I had to rely on my wits to find a way back to our hotel. I made my way to the ticket office at the next station and cornered a member of staff. Then, with supreme effort, I managed to dredge up enough French to plead for help.
The station official was delighted with my archaic, extremely polite, and (surprisingly) grammatically accurate request – so much so that she made it her personal responsibility to guide me all the way back to the Hilton hotel at no charge.
En route we ran into a bunch of my friends. I must have offended them because DTJ ignored me, SC did not pick up on my compliments on her beautiful teeth and new slim frame, and LB chose to sleep between the train lines rather than engage in conversation with me.
My friend invited me round to see her latest pets: two golden brown bunnies.
They were so soft to touch, and didn’t seem to mind being petted. I was surprised to feel such tiny bodies under the mass of fur.
Dreamaticus 