A wicker basket pick (Rousse)

I helped GL assemble a collection of wicker baskets as a 50th birthday present for her sister-in-law (and my mother-in-law) GRB (aged 84).

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A ghost dog, a gunshot and Morris dancers (Belle)

I opened the back door to find out who was knocking. It was the ghost of my dog, complaining bitterly that I had left him in the back garden for three and a half years.

Later I was walking around a conference centre when my companion was shot in the chest. No-one else noticed this – even the victim – and I attempted to phone for an ambulance. Sadly I had completely forgotten how to use a telephone. Frantically I ran at a troop of Morris dancers, screaming for help.

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Social worker shops for supplies for strangers in hospital (Rousse)

As soon as TPR was discharged from hospital, I was admitted to the ward.

The friendly family of a woman who was in for facial reconstruction offered to buy me supplies for my stay. I added toothpaste, a tooth brush, a nightie, and new knickers to the shopping list. When I learnt that one of the family members was a social worker, I understood their kindness.

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Rolls Royce on YouTube (Rousse)

GW left EW and moved into a boarding house. From here he broadcast his popular YouTube channel on working at Rolls Royce.

I couldn’t see the attraction myself. I’d rather be playing Scrabble.

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Stalking an heiress (Rousse)

We finally tracked down DM, now working in a supermarket. She told us that she was looking forward to travelling to the reunion using funds from a recent inheritance.

We didn’t have the heart to tell her that we knew all the details of her recent windfall. This was thanks to our extended stalking of every single member of our year group.

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Stockton-on-Tees holiday ruined by political scandals in Newcastle-upon-Tyne (Rousse)

My two sisters and I took a family holiday with a difference. The resort turned out to be our childhood home in Stockton-on-Tees, and both our deceased parents joined us there to make up a party of five keen holiday-makers.

The house was very impressive. It was so tidy that you could see the carpet in every room! My father, however, was an embarrassment. His idea of fun was to bumble on and on about political scandals in Newcastle.

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Queen Elizabeth II serves fried baseball cap (Belle)

The late Queen was serving me at a large dining table. She approached me with a large frying pan and a fish slice and placed what she called “the traditional baseball cap” on my plate. Then she started beating the cap with the fish slice – so hard I feared the plate would shatter. She leaned towards me and whispered “You have to keep beating it until the press stud clicks”. I whispered back “Why don’t we both pretend we heard the snap?” and she laughed at me as if I were the new Oscar Wilde. I was definitely her favourite.

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From professor to pastor (Rousse)

GW told me that she had given up academia and was now training for the ministry.

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Secret service operatives Geoffrey Palmer and Joanna Scanlan pursue jilted women (Rousse)

The groom visited his bride the day after they married to ask her to return the puppy that he had given her as a wedding present. He also let slip that he had already started divorce proceedings.

Meanwhile TPR had walked out on me. I tracked him down by the sound of his home blood pressure machine coming out of window of the medical students’ hall of residence on Edinburgh’s North Bridge. Now I knew why he had left me: to shack up with a trainee doctor.

The third jilted woman in this sorry tale was M. She sat next to me on the train to a mystery location. When we spotted our former running group pal archeologist BJ further down the carriage we looked forward to a history-themed day out.

Our assumption was, in fact, completely wrong. Many of the other ‘passengers’ on this train were secret service operatives plotting to take us out. Our only means of escape was to wait for the train to slow on a bend, then jump out and make a run for it.

I took my chance in the middle of the Cumbrian countryside. I raced across a field and over a barbed wire fence. Unfortunately for me, a gang of operatives did the same. Amongst them were actors Geoffrey Palmer and Joanna Scanlan. I discovered that the former responded well to flattery when he had me in a headlock, and that the latter was actually on my side because she was a double agent.

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Partying in an Elvis jumpsuit and discussing sugar beet production in Cyprus (Rousse)

My former colleague JB strutted around the party in a white leather, silver-studded, flared Elvis-style jumpsuit, taking our calls of ‘Rocky Raccoon!’ and ‘Davy Crockett!’ with good humour. In short, he looked amazing and he knew it. I was delighted when he agreed that I could photograph him and send the image to KA.

At the same party, I found myself left with the washing up because I lost a bet with TPR’s old boss ZM. My school friend KG (KMcL) was my partner for this task. As she dipped the crockery into the sink, she enthused about a television documentary on the production of sugar beet in Cyprus. Now she understood the reasons for the high price of sugar.

When KG started her review, I was only half-listening. I thought that she was talking about a radio documentary about reading that I had heard that morning. To save her embarrassment, and even though I had not seen the television programme in question, I agreed with everything that KG had to say about industrial agricultural production in the Mediterranean.

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