Simon Cowell and Cheryl Cole’s sudden departure from the X Factor left a huge hole that I was expected to fill. Knowing very little about the music industry, I let the bony woman through to the next round. She almost crushed the life out of me with her grateful hug.

Simon Cowell can be found elsewhere on Dreamaticus. See:

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It was not long after my uninspiring interview with erstwhile Dr Gillian McKeith that I spotted the little black car parked in a quiet square near my office. Although it was an elderly F registration Golf from the mid-1980s, it had clearly been well cared for and gleamed in the sunshine under a tree. It was unlocked, and I couldn’t resist the temptation to climb inside and pretend that it was mine. From the paraphernalia on the dashboard I guessed that it belonged to a woman about the same age as me. I was later proved right when a bunch of final year students crammed into it to drive to a Business School exam. One of their mothers was the owner. As I questioned them about the condition of the car, they complained about how many ‘facts’ they had to memorise for the assessment. They would much prefer to write discursive essays along the lines of those required for my Knowledge Management class.

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TPR and I were showing an American tourist around Edinburgh. We knew he was a fraud the minute he boasted that he was a very close friend of DC and her husband J, and how he adored their two great Danes. (D is, of course, DT. She lives not with a husband and hounds, but with C the cat.)