Monthly Archives: April 2014

Black cab illegally parked in Leith: shoeless couple sought (Rousse)

We were late for our anniversary dinner at the upstairs restaurant on Commercial Street in Leith. I pulled on my pale blue cotton shift dress from Monsoon, and TPR dragged me out of the house. We were in such a … Continue reading

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Party disaster (Rousse)

My fiftieth birthday celebration was a disaster. Everything was wrong: The timing – a Wednesday lunchtime when everyone was at work The venue – a boring hotel dining room in rainy Manchester The guest list – dreary external work colleagues … Continue reading

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Icing sugar icons and a PhD viva re-run (Rousse)

While JA was making pastel button-sized icons out of icing sugar, PL ran some sophisticated programs on his laptop. To begin with they worked silently side by side. Then PL started interrogating JA about his PhD. This raised so many … Continue reading

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I was Anne of Green Gables and newly married to Gilbert Blythe. For now, however, I was serving as a nurse in World War I. Somehow I had lost my ‘ward trolley’ and was forced to push a bulky office … Continue reading

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An office affair (Rousse)

Each day that I turned up on campus I discovered that I had a new office. The problem was that they kept packing up my belongings and dumping them in a new location without first removing those of the previous … Continue reading

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An encounter with a one-legged walker (Rousse)

I slowed my run to match the pace of the man in white wellingtons walking towards the big house. There was something about his gait that gave away that his left leg was false. He told me that his disability … Continue reading

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Down on the farm (Rousse)

I’d always known him as “G”, but my acquaintance was now insisting that all call him “TheFarm”. This was on the basis that this was his pet name at home. I thought that this would be really confusing given that … Continue reading

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The definitive guide to Windows 8 (Rousse)

TPR’s backlist of technical papers and books, combined with his retired status, made him an easy target for publishers. He was even pestered by a man we met on holiday, both in person at the resort and by phone when … Continue reading

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Hanky panky in the headmaster’s office (Rousse)

It was my first day back at school and, before lessons even started, I was called into the headmaster’s office for turning up late. I tried to explain that after years of working in academia I was completely unused to … Continue reading

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Armed, dangerous, hungry (Belle)

I was travelling across Europe in my private railway carriage. I served my guest a traditional ‘pre-breakfast breakfast’ of Emmental cheese and salami served with sweet bread rolls. This would tide us over until ‘proper breakfast’ I assured him. Suddenly … Continue reading

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