I was delighted to hear about a new charity shop on Edinburgh’s Castle Street, especially since it was rumoured to open at 07:00 each morning. That meant that I could visit it on my way into work!
So imagine my disappointment when I saw the hand-written note sellotaped to the glass front door: ‘Admission to poor people only’.
Although dead for over a year, my zombie father was still very much in our lives. One day, when in bed browsing old footage of family dining on an iPad, he froze a frame of himself scowling. Then he summoned two of his daughters – myself and the youngest one – to explain the scene.
We both knew that my father had been cross with me because I was complaining about the delay to dinner, and that the delay was caused by my sister who was so late getting out of bed.
However, in order not to cause any further stress, the pair of us wrapped our arms around each other to present a united front to our father, then persuaded him that the row was nothing more than a wee spot of sibling teasing.
The Netflix trailer came out of the blue and was causing quite a stir. “The Three-Day Nanny” had been filmed over years and featured Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II as she looked after each royal baby for three days, transforming the lives of their parents and the babies. It was part The Crown and part Mary Poppins.
I was transported on a massive ship and was met in ‘New York Harbour’ by my new FBI colleagues. In a gushing attempt to impress them I announced that my arms were completely hair-free. The agents challenged me to “prove it”. I rolled up my sleeve and was astonished to find my arm looked like an orangutan’s.
Later I lost my passport but was helped by the mini UK passport office set up behind the hotel’s reception desk. My first day at the Bureau was an unmitigated disaster.
Susan Calman was determined to make me her lover. Sadly for her, I wasn’t interested in her offer.
I tried to fight her off by telling her how much I admired her – ever since I first caught her show in a small venue at the Edinburgh Fringe many years earlier.
TPR set up a summer-long ‘book’ group and called it ‘Chad’. The participants ranged from his friends to a couple of my undergraduate students. Somehow JS had managed to inveigle herself into the men-only meeting.
Meanwhile I visited drab, rainy Disneyland. The only ride of any interest was a roller-coaster. Otherwise the ‘attractions’ simply didn’t deserve their label. When I started to feel the cold on my bare legs, I decided to turn back. This presented the opportunity to hunt for my lost handbag.
Along the way I found old University friend BN playing a woodwind instrument in a Disney orchestra. She’d spent so many years in Australia that her speech had lost all trace of her Croydon credentials.
I put on my 1940s red and white gingham tea dress before setting off by train for Swindon.
My outfit impressed the one member of research council staff who was interested in fashion. As she complimented me on my style, I admired her choice of a turquoise robe topped with a wraparound turban.
The Girl Guides had set up camp in my street and I found it enchanting and irritating in equal measure. I decided to take my rubbish out to the bins so I could spy on them.
As I walked towards the bin-shed, it became pitch black. Yet I could still make out the figure of a mugger riding towards me on a bicycle. We got into a tangled fight which I was losing until I started to beat the man hard around the head with half a rotten cabbage. “Don’t mess with me!”, I screamed.
We were trying to watch a film in an open space in the motel/conference centre but were interrupted by the foul-mouthed language of two lads pushing prams down the corridor.
Sensing trouble I followed them and (spying through their keyhole) witnessed an incident of domestic violence. I called reception and asked them to contact the police. Then I remembered that David Tennant was actually a police detective and I simply had to knock on his door and ask for help.
We got on our tricycle and set off to the scene of the crime until David noticed several kittens gamboling around the walled garden. He jumped off the tricycle and ran off, determined to “coochy coo” with them.
PM collected JC (but not me) in the new Bentley that her husband had mentioned the last time that we had met. The car was long, sleek and green. It’s most distinctive feature, however, was a most unusual personalised number plate that included the @ symbol.
With a call of ‘See you on Tuesday when we are all meeting at your house to cook Huku!’ P took to the road with her favoured passenger. I couldn’t remember ever issuing this invitation. What on earth was Huku anyway?
With nothing to do, I trudged around town, looking for JC’s house. Although I recognised some of the shops, I was soon lost.
After several attempts, I finally reached my destination. I let myself into the lower flat with JC’s keys, and walked straight into the cat litter tray, just as JC had predicted. The cat itself was not happy to see me. Ginger and extremely bad-tempered, it made several attempts to jump up and bite me.
Just as I was wondering how I would get through the locked door at the back of this lower flat and make my way into the larger section of the house on the floor above, a young girl with a a fading purple bruise on her temple appeared with a key. Now I had a run of the whole place.
Later I met JC in the stands at the anti-gravity stadium. There we watched the anti-gravity enthusiasts who had paid the steep entrance fee to learn all sorts of fun tricks while dressed in Superman outfits. Some simply floated in mid-air, while others took pleasure in dropping from small aircraft into the stadium, secure in the knowledge that their fragile bodies would never fall to the ground.
Dreamaticus 