Dressed in a long white towel, I told the reception staff at the gym attached to the Jury’s Inn that if the hotel staff would not permit a late check-out, I would threaten to run naked through the hotel corridors.
‘That’ll do the trick’, they agreed.
It was a dangerous city at night, yet here I was climbing over walls trying to find my coat and bag after an evening out. I was glad K from school was there to keep me safe.
In the all night cafe we watched an infomercial for an upcoming ‘super rave’ in Columbia. I spotted that the footage of the rink-shaped dance floor had been spliced together from multiple sources. If you looked close enough, you could see football fights from the 1970s. The event organiser was interviewed about his ‘inspiration’ – an eccentric man he’d met who had told him “Don’t worry about the toilet roll, man. People will still come”.
“Well, they’re a bunch of arseholes”, I said loudly to no-one and everyone.
The priests I stayed with were famous Europe-wide for their “anything goes, drop in and drop them” party nights. But whatever I did, and whatever heavy hints I dropped, I was never invited. I was, however, allowed to walk through ‘the room’ on the way to my bedroom.
Later I made raspberry jam at my old workplace.
I awoke to the sound of small feet scurrying in the hall. When I opened my eyes I could make out some figures through the open bedroom door. Four tiny men armed with dusters, polish and mops were busy cleaning our flat.
But where was J, our regular cleaner? Perhaps they had abducted her? Or was it possible that she had sent the wee men herself to cover her work?
The silver Volvo was now our responsibility. TPR parked it haphazardly at the other end of our Edinburgh street, even though there were plenty of parking spaces right outside our flat. Was he ashamed of our vehicle, I wondered?
I took charge of the car and, with the help of a friendly policeman, sorted out a problem with the fuel. Then I decided to move it out of the paid parking zone. The car would be well out of TPR’s sight half a mile away.
My cousin BB was already bathing in the warm estuary while I was still struggling to get my dress over my head so that I could strip off to my underwear and join her in the water. The two women that I asked to help me gave up. What a stupid idea to wear a tight red and white lycra dress in the middle of summer.
Meanwhile, in the distance, I saw EB struggling in the muddy sand across the bay. She was sinking fast. Her father raced to her side, and – with moments to spare – managed to haul her out.
HJ and RJ were very, very wealthy.
When RJ decided that he wanted to enlarge their house, he did not consider an extension. Instead he issued an order for the old house to be knocked down and an identical one built – just to slightly larger proportions.
I tripped over 15 old pairs of roller skates – just another pile of unlikely detritus unearthed from my sister’s chaotic bedroom hoard.
I climbed into my bed in the lobby of the London hotel under the watchful eye of the staff on the reception desk. Just as I was drifting off to sleep, one of them informed me that a PhD student of mine had checked into the same hotel.
Surely this was a mistake? My student had no need to be in London, and certainly couldn’t afford the room rate. The reception staff passed me a small sheet of paper. On it were notes in my handwriting that included the names of two of my PhD students. Their other guest had used this as a form of currency when checking in.
The next morning at 07:30, my student sneaked past my lobby bed on her way to the reception desk. She was attempting to check out without my noticing. When I intercepted her, she explained her overnight stay was a London lay-over on her journey home to the US for Thanksgiving and Christmas.
“Haven’t you forgotten something?” I asked, “Like the conference in a fortnight that you and I are organising?” I had no idea how I would get through the next two weeks without her help.
I walked out of Goldsmiths College to take a walk. I bumped into a group of local red-haired squatters. They were riding red horses that were being led by red dogs. I stopped to chat with the group. They told me they were carrying “The red banners of Benfica“…
Dreamaticus 