The selection process for the prized appointment was so ridiculous that I decided to withdraw my application.
Surely they could have come up with something more challenging than asking the candidates to make up stories based on the assembly of stickers on a sheet of paper (or, in my case, the back of a white A5 envelope)?
I was Jeremy Corbyn’s wardrobe mistress. This season he would be wearing dark green cotton shirts.
It was with horror that I discovered that my new PhD student’s second supervisor was Jimmy Savile. The student had already suffered his first beating at the hands of this fiend. How on earth could I protect him?
My only hope of help was to consult DM, the wisest academic in my circle of friends.
Status Quo’s Rick Parfitt lay on the top of the bed in my ornate Victorian bedroom. He was doing his best to tempt me back to his own house, but I was not interested in following him.
Instead I was perfectly happy to lie next to him while he amused me with tales of leaving enormous tips for restaurant waiting staff who had no idea of his great fame and vast fortune.
We had great success growing strawberries under our flourishing redcurrant bush. Our only mistake was to harvest the early fruit to ripen elsewhere while making room for the next crop. KT told us that doing so would ruin the soil, then wandered off to consume vast amounts of our cheese.
I ignored her, turning my attention to the distressed school teacher sitting with her head between her knees on the staircase, wailing that she couldn’t go on. I agreed that her job sounded hideous, but it looked like it hadn’t done her any harm. Nobody would believe that this youthful-looking woman was 70 years old.
I also wanted to quit my job due to external political pressures. My ambition was to become a shoe designer.
While speaking to a class of disengaged further education students, BD made the most inappropriate double entendre.
It was both appalling and hysterical – and I could not hold back my laughter from under a huge paper bed sheet at the back of the classroom.
The students who had not been paying any attention looked up in surprise. What on earth had they missed?
I felt sorry for the homeless gorillas and other apes who lived rough on the traffic roundabout.
Now that it was winter they had somehow managed to fashion themselves a form of clothing from discarded grain sacks, but I feared that this was insufficient protection from the cold, wet and wind.
I was sitting in the back seat of the Land Rover as Craig of the New York Bully Crew drove us down to the cliff and straight over the edge. I saw it was about to happen, regretted I hadn’t put on my seat belt, but was pleased at how cool I acted. We landed on the beach and carried on driving. “Like the good old days”, said Craig. I agreed, although I hadn’t experienced those good old days.
We had a couple of hours to spare so crossed the causeway to Holy Island. In the distance on the headland we saw JS. We called ‘Broken bone!’ at her and she responded with a wave and a smile.
When we reached the house we expected to find everything in order, just as my sister J said that she had left it earlier in the day. However, we spotted evidence that the house was still occupied, and could hear voices on the top floor. I shouted up:
‘If you’re coming downstairs, please make sure that you are decent!’
A family of four descended to the first floor. The older woman recognised my mother as the party that had been sending her solicitor’s letters with a demand to no longer illegally visit the house on Holy Island. I couldn’t understand how the family had access until she waved a key at us and mentioned a ‘friend’ who had given permission.
I announced that this would not do, snatched the key, photographed the woman’s contact details (from a sticker on the base of a vase that she was carrying), and chased the foursome out of the house.
As they climbed the stone spiral staircase up to the courtyard I witnessed the woman scold her husband, ‘This would never have happened if you had not committed murder. I’m going to turn you in to the police!’
The first person to mention a Jack and the Beanstalk themed party was RG-J. It was at a party that I was hosting that I overheard her mention this to some mutual friends. Only a couple of minutes later another woman told me directly that she was planning a (separate) Jack and the Beanstalk party.
I introduced the two hostesses to one another in the hope that I would be lucky enough to receive two invitations.
Dreamaticus 