Given that they were about to start a holiday rental operation themselves, I was astonished when AH and CS lifted three or four pot plants from our cottage on changeover day. Even when I asked them to hand over the stolen goods, AH tried to hide them deeper in the recesses of his sports car.
I did not want to be associated with thieves, especially those who stole from friends of friends.
As I was getting undressed for bed (with TPR and AL), I caught two new graduates rummaging through the bottom drawer of my wardrobe. The young man told me that they were looking for resources for their voluntary work with transgender groups. The woman next to him appeared mute, but when I sought confirmation that she had attended one of my classes several years before, she admitted that she was called Sally.
It was obvious that we couldn’t go to bed with Sally and her companion in our room, so I sent AL home. Meanwhile TPR put on some clothes. He chose a black and red taffeta tutu and black short-sleeved Chinese silk jacket – all to fit in with the transgender theme.
I climbed the concrete steps barefoot up to the top of the terraces of St James’ Park stadium. I found my seat amongst the other Newcastle United supporters, eagerly awaiting the start of the match against Bolton.
A woman along the row took an instant dislike to me.
‘So what’s your daughter called?’ she asked, haughtily.
‘I don’t have a daughter’, I replied.
‘OK, then. What about your son?’ came the response.
When I confessed that I had no children she turned away, with a smug grin on her face.
‘But how many countries have you visited?’, I shouted after her.
When she could only name Egypt, I knew that I had won that game. I worked my way around the world starting with the Nordic countries. I took great pleasure in watching her look turn sour.
I acknowledged that KA was a stronger candidate for the advertised post than I, but never expected to find her at the University on interview day, super-slim and chic in a smart silk dress, and gearing up to hurl insults at me.
‘What did you expect?’ she shrieked, ‘You’re the one who told me about the post in the first place. It will be your own fault if I am appointed rather than you!’
Following the previous year’s success, I invited my colleagues at Scottish Enterprise back on campus for a week. This time, however, they treated their visit as a jolly, crowding around my computer singing along to karaoke videos on YouTube. As ring-leader, IS egged on his theatrical friends.
Before long my colleagues across the corridor made it known that they were not happy with this arrangement. I managed to persuade the visitors to tone it down for a while. However, when the boss brought in two dogs with the obvious intention of starting a black Labrador breeding programme on campus, I knew that it was time to act.
I called a meeting at which the visitors would given the opportunity to explain the purpose of their visit and the means by which this would be achieved. The auditorium was packed – so much so, that I felt obliged to offer my knee as a seat to a young man in a heavy hi-visibility vest. I later discovered that he was a police officer in a Kevlar jacket, there to protect us from terrorists.
Just who, exactly, had I been harbouring in my office for a week?
I turned up at my old workplace to be told I had better hurry up and moderate the meeting that had just started. I wanted to know who was going to be writing up the report and my boss said: “You”. “Like Effy Jeffy, I am” I said.
Later I met SG and AL and told them about the dream I’d just had in which I’d said “Effy Jeffy” to my boss. They laughed kindly and took me shopping for second-hand shoes. A private Lear Jet landed nearby to take SG on her golfing weekend. I made a fool of myself by pronouncing it “Jeer Let”.
When I studied my new poster map of the Isle of Wight, I saw galleon symbols all around the coastline. These, I learned, were the abandoned ‘ship-radio club-stations’ of the island. I determined to walk around the island and visit each one.
Later I hosted a celebratory festival on the island. There were fireworks over castles cut into the cliffs and I was the guest DJ, although my set was ruined by my inability to use the technology.
It was the middle of the night and the troublesome neighbours had parked six vans outside my house and were now having what sounded like a family get-together in my kitchen. I stormed downstairs and made a speech:
“You lot run around trampling on flower beds and are messy and noisy and cruel to animals”. They all stopped what they were doing and turned to look at me and I trailed off… “Well, not the last thing. I’ve never seen you being cruel to animals but I thought it would make a good close to the paragraph“.
In fact they were updating my kitchen for me, although I was cross to see the children had eaten my ‘pineapple flakes with licorice nibs’. I could see the empty Sainsbury’s basics packaging.
Mary Portas briefed us. We were to travel to south west London and “get serious” with various defaulting gang members. To show how serious the situation was, she gave each of us an AK-47. Afterwards I realised that my gun was made of plastic and I was probably being set up.
At the University of Sheffield iSchool AM taught photography skills in the lunch hour. Her keenest pupil was SW.
I also caught LA and IB moonlighting as PhD students in the same department.
Dreamaticus 