Equality and diversity at awards ceremony in rainy Hawaii (Rousse)

For those for whom this kind of incentive holiday was a first, dark skies and cold rain on Hawaii was a grave disappointment. For me, however, it was a relief, especially since I had spend the preceding weeks in a Californian heatwave. In any case, there was more to the holiday than the weather.

When the breakfast buffet opened, for example, I encouraged my sister J to follow SM to the far end, just to hear the witticisms that he shared with the waiting staff (while I piled my plate high with bread and smoked fish).

BC was also in attendance, and always good for a laugh. On this occasion he was particularly scathing about the poor spelling and grammar in a memo that we received about equality and diversity at the awards ceremony later in the week: it was a requirement that everyone invited on stage received exactly the same amount of applause.

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Edinburgh showroom and shootings (Rousse)

MSB welcomed her friends into her plush new showroom on the corner of Edinburgh’s Broughton and Barony Streets. Through the floor to ceiling windows, from outside you could see the visitors gathering beside her, hanging onto her every word.

When I entered the shop, I noticed a collection of decorative candles gathered on a table at the back of the room in the far right corner. Each was so distinctive that I was able to guess the names of the friends who had presented the candles as gifts to MSB. The fancy one from BW was the most obvious.

All the talk at the gathering was of the recent shootings in Edinburgh. I related my experience of observing a man hold a tiny child at gunpoint on the Meadows only earlier the same day.

Later we all headed to the Pentland Hills for our own target practice, with empty beer cans as our quarry.

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Tussling with a drag queen and making Michael Portillo cry (Belle)

I burst out of the house in Birmingham and accidentally barged a drag queen out of my way. She started to follow me and we wrestled a bit until I realised just how much she looked like Gloria Grahame. After sharing this insight we became the best of friends.

There were four of us around a table and a colleague was passing me papers to collate. As I passed them on to Michael Portillo he complained that they were not in order and I was sabotaging him and I’d never liked him anyway. Angrily I challenged him. Not only was I simply passing on the un-numbered pages as I was receiving them, I LOVED his train programmes and I was very fond of him. I saw him tearing up.

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The right way to hang wallpaper (Rousse)

TPR was setting up a new home office. At the same time – and in the same room – I was preparing a nursery for a visiting toddler. These two activities were clearly incompatible.

Everything came to a head when TPR angrily tore down the green patterned wallpaper that I had ‘pasted’ to the wall with water.

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Escape from Brexit (Rousse)

It was meant to be a two-hour morning meeting to discuss the requirements of the advertised posts and the candidates to be interviewed in the afternoon. About 45 minutes in one of my colleagues started an irrelevant rant about Brexit.

Fifteen minutes later he was speaking to an empty room. We had all made the excuse of ‘another meeting at 10:00am’ to escape him.

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Toby the splint boy (Belle)

I was changing clothes on the Wedding Express train when I read the headline:

“Toby the splint-boy dead”

Although I couldn’t remember who Toby the splint-boy was, I realised the whole nation would mourn.

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A witless move to Wolverhampton (Rousse)

Only a week earlier I’d been saying that I loved my Edinburgh flat so much that I would never leave. So why was I now moving into a bungalow in Wolverhampton?

Its only ‘advantage’ over my former home was the very light sitting room.

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Chris Packham wanders the London Tube in police disguise (Rousse)

Chris Packham took great care to hide from his fans whenever he went about his everyday business. I, however, could see through his devious disguise of a toy dark blue policeman’s helmet and fake beer belly.

I chased him along the walkway of the London Tube station to ask my favour. I was desperate for his autograph to present to his biggest fan of all: Belle.

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An M6 rendez-vous (Rousse)

TPR forced me to cross all six lanes of the M6 as heavy traffic curved its way through the mountains of the Lake District.

At the other side we encountered DJ and FB, also on foot, returning from a race. To save his modesty, I looked away as DJ changed out of his red shorts and into his jeans.

‘We must stop meeting like this’, said TPR, as if it were perfectly normal to bump into old friends on the hard shoulder of the motorway.

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Swimming in the River Tyne (Rousse)

The River Tyne was in full spate, and the water lovely and warm.

We swam all the way to the harbour. Here JS and AT also joined us for a dip.

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