The plane overheard sounded like it was in trouble. It was flying so low that we could all see that it was a transatlantic EasyJet service coming into the city.
We predicted correctly that it would smash into the mountain.
Why this should be the fate of so many incoming flights was always a puzzle to me. The big hilly clue was so obvious in the name of the flight destination: ‘Montreal’.
I stuck up for WB in anticipation of criticisms about to be uttered by a severe-looking woman.
‘WB is extremely beautiful, and very, very clever’, I declared.
QL died with no next of kin. It was for this reason that his ashes ended up in my cupboard.
It was always a shocking reminder to see the green box whenever I opened the cupboard door.
The school office staff did not appreciate my CD of the solo Turkish artiste – even though she won the Eurovision Song Contest just a couple of years earlier.
‘I suppose I’ll just have to listen to it through my headphones’ I muttered sulkily, regretting the day that I agreed to move my desk into the huge shared office.
I was trapped inside the house that I had inherited from my maternal grandmother. I could happily entertain myself by revisiting all the rooms that I remembered from my childhood, and perusing the contents of the cupboards. All the crystal riding trophies in a glass cabinet – presumably the winnings of my long-dead aunt – caught my eye. However, I really wanted to wander out into the front garden and photograph some of the unusual flowers that I could see growing through the snow.
I hoped that the postie would rescue me, but she couldn’t force open the front door. Then a neighbour and friend of my grandmother appeared with a spare front door key. Now I could be released to the rest of the world! As well as the garden, I discovered a long ground floor extension to the house that comprised several double bedrooms. These were occupied by nurses who worked in shifts across hospitals in Newcastle. Their accommodation was to the highest standards, with windows affording great views of the Tyne valley.
All the space in the back garden could also be put to good use in the future, if only I could persuade TPR to invest in the building of a couple of holiday cottages.
When the surgeon walked over to the till to pay for his cup of coffee, TPR ‘helpfully’ laid a section of the patient’s loose skin across the treated wound.
The surgeon was aghast that anyone would interfere in this highly technical procedure.
I managed to find an exit from the massive library by taking a route through the richly furnished rare books section and executive suite of the Chief Librarian.
Outside the streets of New York were flooded. I had no choice but to paddle up the road to my next destination. Some were worse off than me, however. I saw an old man frantically calling for help as he struggled against the water in the middle of a major thoroughfare. When it was clear that nobody nearer would respond to his pleas, I swam out to rescue him.
Afterwards I gave the on-lookers a piece of my mind, taking down names and employers of those who would have willingly watched a man drown. Amongst these was a young management consultant whose only redeeming feature was that he had read Gödel, Escher, Bach.
Everyone was tip-toeing around our colleague at work following her recent bereavement. While I was happy to as supportive as everyone else, it irritated me that she took it for granted that she could throw me off my computer whenever she wanted to do her own thing online.
I was also rather perturbed whenever she walked into the office with her dead husband following in her wake, serving as her document porter.
I hoped that that those travelling in the morning traffic out of North Berwick towards the A1 and west into Edinburgh passed by at a sufficient speed not to notice our antics on a stranger’s garden wall. Afterwards we considered stopping for breakfast in one of the town’s quaint deli-cafés, but instead went directly to the station to catch a train to Glasgow.
At the other end of the line at Queen Street we were greeted by our gay arch-Brexiteer friend IS. While his views on Europe had not shifted, we were surprised to meet his new wife, especially since I recognised her as my former colleague EW. She then introduced her daughter, who told us that her name was Martin. I knew that was really called E or L.
While we hung around the station, TF invited me to take a quick spin around the forecourt. I was impressed with his new ballroom dancing skills, but not his horrible brown suede slip-on shoes with red woolly socks.
Dreamaticus 