Escaped astronauts (Rousse)

I asked the students to dress up for the tutorial according to the theme of ‘outer space’, so was delighted when the six of them turned up as astronauts in bulky all-in-one ski suits.

Forty-five minutes into our discussion AA walked into the room to enquire about a non-existent meeting with a PhD student. The three youngest students (all male) took advantage of this interruption to leave the class early.

I was shocked at their rude departure, and disappointed that I would not be able to take a photograph of my personal cohort of space travellers.

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A bit of give and take in the kitchen (Rousse)

As one friend added to our kitchen, another took away.

DM gave us a set of pale blue ramekin dishes (though not Le Creuset). Meanwhile RK accidentally pulled some of the facing off the crockery cupboard.

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Missing the ‘mont’ in Montreal (Rousse)

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’.

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Sticking up for a dear friend (Rousse)

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.

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Ashes in the cupboard (Rousse)

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.

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Turkish Eurovision win fails to impress (Rousse)

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.

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An heiress makes plans (Rousse)

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.

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Volunteer assistance rejected by NHS surgeon (Rousse)

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.

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Sacrifices for the Secret Service (Rousse)

SC lost all her privacy the day that she was captured by the Secret Service. It was unclear whether they planned to retrain her as a spy, or that she was simply a person of interest to them. However, from now on she was followed wherever she went, and she also believed that her body had been bugged.

The only way that she could get a private message to me now was to write some words in lipstick on the bare back of a small girl, hidden under her dress at a birthday party.

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Flooded New York with Gödel, Escher, and Bach (Rousse)

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.

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