While AO juggled toilet rolls for my entertainment at one end of the bathroom, at the other TPR helped KA sort out the bath.
The blockage was caused by a build-up of revolting rotten autumn leaves stuck at the top of the main drain, just beneath the plug hole.
It was hard work on holiday having both a boyfriend and a husband. Happily I found a way to accommodate them both.
While TPR slept each morning, I would get up early and meet NI to play on the beaches, then return to our room before TPR woke. My husband had no idea that I had ever left our hotel.
I knew that the safety record for road races in the US was poor, but it was not until I experienced one staged on a busy freeway that really understood the danger to life and limb.
Such was the status of the car in North America that runners were forced to share the main carriageway with the everyday traffic. Should there be an accident – as was the case when TPR and I witnessed a saloon car collide with, and squash, a man in a white vest and shorts – the driver had no obligation to stop.
The accepted risk to runners on race days was simply astonishing, as was the inhumanity of the American driver.
I’d been in my parents’ house some time before my sister J eventually came downstairs to greet me.
When she made her grand entrance she was barely recognisable, dressed in a tiny pair of denim jeans and a pale blue short-sleeved satin top. Her face was no longer one of a woman in her mid-fifties, but that of a young girl just out of her teens.
There was only one explanation for the transformation: crash dieting and Botox. My sister had finally succumbed to Home Counties peer pressure to spend a fortune on ‘treatments’. I hoped that she didn’t expect me to do the same.
KPMG had poured millions into the construction of the London Dockland Golden Pyramid Cinema Complex and Ski Resort.
The first time that I visited it I was convinced that I spotted my school friend KC with her husband and two children in the crowds. However, when I approached the group of people that I thought comprised her family, I found that I had mistaken for her a man on skis wearing a curly Brian May wig.
Strangely, however, this man thought that he knew me. He told me that he was a retired school teacher from the north west of England, on holiday at the ski resort with one of his former pupils. He was extremely grateful to his companion for generously agreeing to ski with him on the fake snow in England because this saved him the trouble of travelling to the Alps to enjoy the sport.
When I wondered out loud why the two skiers did not consider taking to the slopes in Scotland, they responded to my suggestion with looks of absolute horror.
There was an intruder in my holiday cottage. I was sure of it. I could sense him on the floor to the left of my bed. To distract him, I held out an oatmeal biscuit. This he readily accepted.
While he munched away in the dark, I carefully stepped out of bed, crossed the room, and pulled out a chest drawer. I managed to pack a pair of grey shorts, a pink White Stuff sweatshirt, and my white sandals into a rucksack before the intruder made his move and pounced.
As he dragged me back to the bed I was convinced that he intended to rape me. Somehow, however, I managed to break free. I ran straight out into the forest daylight to mingle with other holiday-makers. I knew that I would now be safe so long as I did not make a fuss.
I was right: my intruder followed me, but kept his distance. I stole a few glances at him so that I would be able to describe him to the police. His most distinctive feature was the single tattoo that stretched from the top of his head all the way down his tiny frame, giving him the look of a sad, under-nourished, lizard.
I eventually lost the intruder at the Dr Who convention. This was thanks to the deployment of ED’s hard stare. One look from her, and he was off.
(The convention itself was a great disappointment. It was run by Americans who had only recently ‘discovered’ Dr Who so the content of their papers was highly descriptive. Indeed HR’s two-hour workshop was so dull that nearly all the British delegates walked out half way through the first presentation.)
Bored, lonely and depressed in London, I headed off to Hamleys.
On the ground floor I visited the dull Hitchhikers’ Guide to the Galaxy exhibition. Then I walked up several flights of stairs with a pair of very overweight American twins* to the fifth floor. Here I wandered through the displays of Victorian toys, including encased dolls made from the bodies of deceased children. They were hardly cheering.
Later SH picked me up in her car and drove me and TPR through a beautiful snowy landscape. I knew that SH had suffered from depression herself in the past, so spoke openly about my feelings. However, neither she nor TPR was interested in my plight. They were more concerned with the health of the sheep and deer that appeared to be frozen solid in the fields.
*Six months later the twins had slimmed to under half their former body weight and won a whole host of awards for their achievement.
Seated next to me, Mick Jagger was able to disguise his height. However, the minute we both stood up I clocked that I was at least two inches taller than him. I hid my surprise – unlike the woman in the queue behind us.
She soon got the message that her commentary on Mick’s stature was unwelcome and left us. ‘At least you are not ginger’, I offered as words of comfort.
Then I changed the subject of the conversation completely by asking Mick about his appearance on Desert Island Discs.
I had to admit it. I looked fabulous in this yellow dress. Although I was working as a teacher in 1940s New York, I also acted as unofficial assistant to my private detective boyfriend. A good wardrobe was essential.
I was gathering birthday cards with initials on them for my pupils and trying to break a chocolate bar. It took some time to realise why I was struggling. This was a coconut flavour Kit Kat and needed to be broken into fingers.
My pupil was a witness to to a mafia crime. No amount of coconut Kit Kat fingers was going to console her. We were in trouble in this subway tunnel.
I clung onto the roof of the train carriage until I could bear the cold no longer, then embarked on the dangerous descent.
It was difficult to drop to the road while the train was travelling at speed. Who knew that a single horse had the power to pull a set of rail carriages so quickly?
Dreamaticus 