I wondered whether it would be too great a challenge to teach the rules of Settlers of Catan to an eight year-old and her six-year old sister.
Then I remembered that these were the grandchildren of BC. They would soon work everything out (and start beating the rest of us).
The venue for this week’s BBC Radio 4 Any questions was Stockton-on-Tees or – more precisely – the childhood bedroom that I shared with my sisters at the White House, Hartburn.
The room had been cleared of bedroom furniture to make space for armchairs and provide seating for the audience. In the event, only a couple of people turned up so I had my choice of seat. I selected a small chair upholstered in red velvet and waited for the broadcast to begin.
I positioned my seat in the location of my childhood bed from where I looked around the room. Most impressive was the new marble fireplace. However, it didn’t match the shabby cream vinyl wallpaper, which was already old when my sisters and I slept and played in here. It must have been up for over half a century.
Then a man started talking to me, reminiscing about the old days. He gave the impression that he used to know my mother very well. He found it hard to reconcile the glamorous 1970s dolly bird with the little old lady that he had spotted from a distance earlier that day.
As I was using the bathroom at Macy’s in New York, the person in the next cubicle slid their head under the partition to look at me. I stamped on the person’s hand – hard.
When I congratulated Captain C on his thirty years of service at the University, he introduced me to his brother Martin. Although I had known Captain C for decades, until this point I had no idea of the existence of this older sibling.
‘He’s here to sort out the bullying’, Captain C explained. I sympathised, keenly aware that Captain C would be an easy office target.
‘That’s terrible’, contributed KB from across the table. I looked up and glared at her. What a cheek! She’d witnessed my suffering for years, but never once intervened to support me.
It seemed inappropriate that two little blonde sisters aged six and eight wearing white shift dresses would be showing tourists around a World War I theme park.
It was also rather odd that TPR was not staying in the plush hotel with me for the duration of our wet holiday. He’d set up camp in a small Polish boarding house in town (although on the day that I travelled by tummy skateboard to visit him there, they told me that he was in the pub).
Perhaps I’d be better off with my parents, in the car, driving south through the US, expressing our astonishment at the plate glass modernity of all the cities that we passed, and dreading the long journey back north again.
BEX showed me the beautiful line drawings of a crowd that would be used for the cover of his new book. He was delighted when I said him that I loved the design, and took great pleasure in telling me that it was the work of his wife.
‘Well, it’s a vast improvement on her last attempt at art work’, I muttered under my breath.
CQX was anxious to start the presentations, but I was still struggling to prevent the huge water cooler bottles from toppling over at the top of the staged auditorium. Eventually I took my seat and the event was underway.
In the breakout session CQX and I were meant to address the requirements of a set exercise. Instead we found a shaded spot under a deckchair on the terrace where I complained about the difficulties of conducting qualitative research with human subjects. ‘Programming and modelling is so much easier!’ I declared. My companion seemed less interested in the conversation and more interested in me.
Meanwhile I had an inkling that we were being observed. There were faces at the window of the main house. By the time we returned to work there would be rumours of a new romantic relationship all over campus.
My cousin NT steered the tiny green car through the snowy Canadian landscape. I doubted that it would make it up the hill without snow chains, but NT was prepared to give it a go.
In the end, however, we gave up because we were called to help an elderly woman with her cleaning. She sounded English, so when I saw the box of Yorkshire tea on her kitchen worktop I plucked up the courage to ask about her origins.
As suspected, she was Yorkshire born and bred.
Suddenly my father leapt from the driver’s seat and climbed into the back next to me, leaving the car to hurtle towards the steep sides of the mountain tunnel. With great effort I leant over, managed to grasp the wheel, and steered us back onto the road.
The crisis over, I told my mother that I now had sufficient evidence to demand that my father’s GP revoke his driving licence. ‘Good luck with that’ she replied, ‘But you do realise that this is just a dream?’
Dreamaticus 