Belle plotted to return to her old job and arrange for me to join her. I explained that I would need at least a year to prepare for my return to London.
There was the small issue of my degree to resolve. I should have just taken my finals (like SL and LK), but had dropped out for reasons unexplained.
SL said that she could tutor me in French if we moved into together in Birmingham. She would have time to help me while studying for her Masters degree in neuroscience.
The Pitlochry guest house was not to my tastes at all. The proprietor behaved as if she was everyone’s best friend, but I could see through her act. All that interested her was the fastest means of extracting as much cash as possible from her paying guests. For example, rather than encouraging them to go out and see the town, she kept the holiday-makers trapped on her property to enjoy ‘in-house entertainment’.
In the crush of guests someone lost a tiny baby. He was only the size of a small banana. I couldn’t bear to see him abandoned so volunteered to take care of him and wait at the guest house until his parents returned. This greatly angered my ogre of a husband who wanted us to leave the premises as soon as possible.
FR and I impressed one another with our loch identification skills as we travelled south through the Scottish Highlands.
ECM and I were travelling south along the east coast train line. I was heading to a conference in Kent, and she was accompanying me part of the way. It was only when ECM left the train that I realised that I had forgotten to bring the suitcase that I had packed with a change of clothes, my soap bag, and work for the journey and my overnight stay.
This was a mere inconvenience compared with what happened next. I was pick-pocketed on a bus crossing London. The thief took my purse and exchanged my iPhone for an inferior clone.
I appealed to my fellow passengers to help me. Only one stepped forward: a middle-aged woman who offered her phone so that I could ring (a) my bank to cancel my cards, and (b) my parents.
This woman would live to regret her kindness when she and I were later kidnapped by a member of the pickpocket gang, dumped in a dark prison cell, and warned to expect a beating.
As I eavesdropped on the conference conversation at the top table I could sense PB’s increasing frustration at the ignorant pronouncements of the American.
‘What’s the main message of your keynote anyway?’ the American drawled.
‘There’s little point in trying to explaining it to you’ replied PB, ‘You wouldn’t understand’.
The American leapt out of his seat, marched over to PB at the other end of the dinner table, and struck him on the head.
I raced over to comfort PB, and announced in my loudest voice that I would be reporting the assault to the police.
I sat next to television news presenter Dermot Murnaghan in the passenger cabin of the tiny plane.
Keen not to embarrass him by making it obvious that I recognised him, I engaged him in conversation about Scottish stereotypes (e.g. short, stocky, ginger men).
My travelling companion failed to hide his relief when the air steward came over to us and asked me to change seat.
The trickiest job of a murderer is disposing of the body and covering the tracks.
My innocent-looking accomplice told me that she had flushed the dismembered body parts through the domestic plumbing system from the bathroom basin. She’d done a good job: there was nothing to be seen in the room.
However, our flat was located high up in the building and we worried that the body would get stuck in the system. Only time would tell.
In the meantime we needed to deep clean every room to remove all possible forensic evidence that could attach us to the crime.
NP marshalled everyone to spend over £1000 each on a ski-ing holiday – in the Philippines.
I travelled out with TPR but soon lost him in the transfer between the airport and city centre hotel. He had all the details of our accommodation so I was at a loss to know where to find him again.
Eventually I discovered from staff on a service desk that we were in room 475, and that my route there would be by a shaking metal lift and bus. I wondered whether the very tall man (easily over eight feet in height) next to me in the queue would be heading into town too. (Another woman in the queue said that she could easily fit inside this man whole. I corrected her and said that there was room for both of us.)
I found myself surrounded by friends on the bus ride into town. My former student MJ, sitting next to FK, spoke in Malay to the driver (who was in tears for most of the journey). Some school friends were there too (including JC).
However, the party mainly comprised TPR’s former work colleagues. They were under the impression that this trip was an incentive holiday. I was hoping that this was not the case, not least because the bus ride was so long and I was concerned that we risked repeating our experience of a visit to Rome two decades earlier, not so fondly remembered as ‘view from a coach’.
I trundled across the playing field of the University of Edinburgh by shopping trolley and suitcase on wheels. It was difficult to balance myself when lying prone on my two vehicles, but manageable so long as there was a slope.
At one point two young women blocked my way. When I asked them to move they looked directly at me. Even though her eyes were obscured by sunglasses, I could tell that one of them recognised me. She piped up ‘I know that you’re really busy having just returned from Harvard, and that you are going back soon, but could I possibly arrange to meet you next week?’
I expressed my regret that this was not possible, without bothering to correct her misassumptions. I had absolutely nothing to do with Harvard and she was obviously mixing me up with someone else.
Dreamaticus 