LJ was so cold that she had turned invisible. The only reason we knew that she in the office and curled around the radiator was the direction from which we could hear her voice.
Back in my own room I warmed up quickly by donning a black fur and woollen jumper passed onto me by a former colleague.
ET-S showed us the secret beaches of East Lothian from the turreted wall of a medieval castle. We learnt that the kayak school used the beach below for training and was recruiting new members. TPR responded immediately by jumping down the chute to the shoreline.
Then ET-S, DM and I all left for separate journeys by train: to Wrexham, Milton Keynes, and Bristol.
DTJ transported all her friends and family to a romantic faraway venue for her wedding. (It was a pity that her groom KJ was obliged to pop back to Edinburgh from time to time for work.)
She (in her wedding dress) and I swung together on a make-shift swing beside some allotments. Then I left her, and wandered up the hill to a poppy field. There a scruffy man started to take photographs of me, with TPR looking on in the distance.
When the three of us eventually joined one another, the scruffy man explained that he would take me and TPR to meet his wife at their vegan bed and breakfast. Their stone cottage turned out to be beautiful, and the food that they served was delicious.
While we were there RG called in to pass a message on to our hosts. He explained to them (but not to us, out of view) that he was heading off to Australia for the rest of the season.
‘That ruins the rest of our holiday plans then’, complained TPR.
I was allergic to hyacinths so why would anyone think that I would like a hyacinth cake to celebrate my birthday?
By the time I had extracted the plant from the plate, all that remained were a few dry crumbs and some unappetising chocolate shavings.
I returned from outer space with a streaming cold. I arrived at a train station in Edinburgh and got engaged. All I wanted was a cup of tea, but I was forced to drink champagne. Before going to bed, I bought a radiogram for my sister and installed it too.
Standing on a busy train, my exit was blocked by a cigar-smoking Gerard Depardieu. We sang a song together before I boarded a dinghy with a friend and her dog.
Within hours of landing in Canada I boarded a yacht at the behest of my cousin NT. Suddenly the wind picked up and threw us from the craft into Lake Ontario.
Sharks fins circled. I considered whether I would prefer to be eaten alive, or to die first by drowning.
I accepted the offer of a place in Paris to undertake a six-month long refresher course in French. Although downhearted at the prospect of a long time apart, TPR kindly accompanied me to France to help me settle in.
The temporary hall of residence was an overcrowded tower block slum, brimming with squatters, drug addicts, prostitutes, illegal immigrants, and other unfortunates who had set up camp in the cold concrete corridors. There was even a group of Chinese men who were warming themselves by a raging camp fire built into a lift shaft. I was grateful that TPR was there to protect me.
If these were conditions in which I was expected to live, I was going off the idea of learning French again. I discussed this with TPR naked in the back seat of a car not far from the airport. Here we saw Air Force One overhead, accompanied an anti-terrorist escort. We continued the discussion along a cliff edge in the pouring rain.
Then it dawned on me that the reason reason for not taking up my place should be that I had promised TPR that I would never leave him again. However, I would use the excuse of my PhD students when I confessed to SL that I would not, after all, be her fellow student in France.
It was only when I sat down in the cabin that I realised that I had left my green file of work under a seat in the airport departure lounge. I would need to pull strings to ensure that it was returned to me speedily.
It was just as well that Prime Minister Theresa May had recently given me her priority email address. She would call the secret service just as soon as she received my request.
We pushed the door open and behind it found a set of steep steps. Below us was a vast rural landscape of hills and lochs, and a river delta that ended at a massive white sandy beach.
In his excitement, QDX rushed ahead, leaving me behind with CEX – alone, at long last!
For years I had fantasised about this moment. CEX took one step down and turned to face me. As he drew me into his arms, I reached down to release the buckle of his belt…
The winner of the BBC Radio 4 Food and Farming Awards was the a seaside town on the south coast of England. The prize recognised the elaborate ‘sandcastle’ complex that included a working roller-coaster and mechanical dinosaur.
Dreamaticus 