I caught FW on a tricycle heading along the cut between our house and garden. She’d got in through a gap in the fence caused by JS’s poor stewardship.
FW was embarrassed to have been apprehended on her way to the school reunion, all the way from the US. However, her shame was lessened when I revealed my identity and told her that I would be at the reunion too.
TPR was impatient that we leave as soon as possible so as not to miss the spectacle of the full moon over the sea.
I packed my bikini and a spare jumper then jumped into the back of the car with my colleagues AL and IMcG. AL admitted his well-disguised Portuguese heritage to us all and for the first time I could hear it in his speech. IMcG shared menus from a recent meal that he had enjoyed in a French restaurant. I noticed the prices of the dishes. We would never pay so much for our supper.
TPR drove us through the dark to a house above the cliffs. There we waited until the moon rose. At the appointed time we grabbed our warmer clothes and cameras to head to the beach. TPR kindly helped my colleague DG put on her coat.
It was a difficult flight. On several occasions the plane nose-dived and we feared for our lives, so we were relieved when we spotted the helicopter escort that would lead us into the Austrian village. It wasn’t too difficult to disembark from our landing spot, half way up the tree in which the plane dangled.
I raced to get to the front of the check-in line at hotel reception. I needn’t have bothered because everyone but us was registered on a single accommodation voucher, and the person who held those details reached reception before me.
We spent much of the first day of our holiday in a craft shop. The owners were clearly amateurs in shop design. When I climbed up a set of shelves to look at a porcelain ornament the whole structure came away from the wall because nobody had bothered to secure it.
Belle and I was amused to discover that a newly appointed shop assistant had just arrived from Leyburn in the Yorkshire Dales, and knew of CB.
The next day we were meant to be continuing our holiday in Turkey, but I slept beyond the time by which we were meant to join everyone else for the coach journey.
SS pulled me back.
‘Don’t venture down the executive corridor’ she cautioned, ‘Unless your are prepared to face the wrath of Florence’.
This intrigued me – and I decided to risk it. I continued through the double doors and past Florence’s desk. She glared at me, annoyed that I was yet another person using her work space as a thoroughfare.
I pointed out that if she turned her desk around to face the wall, she was less likely to be disturbed.
The classroom was in chaos. Bowls of soup dropped down from the ceiling. My ex-colleague KB had prepared far too much for a one-hour class, and I was unconvinced that colouring-in was an appropriate undergraduate activity.
JM came to the rescue. He first embraced me, then took my hand for a long walk away from all this madness.
I cycled the country lanes, picking up rolls of wrapping paper along the way.
There was a move to honour the White House (Hartburn, Stockton-on-Tees) as a national monument on account of the parties held there in the 1970s and 1980s.
I doubted that it merited such attention: it was not as if my parents had led a great art movement. In any case, the place was a mess, despite the newly hung blue and white Louis XVI wallpaper in the dining room. Who else, for example, would keep a copy of their will under the sofa?
My cousin B finally revealed the solemn secret that she had been harbouring for years. During the war my grandfather had been in a relationship with Sir Ian Brindley.
‘There’s further information in there’, she said, pointing to the museum.
Amongst the exhibits were several bowls of porridge curated by French speaking Arabs. The information that I sought was held within the cereal, but – of course – I could not translate it.
‘The greatest skill that we learnt as undergraduates’ announced JS to the audience seated before her on rows of hard wooden chairs ‘Is how to write concisely. I can turn one person’s long-winded paragraph into three neat sentences – as can others in my class’.
She then cast a glance at me – at exactly the same time that my PhD students turned their heads in my direction.
Meanwhile JG nodded in agreement, as GCHQ employee KH and his daughter came to sit next to us.
Then JS set up the video to show us scenes from her recent holiday in France.
Dreamaticus 