SC and TM invited us to Pitlochry for a barbecue. There they announced that S was expecting a baby girl.
Although not religious, I was sick with jealousy when they invited CT to be godmother. To be second choice was no consolation.
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.
We helped out at a party in a top floor apartment hosted by two gay friends.
Inevitably one of the young women became addicted to cocaine that very night.
We drove home in TPR’s brand new black Golf GTi with K, J, and their new twin babies.
Mr and Mrs K ran a bed and breakfast in the Lake District. I visited with the intention of staying there to finish my first novel.
I ordered burger and chips for my breakfast. The Ks’ yellow Labrador took a fancy to my food, leapt up to the table, and scoffed the lot.
Robbie Williams explained his secret of song-writing success.
‘If you listen carefully, all my tunes are simply up and down scales with added lyrics’.