SM agreed to leave the house and type an email to the conference organiser at Sunderland University.
‘If you ask for a start time of 4pm, I can attend after conducting a PhD viva’, I suggested.
When SM learnt that my paper would be on the informational content of food, he refused my request.
‘This is far too trivial to be the subject of a conference presentation’ he said.
Over the summer months one of Edinburgh’s venerable institutions of higher education transformed itself into a ‘seaside university’ complete with beach, sea and funfair. Portobello was no longer the only show in town.
TPR and I were walking along a narrow path next to a glistening stream when a truncated Jack Russell terrier ran up to us. It was all head and no body, but managed to get about with no problem at all on his two legs.
‘Katie Hopkins? Katie Hopkins on University Challenge?’ I asked.
‘Yes’, replied HJ, ‘Representing Birmingham University’.
This was all related to me on a Scottish beach where, by complete coincidence, was gathered an array of my undergraduate friends.
Here I also learnt that SPL gave up on Elena Ferrante’s Neopolitan novels after 22 pages, and that GG was fighting a disciplinary action that had been imposed on him by his headmaster.
The vice chancellor was going to the US for a fortnight and left SC in charge of everything, including finance.
Just before he left, he asked SC to read out the history of the University as printed in gold embroidery on three bolster-sized cushions. There were objections when she alluded to the library staff’s role in the development of the University’s elearning system.
‘We only did the initial data entry’, they argued.
We recognised the ghillie as the one from the Ardushiane Hotel. He had once asked on the last evening of a weekend trip to the Highlands whether we would be shooting the next day. At the time I had been tempted to answer ‘Yes, I’m going into the office tomorrow. Please prepare my guns’.
Now he was working for a less prestigious hotel with aspirations. Here evening entertainment was offered as a means of attracting guests. This included a weekend-long murder-mystery quiz at which audience participation was expected.
PS was selected to take to the stage first. SM couldn’t bear to think of her there on her own (albeit with the cast) so he followed her up and joined the chorus. He fitted in fine in his honeymoon outfit of oatmeal linen suit and brown and white correspondent shoes.
I watched from the stalls with KA and her daughter R, who thought that the whole show as a rehearsal for Dr Who. Next to us was a set of parents who were hot-housing their kids with maths puzzles.
My mother took up observing the wildlife of East Lothian in the dead of night using infra-red technology.
She invited us to join her one evening. David Tennant turned up to wave us off – my mother on a quadbike, carrying an enormous white handbag, and TPR and I with a shopping trolley for transport.
We reached a pretty tourist village with a white wrought iron bridge over the River Tyne. My mother recommended crossing the water to see deer and foxes on the other side. Then she zoomed off at top speed, flew across the bridge and the road at the other side, and smashed into an embankment. She was flung from the seat of the quadbike to the ground, where she was attended by two teenage boys.
I asked how she was. ‘She can recognise the number six’ said TPR, ‘That is all’.
Dreamaticus 
In-law social climbers (Rousse)
My in-laws were terrible social climbers. They forced me and my husband to enter a cycling race that – if we won – would reward us with a job placement with some posh person. (Of course, it was highly unlikely that I would come first, cycling solo on a tandem.)
My father-in-law embarrassed us further by following the race with a megaphone, through which he gave a running commentary on our progress.
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