I walked for miles and miles alone, without a single podcast, in shorts and sandals along the loch side. By the time I reached the village at around the mid-point of the 32-mile route, however, I was missing TPR’s company.
My access to resources amounted to £1.50 in my pocket, a red phone box, and a taxi cab. Since I couldn’t afford the taxi, I went to make a call to TPR.
In the phone box I found an abandoned pile of loose change. I reckoned that I might be able to afford a cab home after all.
My mother had a new lease of life.
She took up ski-ing at the end of the season. Then booked a holiday house in the Scottish Highlands for a weekend in January 2018 – at first for two, then for seventeen.
My big, burly boyfriend was a chip off the diamond that was his gangster father. I adored him because he was always there for me, keeping me safe from harm.
In the past he had appeared from nowhere to recover me when I got lost on the top of a remote a mountain range.
This time he rescued me from a claustrophobic university reunion in a crumby hotel. Afterwards, as we walked arm-in-arm along Euston Road, a man in a suit approached us and ushered us into the forecourt of the St Pancras Hotel. There the stranger transferred vials of liquid into various small plastic bottles into a handy bag that my boyfriend ‘just happened’ to have on him.
This was highly suspicious. I already had a feeling that my boyfriend was apprenticed to a Russian oligarch. Now I believed that I had the evidence to prove that his route to unlimited wealth was through drug dealing.
KA and I shared delivery of the lecture. Somehow I ended up with the ‘hard’ bit: explaining the difference between linear and complex computer programming.
My instructions said to use railway tracks as an analogy, and make reference to a bacon, egg and mayonnaise roll. This made no sense to me whatsoever.
I knew that one of the boys in the class was from Stockton-on-Tees. He was bound to know about trains, and could help me with the analogy. I could barely conceal my disappointment when it became obvious that Robbie had no idea of the part that his home town had played in the world history of the railway.
I hurried JA out of our shared bed in the big terraced house in Manchester.
‘Quick!’ I cried, ‘The water has reached the third floor. We need to get dressed and climb into the attic with everyone else, or risk drowning’.
I scrambled around, grabbed the nearest clothes, and pulled them on. Then I ran to the bathroom and – with difficulty – climbed up the tiled wall clinging to fixtures and fittings and bits of the cistern to reach the gap in the ceiling, and safety.
4a Audrey Terrace, Edinburgh was a West End palace – and ours, all ours. We bought it for the ballroom and the prospect of the fabulous parties that we would host there. The immense front porch had plenty of space to hang everyone’s jackets and coats, and we could put in an extra bathroom in some dead space in the middle of the ground floor. The only drawback of our new flat was that it did not have a back door.
When HR called round to visit (her face shrouded in a long red and black veil) she mentioned that we should watch out for Nicola Sturgeon’s new ‘friend tax’.
EM was struggling to finish knitting a purple fluffy cardigan. She was concerned that she was dropping stitches all over the place.
‘Don’t worry’, I said, with hope in my voice. ‘Nobody will notice. You’ve just created an original lacy design’.
I was the first UK contestant on Ru Paul’s Drag Race – and the first woman. My character – Bobby Saint-George – was going to bring a slice of Carry-On style saucy humour to proceedings. I was being coached by millionaire matchmaker Patti Stanger who couldn’t stop being kind to me.
Before that, I was attending a musical premiere and the photographers were out in force to snap me in my flowery outfit. I arrived on the arm of Dan Walker, the fine face of BBC Football Focus. He led me to my seat and disappeared, only to re-appear at curtain-up playing the cello.
I stepped out of my seat to help the old lady left standing in the middle of the bus.
My intention was to prop her up. Instead I accidentally pushed her over. All the contents of her shopping trolley went flying down the aisle.
Dreamaticus 