I managed to keep the baby alive with the minimum of care. I only looked at it once a day when I fed it a bottle and changed its nappy. The only indication that it was in any distress was that its right eye had started to bleed.
I was looking forward to giving up my duties when the French family returned to collect the child.
At (yet another) University reunion JS told me that practised an hour of yoga every morning, even at weekends.
The front door of our flat was boarded up, and through the windows you could just see that all our belongings had been removed. So it was true. We were moving out of town into an old farm house, the inside of which we had never seen.
The particulars said that the house was in good decorative order, and it did look nice from the photograph, but I worried about the proximity of fields and agricultural smells.
When TPR got lost driving to our new place, insisting that the only way to reach it was to dump the car and walk across a hay field, I very much regretted leaving the city centre.
WB showed off her new living quarters: a small but beautifully furnished bedroom complete with a square IKEA daybed and a huge picture window that looked straight out onto the loch.
So what if it was remote? WB would be very happy here.
My girlfriend and I beat a path through the remote African jungle. We had no idea of how we would ever find our way back to safety again, but we were grateful to discover a sheltered spot under some ancient trees where we could set up a temporary home.
When we spotted a lone figure approaching our camp we rejoiced. However, it was rape rather than rescue that was on the agenda.
Luckily for us the mobile dental service passed before the threats became reality. Our would-be assailant was packed up in the van and carried away for treatment.
‘And this is why we need Sunday opening too’ said the librarian as she led us through the main reading room of the National Library of Scotland (recently refurbished with lovely new blue chairs).
I glanced over and understood her message when I saw a six foot tall tower of books balancing in the middle of a highly-polished mahogany table. Some poor student was attempting to get through all this material in a single day due to the library’s restricted opening hours.
TPR and I and some friends invested in a buy-to-let flat.
One of our co-investors took the lead on the renovations and started by dismantling the navy blue bath. We chose the wallpaper (in the event too expensive for a tiny flat to be offered to students) and helped move furniture (including a mattress that we picked up on the street).
Then I volunteered to tidy up the sticky kitchen. It must have been fitted by someone very tall because I could barely reach the sink to do the washing up.
I also kept an eye on the cooking. I was rather suspicious of the potato and pea dish. It looked like it had been poisoned with washing up liquid.
A tall, thin, grey-haired man approached me as I walked along the Old Edinburgh Road with TPR. When he addressed me as ‘Miss’ I knew that this was some kind of scam. He wanted to know about my last encounter with my GP.
This was a different tack from the well-known ‘You have been involved in a road traffic accident’ approach. I pointed out that I knew that he was trying to fool me into parting with my money, and warned that he himself was probably being set up by someone else. He agreed.
I then asked him how I had become a target for this particular campaign. The man opened up his laptop and demonstrated how a range of social media profiles had led him to me – including a number that I didn’t recognise at all.
TPR and I bought an enormous country pile just north of Aberdeen. Granted it was right next to a massive housing scheme (thanks to my mother for pointing this out), but it would make a fantastic venue for our forthcoming 30th wedding anniversary party.
The old owners – a very learned but extremely talkative overweight nurse and her partner – and their friends struggled to understand that the house was now ours. I was sick of coming home and finding odd people in our bed, and others ‘just popping in’ to ask our servants for food and drink. Even other people’s laundered underwear would appear in our drawers. This explained why I felt so uncomfortable in my underwear one day. The size 6 black M&S knickers I’d put on that morning weren’t mine.
There was only one thing for it: to change the locks and risk becoming the most unpopular woman north of Aberdeen.
