‘Northern lads, guitars, drums and witty lyrics – that’s my kind of music’, I declared when the woman told me that she was a Morrissey fan.
She couldn’t care less. She didn’t even react when I noted that the Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Theatre met this description.
The mother was at her wit’s end caring for a floppy middle-aged child whose only interest in life was her next fix. There was nothing that could be done except to sit and watch as the addict threw methadone-infused sugar cones down her throat.
The violet liquid drug was the same colour of the user’s pale skin and enormous-pupilled eyes.
I surprised K and her husband at their vegetable chests on Bruntsfield Links. I asked after K’s mother. They told me that she had died.
This was a terrible shock. I knew that G had been ill, but I had no idea that she was at death’s door.
I fought with M over a silver Waterman pen. He claimed that it was his, but I argued that it could only be mine since it was a corporate gift from Sun Microsystems.
IH, who was cradling a baby, watched us arguing. I glanced over and wondered if the child in her arms was her son and M the father.
IH later referred to M as ‘grandpa’. I assumed that this was just a courtesy title.
I unexpectedly found myself free one afternoon so I took a walk across the Meadows to photograph the flowers. There I found a huge gathering – mainly of women – at a celebration hosted by the University of Edinburgh.
JS and I photographed a water feature at the reception. Then I smashed a glass. I worried that the children would cut their feet on the shards as they ran about unshod.
On my way home from the party I got trapped in a lift. I had several conversations over the intercom with a rescue team in the US before I realised that I was travelling in a special carriage of an Edinburgh to Glasgow commuter train. Now I really was in trouble because I had no cash on me to pay the fare. I couldn’t even make the purchase by mobile phone because my iPhone had snapped in two earlier during the journey when I had dropped it on the floor.
I spent the night in a bed and breakfast in rural Northumberland run my friend BC (or BB).
On a Sunday morning I found XY lying in a bed at my flat. He was there because Mansfield Church was fully booked. I could hardly bear to be in his company and wondered out loud how long we would be obliged to put up with him. Given it was a Sunday, shouldn’t he and his family all be out at worship?
XY opened a newspaper and pointed to a column that showed that the service and all other associated devotional activities started after noon. In the meantime we were lumbered with him. Fortunately, however, there would be room for him to stay at the church that night, so once he was gone, that would be it.
In the meantime he whinged about an event that he was organising and my failure to promote it. He clearly wanted a PA, but I was not going to be bullied into that role. As far as I was concerned he was responsible for his own marketing and communications, from pinning up posters to a full-blown social media campaign.
I eventually escaped when it was time for me to start a seminar on research methods. I welcomed the delegates, made their badges, recommended reading, and invited them to enter the prize draw.
The research seminar was my responsibility and time was running out.
My main concerns were that: (a) I had confused everyone by corresponding with the speaker as Tivol (or Tivo for short) – my Aboriginal name; (b) the event was overbooked and there would not be enough space for all the participants; and (c) WC had forgotten to order the biscuits.
Then there was the question of my props. I had spotted some great vintage anti-feminist backlash material in a new antique shop on Edinburgh’s Broughton Street: homemade American placards from the 1970s that read along the lines of ‘A woman’s place is in the home’, each of which included a note of the US state in which it was created. If only the miserable shop assistant would let me purchase them, and the owner stop trying to drag me around the entire premises to show off all his wares.
When I married David Tennant I expected to be invited to all the showbiz parties and premières. Unfortunately I was unaware that he always left his wives at home.
When I dared to ask him about this he bundled me into a Victorian hotel kitchen and suggested that I might like to have a lie-down in the coal store.
Dreamaticus 