Back on campus for the first time in months, X did not look her best. First I said how pleased I was to see her after so long, then I asked her what was wrong.
“Patrijca Allende just tried to run me over on her bike as I walked up from Haymarket Station”, she explained.
It was mid-January and high time that our Christmas visitors headed off home. While non-stop partying had its appeal, these so-called friends were eating us out of house and home, and TPR had strong suspicions that they were sponging off us.
Eventually only family members were left at the White House, and soon most of us would be on our way too. In my case I had to return to France – just as soon as I had finished my packing. I popped upstairs to check that I had not forgotten anything.
First I peered into my sister S’s mess of a bedroom. There was nothing there that I needed.
A guest was staying in the room next door, so there was no point in checking in there. I just made sure that the door was firmly closed – we had been trained to keep the heat in.
In the corridor to my bedroom I noticed a new piece of furniture. A light wood Chinese-style cabinet stood where once there were fitted cupboards. When I pulled open the cabinet doors and drawers I found paints, pens, and brushes all designed for creating Chinese artworks. Although I had no need for any of these items, I was interested in a stack of onion-thin paper. I considered stealing some of this for letter writing.
While I was considering this someone approached me from behind. It was N who, unbeknownst to me, had followed me upstairs. Earlier we had had a wee cuddle in the bed that he shared with his wife and a less attractive, muscly, stranger. Now that he had me on my own, N pulled me through the door of my own bedroom, then took me in his arms for a long kiss.
‘What are we doing?’ I asked, even though I fully aware of his intentions, and just how much I would enjoy what he had planned.
G and LE started a fashion for building houses half way up the crags of Holyrood Park. My parents planned to do the same. In the meantime we lived in a small caravan in a car park next to Holyrood Palace. It wasn’t an ideal pitch, mainly because the field right next to us was used to lay out the bodies of the victims of the recent Greek massacre.
One day I left our temporary home to meet JS, who had promised to show me round the high court of Edinburgh. J’s role at the court was so important that her name was inscribed across the portal of its main entrance. I learnt from this that she had two middle names: Kay and Mali. I also met her family for the first time. She introduced me to her young husband, her 11 year-old son, and her 8 year-old daughter. Both children wore multi-coloured cotton jumpers.
At the start of the tour everyone was instructed to pick up a long staff and don a silk scarf, then line up for the procession. Meanwhile J and the other leading (and very glamorous) female lawyers took their places to explain the workings of the judiciary.
We were half way through the tour on the top floor of the court building when the trouble started. Beyond the roof-top car park in the street below I could see armed police, rioters, and members of the general public dressed in running outfits. When I heard the first shots I took immediate shelter under a table with TPR and my sister J.
The train crossed the River Tay, took a sharp right in the direction of Dundee, then suddenly veered off the track to avoid a herd of deer. Somehow it managed to jump back onto the track again almost immediately afterwards.
P and I did not discuss this incident. We were too busy listing all our complaints about a recent meeting of the British Computer Society.
When I looked up again I saw that P had transformed into a pale woman with fluffy dark hair.
As feared, our meeting had over-run, and now it was impossible for us to catch the flight that we had booked to Loughborough.
Someone suggested that we go into central London and then take the train to the East Midlands from there. I was not keen on this at all. This was because I had witnessed all AM’s complaints about this service in the past.
The two international tennis superstars squealed with joy when they saw me.
“We’ll never forget your performance in the semi-final at Wimbledon 2013” said Charlotte as Natalia covered me with kisses. “Do you ever think of coming out of retirement?”
It was true that I had an amazing run in 2013, narrowly missing a place in the women’s singles final. However, we all knew that it was a fluke.
This had been confirmed in 2014 when I crashed out of the tournament in the first round – largely because I had not touched a racquet all season up until the point that I stepped onto the court.
We thought that we were staying in a luxury hotel in Paris, but it was a complete con.
The façade of the building was genuinely in the French capital, but as soon as we exited the glass lifts on the floor where we expected to find our bedroom, we were shepherded into a shuttle bus with a bunch of other guests. We were all asked to state where we were staying, then labels for each city identified was pinned to our backs.
After a long bus ride we were dropped off outside an industrial unit. Inside this were bedrooms in the style of the major tourist destinations of the world. We were expected to believe that we were still in the city where we expected to spend our holiday, but I was not fooled.
My cousin EV asked if we could look after her newborn baby. I was very nervous about accepting the invitation, especially since the baby was only the size of a broad bean. It was obvious that this would be a very stressful exercise. I also wondered why EV had no interest in her own child.
To make things easier (so she thought) EV passed over a backup baby too. This meant that if the first one died, we’d have a second in reserve.
In the event TPR and my sister S took a baby each. TPR carried his in a matchbox. Meanwhile S rummaged through our mother’s sewing box looking for some green felt in which to wrap her charge. Neither baby cried, not even when coated with cinnamon. TPR told me that he remembered to feed his, although I never witnessed this.
After a couple of days the broad bean babies were no more. They had transformed into a couple of polished aconite fossils.
Dreamaticus 