The old lady’s handwriting said it all. She’d forgotten my name, but since we were such good friends online she wanted me to give me her precious heirlooms. These included a locket that contained an ancient black and white photograph of her parents.
I was surprised that BC, who actually knew GG in person, had not pointed out the folly of sending personal treasures to a near-stranger.
The venue for the course was the sitting room of my (dead) grandmother’s house in Corbridge. It was exactly as it was the last time that I had last visited it in the 1980s. The brown curtains still hung at the window, the ornaments above the television had not moved, and the photographs of me, my sisters, and our cousins were still fixed to the walls. I decided to take away some of the more precious artefacts such as the nineteenth century cameos and gold jewellery. I left behind the freemason’s rings embedded in the wall.
The syllabus of the course was unclear, but I did enjoy the skateboarding. It was so much easier than I remembered it. Apparently this was due to the new independent back wheel mechanism. It felt like I was hover-boarding as I moved along.
WB was also on the course. She led some of the other participants in the baking of popsicle cakes. I missed the opportunity to photograph them when the birthday candles were added.
There were a couple of unexpected course participants. MS had taken the decision to ‘just call in’ and an escaped mental hospital patient chased me along the street outside as I was waving a couple off home again after their full day of training.
I greedily worked my way through a delicious breakfast of scrambled eggs prepared for me by TPR. He took me by surprise when he told me that next we were going on a long run. Shouldn’t we have saved the feast until after our exercise?
It had been a while since I had seen SL, and rather unnerving to find her wearing a pale blue 1980s vintage cotton dress.
I hit the accelerator rather than the brake and watched in horror as the speedometer recorded a top speed of 275 mph. Even travelling at this speed did not help us reach our destination of Oxford any quicker. We had drifted so far over to the east of the UK road network that it was going to take hours to find and follow a route back to the M40.
I had never had such a rowdy class of students, nor had I ever been so poorly prepared for the start of the new academic year.
When two of the Chinese students were late because they had been distilling whisky I doubted their commitment to the course.
The rescuers carried us from the terrorists’ enclave to the safety of the most luxurious ambulances I had ever seen. I had a whole one to myself complete with an empire size bed with a memory foam mattress. The Iranian doctor was also very attentive, although I disapproved of his young companion who clung to him wherever he went, even when he was tending to me in bed.
BC hosted the party in her tiny house. I’d never seen a kitchen so small, nor tried to cook in one. The sitting room was a bit bigger, and in there we had fun lining BC up on her sofa with two other tiny fit friends, JLW and ECM. We ended up with three pretty blondes, all in a row.
The party was cut short because BC’s husband GC had to deal with an industrial dispute at work. It took me longer to leave than I hoped because I was attacked by a dozen huge black ravens in the sitting room while I was packing.
Dreamaticus 