Dreamaticus

LM and her colleague from the National Library of Scotland could wait for me no longer. I said that I would follow them up to the Library just as soon as I could get off the phone. We were due there for a Special Libraries Association talk at 6pm.

Once the phone call was finished I rushed into the bedroom to change out of my jeans into a dress. I didn’t have time to put on any make-up. I hoped that nobody would notice this.

Then I heard someone come in through the front door. It was TPR, followed by LM, her colleague and my sister S.

‘That meeting’s not on Broughton Street’ he said.

‘I know’, I replied, ‘It’s at the National Library of Scotland, and we’re all terribly late now. Why don’t we catch a flight to the venue rather than walk?’ The others agreed to my suggestion.

Taking the flight was a terrible mistake. It crashed in the Alps on a bridge over a melt-water lake where brave souls were bathing in bikinis amongst the shrinking ice-bergs. Although nobody was hurt, we would be stuck there for hours. I didn’t mind so much because a lorry driver passenger was determined to pass this time flirting with me. TPR, however, was furious – not least because he had to travel elsewhere the next day, and didn’t really want to attend the lecture at the National Library of Scotland in the first place. He couldn’t understand the logic of taking a flight from Edinburgh Airport to the National Library of Scotland when the Library was only a half hour’s walk from our flat.

When I asked TPR where to find my sister S, he told me that she had climbed into an overhead locker to sulk and sleep.