Sheffield conference fail (Rousse)

The conference was an excruciating experience. We had travelled to Sheffield with such high hopes, but here we were stuck towards the back of the lecture hall appalled at the poor standard of presentation. Even the supposed ‘big names’ failed to deliver.

The local PhD students made an attempt at comedy in the final session. I cringed in embarrassment at their costumes. When they started to make puns about recreational drug consumption I could bear it no longer. Like everyone else, I knew that I had to leave.

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Boris Johnson recommends bingo and a steak (Rousse)

“Boris Johnson told us that we might as well go and play a game of bingo and get a steak for our lunch. It’s going to take ages for them to sort out the photography” said my contact.

Boris had a point. Even though they had plenty of advance notice of my arrival, the suits were clearly unprepared for me. There was a dodgy moment when I couldn’t stop my iPad mini bleeping, but other than that all responsibility for the chaos was theirs.

Meanwhile TPR was making a feeble effort to help clean the flat. I was astonished at the filth that students were willing to tolerate. One didn’t even bother to get out of bed as we attempted to remove years of grime from the surfaces of his room. I was so keen to see the job done that I risked my hands on the strongest detergent that I could find buried deep in the cupboard under the sink.

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To Australia by sea with an unlimited baggage allowance (Rousse)

It was so frustrating to find that both my meetings with the Scottish Government and Skills Development Scotland were cancelled. What made it worse was only discovering this news on arrival at the offices: first at Saughton House, and then in Corstorphine. I wasted so much time cross-crossing Edinburgh on a day when I had so much to do, not least the packing for my trip to Australia.

Back at the house I worked my way through my boot collection in my sister S’s bedroom. It was a difficult job to work out which pairs to take on the trip. I thought hard about the white plastic cut-offs, and the black pony skin. Eventually ECM popped through to give me some advice. At least we weren’t hindered by a baggage allowance: this is the biggest advantage of travelling to the other side of the world on a ship, even if it takes three weeks.

It really is possible to travel from the UK to Australia by sea, although the journey is longer than Rousse has indicated here.

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What happened at the school reunion? (Rousse)

At the Teesside High reunion I knocked over the pot plant that RL brought for our hostess, VH turned up as a surprise, and I caught HD-B working her way through a plate of chocolate brownies.

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Upside down rabbits and squirrels, and two escaped cats (Rousse)

It was great to be back home after our holiday. We’d been away so long that I had forgotten the layout of our house.

TPR took me through to the small sitting room. He’d arranged for it to be decorated while we were away. It was almost perfect. Just one wall needed attention: the rabbit and squirrel patterned wallpaper had been hung upside down. TPR admitted that this was his fault. He confessed that he had misdirected the decorator.

To take my mind off this mishap, TPR led me outside to his vegetable patch in the garden that we shared with our neighbour. He told me all about mowing the lawn and introduced me to two cats: a small black one and a large tabby. Both escaped into the street when I failed to shut the gate properly.

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Salmon in Manchester skies (Rousse)

TPR recommended taking a taxi from Manchester Piccadilly to Manchester Metropolitan University to ensure that I reached campus in time for my 4pm class. We took the one available taxi, even though we were unconvinced that the kindly driver was licensed to trade. It was strange that the back seat was taken up by child seats, and that we were taken to the driver’s house rather than the university.

I managed to reach my class eventually. When I arrived I found BD already in full flow so there wasn’t much for me to do. I stayed long enough to ensure that my participation had been noted, then set off to find SPC. She was catching the boat back to the Isle of Man that afternoon and we only had a short few minutes in which to share a hug.

Afterwards BD and I met my mother to join her in her evening recreation of canal boat rowing. We drifted along the water under a beautiful pink sunset. The sky to the west was the most remarkable. It was decorated with images of silvery salmon leaping between the clouds.

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Kings Charles II and Cardinal Wolsey prime candidates for Obama replacement (Rousse)

American President Barack Obama was missing. He could have been assassinated or simply resigned: nobody knew. Whatever the reason, we were now with the crowds on Princes Street to watch the parade that featured Obama’s replacement, the former Deputy President Senator Robert Deltoid.

We fell in with a group of radical feminist socialist workers. They had a chant ready for the moment when the new president came past. The only problem was identifying him: all the dignitaries were dressed up in over-sized It’s a knockout style costumes. It was impossible to tell whether Deltoid was King Charles II, Cardinal Wolsey or any of the other characters marching along the designated route.

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Canadian cousins, bathers, a family row, and South Yorkshire pop bands in Whitby (Rousse)

My sister J planned an ambitious itinerary for the visit of our Canadian cousins N and D. I doubted that it were possible to squeeze everything into a single day.

I was proved right in Whitby. It would never be enough to merely see the sights from a car window. J asked the silent driver to park at the sea front where we all got out. It was high tide and I watched the few bathers who were splashing around in the water. When I turned round to say something to the others I discovered that they had all disappeared.

When they eventually returned I made it clear that I was upset. “We just went for a little walk” my sister said. “Yes, without me – as usual”, I responded.

I asked my mother why I was always being left out. “Probably because you’re not very nice to other people” she concluded. I argued that I was exceptionally nice to everyone (except perhaps J, but only from time to time).

Anyway, I had had enough of being unpopular so I took TPR with me across the road to the cinema. Here we spent the rest of the afternoon watching a documentary about South Yorkshire pop bands.

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Husband’s mystery trips to Manchester while wife heads north to Inverness by foot (Rousse)

The day that I made the round trip by car to Manchester to fix JC’s blinds I discovered that TPR had made the same trip the day before and had another planned for the next. He claimed that these visits were related to his doctoral studies. I was not so sure.

Meanwhile we needed to identify the examiners for his thesis. I started to do so in the company of my colleagues. Some of the most unsuitable candidates tried to put themselves forwards. In the end I decided on AL, but I needed to get his permission for the formal documentation. Where was he?

I eventually found AL in the ‘field’ with Jim from Engineering. The ‘field’ was an open space where the civil engineering students could practise skills such as the laying of culverts. As soon as AL assented to my request I set off on my long, dangerous journey by foot to Inverness.

Progress was slow through ancient haunted tunnels and over decrepit Victorian railway embankments. After several painful hours of walking alone I came across a group of people south of Perth and asked how much further it was to Pitlochry. They told me that I had at least another eighteen miles to cover and, of course, Inverness was even further still. My new friends ushered me into a bus shelter and persuaded me to travel the rest of the journey by coach.

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A night in the VIP suite at China White (Rousse)

TPR was offered the post of Reader in Computer Science at the University of Edinburgh, even without a PhD. I considered this rather odd, but it was his industry expertise that was sought.

In the meantime he had to complete his HNC in Exercise Science. This involved a trip to the highlands by minibus. One of the other students announced that he had to drop out because he couldn’t afford it.

‘This is what happens when you blow your entire student grant on a weekend trip to London and a night in the VIP suite at China White‘, muttered TPR bitterly in response.

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