Ducks and drowning risk in city centre (Rousse)

Posted on October 29, 2014 by Dreamaticus

I’d craved a sea view for years and now I had one – almost.

When we woke at 05:00am to the blast of morning television from the flat upstairs TPR and I had no option but to get up and dressed, and investigate.

While I inspected the internal conduits of sound, such as our airing cupboard beneath their kitchen, TPR checked the garden. There he discovered that we now had a river flowing past our back door, already colonised by a family of mallard ducks. TPR called me out to see our new water feature.

I admired the view, then grew increasingly concerned for the safety of the children in the neighbourhood who might fall into the water and drown.

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Phil Collins’ Ghostbusters dance (Rousse)

Posted on October 28, 2014 by Dreamaticus

Phil Collins danced with joy as I watched Ghostbusters on a decrepit VHS tape.

Afterwards I took the dog into town to find TPR’s abandoned bike.

When I returned home to the White House I annoyed my sister J. She refused my request to photograph the mist over the garden at dawn from her bedroom window.

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Love strikes in the City of London (Belle)

Posted on October 26, 2014 by Dreamaticus

My advanced tea-making skills had attracted the attention of a handsome young suitor but I knew this was not enough to ensure our long-term compatibility.  I was more interested in the older gentleman I had met in the exquisite and newly excavated chapel near Cannon Street Station.  As he drove me around the city in his car, we exchanged teasing banter.  I was in love!

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Cheese throwing with Billy Connolly (Rousse)

Posted on October 25, 2014 by Dreamaticus

Although the purpose of the exercise was unclear, I enjoyed an afternoon of ‘cheese chucking’ with Billy Connolly and BP. The concept was simple. All you had to do was throw lumps of cheese up onto a high shelf. I soon found that the small cellophane-wrapped samples were easy enough to toss, but I cursed the person who had added a huge breeze block sized brick of cheap coloured cheddar to the game. This was impossible to lift, let alone propel through the air.

Afterwards BP challenged E’s decision to make poverty a main theme of her PhD thesis. ‘How could she possibly speak about this with authority at a viva?’ he asked. ‘There simply isn’t time for her to complete all the necessary reading.’

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Arthur Lowe and the Penis Olympics (Belle)

Posted on October 25, 2014 by Dreamaticus

It seemed I had – at last – achieved my lifetime goal.  I was the passenger in a sweet, vintage car and it was the 1970s.  Arthur Lowe was taking me to the shops in Catford, having proposed to me earlier on that day.  He lifted up my hand and licked the inside of my wrist.  I thought, “That wasn’t too awful”.

Later I settled down to watch the Penis Olympics on TV.  Broadcasting live from a remote south American jungle, two competing villages were wearing their distinctive red or blue wooden  ‘gourd’ uniforms and displaying their muscly lower halves.  When the whistle went, each villager sat down with an opponent and the competitors began to discuss whose penis was best.  A winner emerged from each bout by mutual agreement.  The Reds won!

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A bathroom for every bedroom in Edinburgh’s Victoria Street accommodation (Rousse)

Posted on October 22, 2014 by Dreamaticus

I visited AC in his Victoria Street flat. None of us had ever been there before, although TPR had once peered into the sitting room and concluded that this was the extent of the apartment. This was on the basis that it housed AC’s bed. I was therefore surprised to discover that AC’s accommodation ran to three bedrooms and three bathrooms.

The flat was an odd shape, and the windows didn’t offer much of a view other than of the white-painted walls of the next building in the street. However, it certainly could not be described as small.

The only reason why AC kept his bed in the sitting room was that he sub-let the three bedrooms to foreigners to supplement his income. One – a back-packer from New Zealand – assumed that I would soon be joining them until I explained that I was a long-term resident of Edinburgh.

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A creepy Cotswolds hotel and a fight for fish fingers (Rousse)

Posted on October 20, 2014 by Dreamaticus

The reviews for the Cotwolds hotel were amazing, but the longer that JC and I stayed there, the less inclined we were to recommend it ourselves. The two owners were rather creepy, following us around everywhere. When they complained about the state of our bedroom I was tempted to reply that they should worry less about guests’ clothes lying heaped on the floor, and more about the damp coming in through the mouldy walls. It was also ridiculous that I had been obliged to wash my hair using the bottom drawer of a chest as a basin.

We were just going into dinner (very late at 9pm) when we bumped into LF and two friends. I pulled L into the ladies to warn her about the hotel and its poor service.

Later, while trying to catch a bus in the middle of nowhere, I got into a fight over the last two fish fingers offered for sale by a roadside pedlar.

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Clever words win Russell Crowe (Belle)

Posted on October 19, 2014 by Dreamaticus

The dog and I stood at the top of the hill, admiring the view in front of us – lush green valleys and emerald green woods.  The view behind us was a complete contrast – the whole of London was visible in the sunlight.

I wondered if the Australian ‘park ranger’ sitting on the bench realised just how lucky she was to be here?  I turned around and said something so profound and astonishing to Russell Crowe that he immediately fell in love with me.  It was inevitable – we were ‘meant to be together’.

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A missed reservation at the “best restaurant in the world” (Rousse)

Posted on October 19, 2014 by Dreamaticus

We arranged to meet in Paris at 1:30pm. J chose the venue: a beautiful white stucco-fronted hotel, opposite a formal park. When I arrived (just a couple of minutes late) J greeted me enthusiastically. Although we hadn’t seen one another for years, we soon slipped into the pattern of our old friendship.

I had expected that we would eat at this hotel, but J had other plans. He led me to his car and then we crossed the city to where he was staying. At one point I got the impression that we might be dining at the Pigalle restaurant just named “best in the world”. J confessed that we’d arranged our meeting at too short notice to get a table, but perhaps this could be arranged for next time.

He spent the rest of the trip complaining about Teesside accents. I pointed out that he would have to get used to them quickly now that my school friend M had been appointed to chair all the important meetings of our main professional body.

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An under-resourced conference (Rousse)

Posted on October 18, 2014 by Dreamaticus

Even though I had passed the duties on to another colleague months ago, I was getting the blame for the failure of the conference. I couldn’t help it if I spent the afternoon cosying up to P and playing with the children rather than preparing the conference dinner.

I ran up to Northfield to avoid our boss, but she soon tracked me down. When I explained that you couldn’t run an event without resources she seemed to understand my dilemma.

As we were discussing how to retrieve the conference BR interrupted the conversation to say that he and EH were using their bikes as collateral against bus fares for visitors to the “Computers and food” exhibition. He added that if the bus fares weren’t paid, he and EH would lose their bikes, and possibly also their homes.

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