Tour of the hotspots of Hartburn misses the White House (Rousse)

Posted on July 8, 2014 by Dreamaticus

As the bus came down Greens Lane I considered pointing out Hartburn Primary School, but I wasn’t convinced that my fellow passengers would be interested.

At the T junction we turned right on to Darlington Road, then first left into Hartburn Village. The bus stopped at the corner and we all disembarked. I walked up Darlington Road with JH. Recently widowed, and somewhat disabled following his stroke, he had come to Stockton to meet his new girlfriend. They had met on a dating web site and this would be their first face-to-face encounter. I wished him luck while resisting the temptation to tell him how ECM thought that the sign in the grounds of Elmwood Community Centre read “Trespassers will be executed” (rather than prosecuted).

Within minutes we were in the open countryside. I had been so deep in conversation that I had missed the White House as we passed by it.

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To St Andrews by tandem to sample the sherry (Rousse)

Posted on July 6, 2014 by Dreamaticus

I had to get to one-day conference in St Andrews where, I was warned, the presentations would be a waste of time, but I could enjoy many different varieties of sherry.

TPR and I travelled part of the way there by tandem. Things got tricky when the back end of the bike became detached from the front. Although I could still pedal along quite happily, I had no brakes. I was forced to slam my wellington-booted feet into the tarmac to slow myself down at traffic lights.

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Standing stones stand-off: Exmoor versus Edinburgh (Rousse)

Posted on July 6, 2014 by Dreamaticus

The signs in the bog noted that the moorland belonged to AJ. Wasn’t she a friend of DT? This was perhaps why DT and KJ spent so much time on Exmoor?

TPR drove the car over the rough ground so that he could get us as close as possible to the standing stones. They were not as impressive as one was led to believe. Indeed we wondered why DT and KJ bothered to travel so far when there was a stone circle in perfect condition on Bruntsfield Links in Edinburgh, easily accessible from Morningside Road.

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Surviving the Hebrides without adequate waterproofs and footwear (Rousse)

Posted on July 6, 2014 by Dreamaticus

TPR was in trouble. His Crocs and Barbour jacket had been stolen. How would he survive the rest of his trip to the Outer Hebrides?

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Fun with Kalashnikov rifles (Rousse)

Posted on July 4, 2014 by Dreamaticus

I suspected that something funny was going on in the big upstairs bedroom. I pushed open the door and found my former colleague JB with eight or nine foreign men playing with Kalashnikov rifles. Only one other man spoke English, but this didn’t matter to JB. Playing with guns was apparently much more fun than talking.

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How to feed a baby pigeon and other vital advice (Rousse)

Posted on July 3, 2014 by Dreamaticus

I kept a baby pigeon in a tiny cage in the corner of my granny’s kitchen. I regretted my decision to store his favourite food (fresh broccoli) with the coal in the bucket next to the back door. The coal dust got all over my hands whenever I reached for a green sprig to feed my little pet. I was also worried about mice. It looked like TPR had also been feeding grain to the bird, and there was evidence that tiny rodents had taken a liking to this additional food supply.

TPR was also causing anxiety for one of my PhD students. Through Facebook she was able to track him on his iPad, and had discovered that he regularly met someone called Carl Newton for coffee in town. She needed TPR to know that this Carl Newton was her former boss and a sworn enemy. Her advice was that TPR should have nothing to do with this evil man.

My third worry was a class of set basic business textbooks that I found piled up in my office with an invoice for £844. It was the case that I had ordered this title through the University library. However, I’d only asked for one copy, and not forty. I’d have to let the acquisitions staff know and get a refund.

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A bouncy cousin and a paper husband (Rousse)

Posted on July 2, 2014 by Dreamaticus

My cousin EA bounced into our bedroom declaring that it was time to get up. It was not, and I told him to go back to bed. I needed all the sleep I could get before waking to my 06:00am run.

In the event the run was cancelled. Instead TPR and I followed EA to a conference room in a massive Georgian sub-basement. When my sisters arrived at the meeting looking very glamorous I realised that we hadn’t even brushed our hair since getting out of bed. TPR and I decided to pop back to our room to smarten ourselves up.

We took the route via Edinburgh’s George Street, where TPR tripped over a massive golden padlock attached to a marble statue outside the Royal Society of Edinburgh. Then we jumped into a yellow Smart car for the short journey home.

I was not prepared for the shock of seeing TPR morph into a sheet of paper before my very eyes. I screamed at him to come back, which he did briefly. He then disappeared back into the pages of a business report on the front seat of the car, with no hope of return. Our life together was over.

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An ambitious bigamist gay husband (Rousse)

Posted on July 1, 2014 by Dreamaticus

I really wanted XY to myself so I was very relieved when PQ took the hint and wandered off. Now I could ask XY all the questions that had bothered me for years:

  1. Why would a gay man marry me?
  2. Had our sex life been for real?
  3. Would he ever sleep with me again?
  4. Did his civil partner know about us?
  5. Had we committed bigamy?

The biggest surprise of all was that XY confessed to marrying me as a career move. He did so even though I had been the laughing stock of the department at the time of our wedding due to my obsession with medieval forms of contraception. Of this I had no memory at all.

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A cancelled dip in the pool and a missing cashmere cardigan (Rousse)

Posted on June 30, 2014 by Dreamaticus

LC picked me up in her car. Two of her blond grandchildren were bouncing up and down on the back seat with a couple of their little friends, a dark-haired brother and sister set.

When we reached the gym the children disappeared. LC headed off to the pool and I shouted after her that I would join her just as soon as I found my soggy costume and towel in the bottom of my bag.

I was stopped in my tracks by TM, who was waiting in the gym bar. He explained that SS had summoned everyone for a drink to celebrate the end of term, but he was the only one of all of our colleagues who had turned up so far. He knew RK was on his way, but was engaged in some dispute over the legitimacy of the vegetarian options on the bar food menu.

I changed my mind about a swim. I would need to show support for my department and attend this meeting instead. The problem, however, was I’d lost my black cashmere cardigan somewhere in the building, and I couldn’t settle until it was found. My greatest fear was that it had been stolen.

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Evil shop girl in vanity licence plate plot (Rousse)

Posted on June 29, 2014 by Dreamaticus

I loved just about everything about working in the gift shop. The work was easy, the hours were good, and I was a genuine fan of our product range. With just one exception, I also got on really well with all my colleagues. I was pleased that – so far – none of the others had picked up my dislike of the woman secretly known to me and TPR as the SEB.

The SEB always liked to be the centre of attention. If necessary, she would manufacture a crisis to ensure that this was the case. Her latest ploy had been to buy up every personalised car number plate that offered a possible association with her name. She arranged for the plates to be fixed to cars, and then for each car to be allocated a driver. She instructed the drivers to rack up as many speeding tickets as they could.

As the inevitable fines for dangerous driving eventually reached the SEB (as the owner and assumed driver of all these vehicles) she had the perfect excuse to moan at work that she was the victim of a witch hunt. She claimed that she had no idea of how this had happened.

I, however, was completely au fait with her devious ways. I was sorely tempted to reveal all when the time was right.

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