“Rousse has had her problems too, just like DT” mentioned KJ to the stranger.
“What kind of problems?” I thought. I wasn’t aware that anything had been wrong with me.
It slowly dawned on me that he was referring to our weight. Was it really so obvious that I’d dropped a couple of stone in the past 12 months?
It was wonderful to have OC-I as our lodger again, this time accompanied by his partner R. Our lawn was already looking better thanks to O’s keen gardening skills.
O and R made the spare bedroom their very own by extending the floor space into the garden and installing huge French windows. The views from here were fabulous, especially now that the flat had transformed into a houseboat that sailed up and down the River Thames.
We didn’t know why they had removed the staircase. Without it, the London office was very difficult to navigate. As best we could, P and I hunted for A. However, he seeemed to have disappeared.
We later learnt that A had left the country for Texas. He’d taken a job with N at a start-up in Houston.
ECM made a surprise visit to Edinburgh to celebrate Baby Ted’s 50th birthday. She slept in the bath because KA had already commandeered the bed in the spare room.
In the first week of December TF drove us through the slush to Stirling for our annual skiing holiday. Unfortunately, however, there was no snow on the hills. It was far too early in the season to ski.
I thought it rather unfair to place the blame for the popularity of French bloodsports on the residents of Marcillat. Indeed I couldn’t recall an active hunt in all the time that I spent there. All I could remember was the boar’s head hanging from the wall in the main hall, and 17 year-old PD’s firearms bluster.
As we headed out of Edinburgh for the A68 I hoped that there would be something interesting for me to photograph from the car.
My wish was soon granted when I spotted the pilgrims in seventeenth century dress setting off on their long walk to Holy island. The flames of Edinburgh’s Old Town on fire illuminated the scene, with the billows of smoke heading into the night sky adding to the atmosphere.
It was such a pity that none of the controls on my camera worked. This would have made the most marvellous shot.
We dropped the habit of recent years of spending New Year’s Eve in Edinburgh. Instead we travelled south to celebrate with A, C, N and S.
S told us that we would be having “something called boeuf bourguignon” for dinner. She kindly started to explain to me what this was until I interrupted and reminded her that I had a degree in French.
Later in the evening one of S and N’s babies, who I discovered lying on his back in his cot, raised his little fists, struck out at my chest, and pushed me upwards. Such was the force that I was sent flying towards the ceiling, where I then got stuck. TPR had to stand on his toes to reach up and pull me back down to the floor again.
By the time that I came back down everyone’s hair had reverted to the colour of their youth.
Dreamaticus 
How not to peer review conference submissions (Rousse)
AM reminded me why she would have very little time to herself next academic year: she was organising a conference in Leipzig. Apart from the idiotic behaviour of one of her colleagues, who refereed conference submissions by lining up yellow witch’s hat bollards along the roadside and pinning to them notes of caustic comments hand-written in red crayon, all was going well.
At first I thought this lunatic was one of my colleagues because both men shared the same name. However, I soon found out that the man in question was not the small-framed engineer of my acquaintance, but someone else completely.
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