GW left EW and moved into a boarding house. From here he broadcast his popular YouTube channel on working at Rolls Royce.
I couldn’t see the attraction myself. I’d rather be playing Scrabble.
GW left EW and moved into a boarding house. From here he broadcast his popular YouTube channel on working at Rolls Royce.
I couldn’t see the attraction myself. I’d rather be playing Scrabble.
We finally tracked down DM, now working in a supermarket. She told us that she was looking forward to travelling to the reunion using funds from a recent inheritance.
We didn’t have the heart to tell her that we knew all the details of her recent windfall. This was thanks to our extended stalking of every single member of our year group.
My two sisters and I took a family holiday with a difference. The resort turned out to be our childhood home in Stockton-on-Tees, and both our deceased parents joined us there to make up a party of five keen holiday-makers.
The house was very impressive. It was so tidy that you could see the carpet in every room! My father, however, was an embarrassment. His idea of fun was to bumble on and on about political scandals in Newcastle.
GW told me that she had given up academia and was now training for the ministry.
My former colleague JB strutted around the party in a white leather, silver-studded, flared Elvis-style jumpsuit, taking our calls of ‘Rocky Raccoon!’ and ‘Davy Crockett!’ with good humour. In short, he looked amazing and he knew it. I was delighted when he agreed that I could photograph him and send the image to KA.
At the same party, I found myself left with the washing up because I lost a bet with TPR’s old boss ZM. My school friend KG (KMcL) was my partner for this task. As she dipped the crockery into the sink, she enthused about a television documentary on the production of sugar beet in Cyprus. Now she understood the reasons for the high price of sugar.
When KG started her review, I was only half-listening. I thought that she was talking about a radio documentary about reading that I had heard that morning. To save her embarrassment, and even though I had not seen the television programme in question, I agreed with everything that KG had to say about industrial agricultural production in the Mediterranean.
Alan Carr was the star attraction at the Fringe, relocated this year from Edinburgh to Shawbost on the Isle of Lewis. He and his fellow comedians would be performing silent improv.
I was hoping to catch him after the show to ask about his connections to Stockton-on-Tees.
Our new home was a bright first floor flat on Princes Street. The enormous sitting room, as well as the smaller dining room next to it, offered superb views of Edinburgh Castle. I couldn’t wait to host a dinner party here. Our only disappointment was that a local by-law forbade the use of ‘Princes Street’ as part of our new address. This privilege was only granted to businesses on the payment of a substantial fee.
We now needed to make arrangements for most of our belongings from our old flat to be moved to the new one. We would leave enough furniture and artwork in place so that the rooms looked attractive in the photos for the sales brochure.
TPR didn’t trust me to take charge of ‘dressing’ the old flat. This was largely because of my recent drunken behaviour. My mysterious acquisition of three big wads of used £20 and £50 notes did not make up for losing both my handbag and iPhone in a single night.
Going against everything we ever said about looking ahead to our old age and future-proofing our modest living arrangements accordingly, TPR and I bought a huge derelict old house in Malvern.
We were now burdened with an enormous ‘project’ that – if successful – could well encourage all our elderly relations to move in with us. Added to this, the hippy locals in our new neighbourhood were all extremely unfriendly.