John Humphrys spent much time chatting to me at his retirement party. He posed for a photograph with me and my American PhD students. They had no idea of his identity.
I also spotted Bernard Cribbins amongst the guests. He was just another ‘unknown’ as far as the students were concerned.
Simon Cowell begged me to support him in his collaboration with sworn enemy Louis Walsh.
‘This will be my last ever chance to reach number 1 in the charts’ he explained.
The University of Birmingham revealed the institution’s innovative widening access policy at the launch of a spanking new hall of residence.
All incoming students who had attended state schools would no longer be liable for fees. Those privately educated, however, would still need to pay up for their university education.
The two categories of student would be identified by their footwear. As demonstration, the site manager handed a pair of (mainly pink) multi-coloured wellington boots to me and TPR. We were to wear these as a mark of our privately-educated status.
TPR’s mother, who was also in the audience at the launch, did not spot us.
My sister S made two demands:
(1) We pay for her to go on holiday to Spain with her boyfriend C.
(2) After the holiday, she moves in with us.
It was a miracle. My sister had cleared the floor of her bedroom of all her junk! The carpet was finally visible and all the furniture could now be seen. Added to this, my sister had discovered that behind her room there was another one, complete with a secret staircase that led upstairs.
The second room was a treasure trove of smart Georgian furniture. My late father must have bought all these pieces in the 1970s. Labels that hung from the keys to the wardrobes and armoires stated their purchase price, every one over £5000. What a pity that the value of antiques had dropped so low in recent years!
HVJ, however, noted that some of the jewellery in my sister’s ‘main’ bedroom was probably valuable. She picked out a pearl bracelet from a glass cabinet. ‘This is worth at least £3000’, she said. The issue now was whether the bracelet belonged to my sister or to my mother’s estate.
Former Professor of Information Science BC showed off his acting talents when he played the lead role in the remake of Fantastic Mr Fox.
The new scent ‘Eau de Dr Who’, sold in Channel No. 5 bottles, was found to be mainly ‘L’essence de David Tennant’.
A lack of sailing qualifications was apparently no barrier to buying a yacht, especially when the owner was in such a hurry to sell. Our new boat came with a lower deck stuffed with smaller vessels, and a resident black and white tabby cat and her small litter of kittens.
We managed to sail the yacht to the southern tip of the island. Here we enjoyed several days in the sun.
It was on the day that the police boarded the boat to arrest us that we first heard the rumour that the previous owner had been disposing of his assets quickly. This was the first part of his plan to fake his death as a victim of the 9/11 attack in New York.
A kind nun working in Accident and Emergency treated my mysterious discharge.
As we were thanking her, she made a surprising revelation. She was a former school mistress, having completed teacher training in the 1960s alongside TPR’s father.
She felt compelled to pass on this information when certain that she recognised her former fellow student’s good looks in his son. She also wanted to correct the misassumption that octogenarians have no useful function in society.
It was my first day on the job as a newly qualified police officer in Florida.
I’d pulled over a vehicle for a traffic infraction. The driver stepped out of the vehicle and took off running. I radioed for back-up and the dispatcher asked “which direction is the suspect running?” and I realised I had no idea. Northbound? Westbound?
I had a compass in my pocket for just such an occasion. Only then did I realise I had failed to watch the YouTube video ‘How to use a compass’.
Dreamaticus 