A research council prawn and shrimp feast in Hawaii (Rousse)

Posted on April 28, 2014 by Dreamaticus

Were the UK research councils awash with money? All the evidence pointed to this: how else could they afford to host a conference in Hawaii? I just wished that there was more time between sessions to change into my gown for the conference dinner, and for there to be more on the menu than prawn and shrimp. Still, it was lovely to spend time with JB and my other external colleagues.

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Christmas confusion leads to a very late lunch (Rousse)

Posted on April 27, 2014 by Dreamaticus

In all the confusion of the Christmas celebrations my mother forgot to switch on the oven. We ended up eating the roast potatoes for breakfast on Boxing Day, and the turkey a couple of days later.

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Drugs and death at Tesco (Rousse)

Posted on April 26, 2014 by Dreamaticus

I needed drugs. TPR told me that we could buy them over the counter at the supermarket. I wasn’t too sure of this, but felt it was worth a try, so I followed him out of the door and along the road to Tesco on Broughton Road.

Just outside the shop entrance we became involved in a brief conversation with some people we’d seen around our neighbourhood. The five children in the group looked very bored. Like them I wasn’t interested in hanging around listening to idle chit chat. I reminded TPR that I needed drugs, and dragged him into the shop.

Tesco’s layout had been changed since my last visit. The pharmacy counter was now situated amongst the newspaper and magazine stands. We walked up to the assistant on duty and made our request.

“For that you will have to provide a sample on a stick” she instructed me. “Oh, and there is a £20 charge”.

I was about to say that perhaps I didn’t need drugs that much when one of the women that we had spoken to earlier rushed into the shop screaming that there had been a fatality in the car park. One of the bored children in her party had run into the path of a car and been killed instantly. Suddenly my quest for drugs was completely irrelevant.

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Rousse’s one night stand

Posted on April 23, 2014 by Dreamaticus

I had been a faithful wife for almost three decades and now I’d blown it after a brief (but fun) encounter with XY (also married) in the marital bed while TPR was fast asleep along the corridor in the spare bedroom. I reckoned that TPR would never discover my infidelity provided that (a) I kept my mouth shut and (b) I hadn’t caught anything nasty from XY (who, unfortunately, had a bit of a reputation for promiscuity).

XY scrunched up the covers on the futon in the study to give the impression that he had slept there, so I thought our night of passion would go unnoticed. However, my sisters were suspicious. To prove my innocence (or guilt) J forced me to take a test of her own invention. This required me to identify next year’s Christmas cards from a box in the study. I had no idea what she was talking about, but I did know that there was another box of cards (of which she was unaware) elsewhere in the house. I fudged an answer that kept her quiet for some time.

After all this faffing around I was late. I needed to get to work for a meeting at Craiglockhart with MB about her photography practice. I rounded everyone up (XY included) so that we could jump in a taxi for the ride across town.

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A monochrome moon rise, a self-driving car, drunken students, a horse, frozen waves, and a train ride to Edinburgh from South Queensferry (Rousse)

Posted on April 22, 2014 by Dreamaticus

From the back seat of the car I noticed the moon rising in monochrome over Waverley Bridge.

“Slow down!” I shouted at TPR, “This is amazing. I need to photograph it!”

When he didn’t reply to me I leant over to the driver’s seat and discovered that TPR was no longer at the wheel. Instead he was fast asleep at the other side of the back seat, and somehow the car was navigating its way around Edinburgh all by itself.

I shouted louder and TPR woke up just in time to steer the car away from a crowd of drunken students near to the queue of airport buses, and a horse heading north from the roundabout.

I didn’t get my photograph then, but a later opportunity arose when we crossed the River Forth. I daringly left the car through the open back window and walked along the tracks of the rail bridge. From high above I could observe the strange phenomena of frozen waves, and AV sitting in a playground below. At the end of my little outing I met a nice young man at South Queensferry railway station who showed me where to catch a train back to Edinburgh.

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Unshod on a London Routemaster bus (Rousse)

Posted on April 21, 2014 by Dreamaticus

After all the fuss it took to book a vintage Routemaster bus to take us to the railway station for a special trip to London by train, I was very disappointed that only TPR and I turned up. Then there was the embarrassment of discovering that neither of us had remembered to put on our shoes before leaving the house.

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The chaos of rapid expansion in UK higher education (Rousse)

Posted on April 20, 2014 by Dreamaticus

The expansion of Queen Margaret University’s portfolio of courses was so rapid that its building could not cope with the additional student numbers. Indeed something had gone terribly wrong during the extra construction work and now many of the institution’s corridors and staircases led to dusty dead-ends.

The academic timetable was also in a terrible mess. I was asked to teach the Business Information Sources class again after a break of seven years, and was given a morning’s notice to deliver the Knowledge Management class. Even so, the students were clamoring to be taught by me. One was prepared to give up third year English Language and History just so that she could boast me as a tutor.

I wanted to raise all these issues in a meeting, but I was sitting so far back in the lecture hall that I didn’t get the chance to have my say, even though HC was breathing down my neck, hissing at me to do so.

The only chink of joy in all this chaos was the prospect of meeting JM for lunch later in the day.

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Dressing up for the doctoral defence (Rousse)

Posted on April 18, 2014 by Dreamaticus

Each time that I attended a doctoral defence in a Nordic country I was impressed by the trouble that my hosts took to look their best on a student’s big day. On this occasion GW wore a spangled cream and white shift dress decorated with silver sequins across the shoulders. I asked where she had bought her outfit.

GW turned around and lifted her hair so that I could pull down the tag stitched into the collar of the dress. I wasn’t in the least surprised to see that the label read “Next, size 12”.

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The sinister story behind Bye baby bunting (Rousse)

Posted on April 17, 2014 by Dreamaticus

“So, contrary to popular belief Bye baby bunting is not a sweet lullaby, but instead a sinister account of child abuse at the hands of a trusted nursery nurse” concluded the speaker.

The looks on my colleagues’ faces said it all. Who had let this crazed woman take the stage? Her thesis was completely irrelevant to the conference themes, and most likely inaccurate.

Then I spotted CO out of the corner of my eye. He was carrying a weekend bag. I knew that he was unaware of what was inside the bag, or where he would be taking it after the conference closed. I did because AM had let me into the secret: clothes for a trip to Paris.

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Angela Lansbury’s handbag and Lady Gaga’s wig (Belle)

Posted on April 17, 2014 by Dreamaticus

I was asked by my aunt to go to the library and post a letter to Angela Lansbury.  When I arrived at the library I found I didn’t need to buy a stamp because Angela Lansbury was in the hallway, fiddling in her handbag.  I approached her with the letter and warned her against reading the contents.

Later I watched someone remove a heavy bag from a step ladder.  This rash action meant that the poor man standing at the top of the ladder was catapulted over a hedge and landed head-first on next door’s patio.

Meanwhile, I was making arrangements to hire a Lady Gaga wig for the weekend and to have my shoulder tattooed.  It seemed I would do anything to ‘fit in’.

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