The four beautiful sisters welcomed me into my family. I was very much enjoying my holiday with them until the afternoon when I got stuck on a cliff ledge above the swimming pool.
Clinging to the red rock edge, I tried to work out whether it would be safer for me to attempt to climb back up the cliff or jump down into the water. I really needed to exhibit the same bravery as the fairies. They leapt from great heights into the water below without a care in the world.
My sister S’s bedroom had always been a terrible mess, but I had no idea that it was now so dirty that trees had started growing in the soil. Before long the room would be transformed into a forest.
TPR and I really needed to get our act together. First, we should carry our mobile phones at all times. This would have saved us the trauma of losing one another in France. Then TPR had to cut down on his extra-curricular activities if we were to present ourselves as a model couple to the journalist.
We discussed our plans while lying on the lawn looking up at our new house: a 1930 sandstone semi decorated with gargoyles.
Everyone was there, including TPR, JM, DT, KJ, NP and SF. JLW arrived a little later with a present for me: some fun photos of the pair of us that she had purchased from a Blipfoto booth.
At first it seemed that we would just spend the evening sitting around and chatting. This suited me because I was only wearing a very thin silk nightie and was worried that it would become immodest if I moved about the room. Then someone reached over for a box on a shelf behind him.
“Here is the brain” he announced. “Please find a partner”.
I soon realised that “the brain” in question was not a body part, but a board game. I was desperately disappointed that JM was sitting at the other side of the room – too far away for me to pair up with him. I would just have to take my chances with the stranger sitting next to me.
Upstairs at the White House in my sister S’s room, the cocker spaniel puppy would not let go of my hand. His alligator teeth were well and truly clamped into my skin. I really had to shake him off before he did any damage.
Then I struck on an idea. What if I just ignored him? I stopped paying him and attention and within seconds C decided that I wasn’t worth bothering with after all.
I was now free to make a visit to the upstairs lavatory unaccompanied by a dog.
I was both amazed and appalled to discover an office full of colleagues on campus working at 02:00 in the morning.
One was just about to pack up and go home to his wife and children, but would only manage a maximum of three hours of sleep before being obliged to return for another full day of teaching.
The research students seem the happiest members of the group. They were gathered around JS chatting in an animated fashion about their studies.
DT and KJ came to visit our new flat on the top floor of an old house built into the hills. KJ was not convinced that it was an improvement on our old place. I argued that it was. This was on the basis that the kitchen was so huge that you could hang all the bed sheets to dry on a line indoors.
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.
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.
Dreamaticus 