When I gave away the silk cloak that came free in the cornflakes box to two colleagues in the school office, I never expected it to be the one that contained the diamond-studded solid gold hedgehog.
Now I faced a terrible dilemma. Did I insist that the prize was really mine (since I was the one who paid for the breakfast cereal), or let my colleagues sell the jewel and retire on the proceeds?
Driving from the back seat, TPR managed to spot a parking space not far from the market and other attractions. When we left the car and started to walk back towards town I noticed a sinister sign. Somewhere beneath us was the body of a missing 19 year old girl, presumed to have drowned in the bog, exactly 100 years earlier in 1914.
I knew that my boss wouldn’t mind if I took a small tin of lip salve from the supply that she kept in her office drawer. I needed it for the forthcoming PhD studentship interviews, along with a glass of water for each candidate.
When I saw her later that day, my boss confirmed that I had done the right thing. Then she returned to her main preoccupation of switching form from “lady in a fluffy purple jumper” to “tiny, sleek, black cat”.
Meanwhile G recounted tales of a recent date. Doubts were raised regarding the gender and sexuality of the potential suitor on the grounds of strange lumps visible on the throat and chest.
We were late for our anniversary dinner at the upstairs restaurant on Commercial Street in Leith. I pulled on my pale blue cotton shift dress from Monsoon, and TPR dragged me out of the house. We were in such a rush that I had no time to put on any underwear, and neither of us wore shoes.
By the time we reached the corner of Leith Walk and Great Junction Street we were still running very late. Forgoing footwear had actually slowed us down rather than sped us up, and the soles of our feet were filthy and sore. This called for drastic action – so we stole an empty black cab for the remainder of the journey.
We dumped the car in a “permit holders only” spot on cobbles next to the Water of Leith, making sure that we wiped our fingerprints off the steering wheel and bodywork before sprinting the last few metres to the restaurant.
At first I thought we had the wrong place. The woman who greeted us at the door, dressed in the style of an American diner waitress, was handing out e-number laden candies. When I asked what had happened to the curries, she assured me that our table was ready upstairs – as were Denis and Saskia, waiting to serve us.
My fiftieth birthday celebration was a disaster. Everything was wrong:
If only JC had been there, then everything would have been so much better.
I was Anne of Green Gables and newly married to Gilbert Blythe. For now, however, I was serving as a nurse in World War I.
Somehow I had lost my ‘ward trolley’ and was forced to push a bulky office desk around the hospital.
Each day that I turned up on campus I discovered that I had a new office. The problem was that they kept packing up my belongings and dumping them in a new location without first removing those of the previous occupant. The fourth time that this happened I found that I had two televisions and several clumps of random electrical equipment to dispose of. KC and GMcC couldn’t wait to get their hands on it.
When I complained to X he gave me a master key for all the offices on campus. Then he climbed into bed with me for the rest of the afternoon. I didn’t mind at all, but he was not happy at all when the news of our secret tryst leaked out.
I slowed my run to match the pace of the man in white wellingtons walking towards the big house. There was something about his gait that gave away that his left leg was false. He told me that his disability caused him no bother at all. In fact he had walked most of the way around the world on his false leg, and now he was heading home.
It turned out that “home” was the big house. He invited me into the garden and I admired the view over towards the bay. The only blot on the landscape (to my mind at least) was the golf course between the house and the beach.
I’d always known him as “G”, but my acquaintance was now insisting that all call him “TheFarm”. This was on the basis that this was his pet name at home.
I thought that this would be really confusing given that his family actually lived on a farm. Nevertheless, I gave into to his wishes as we pored over a medieval map of Northumberland and calculated the proximity of our families’ houses.
Dreamaticus 