A lecture, a disco, and a swim (Rousse)

I lost my place in my notes, then found it again but couldn’t make sense of them. Added to my woes, the few students who had bothered to turn up to my last ever lecture clearly did not appreciate my pathetic jokes.

They only cheered up when I offered to type everything up in a Word document and email it to them later. My suggestion that we clear the desks for an end of term disco afterwards was also very popular.

Later I played in the on-campus leisure pool, taking it in turns with my Finnish friend GW to slide down the chute. Then, in the shallow end, I listened intently to a school friend as she poured her heart out over her recent cancer diagnosis.

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Fish hypnotism (Belle)

As I was being introduced to a stranger, my friend stage-whispered:

“She participated in the International Catfish Hypnotism Championships last week”.

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Redesigning tulips (Belle)

It had been my lifelong ambition to improve tulips. I had always felt that they could ‘do better’.

After many years, I demonstrated my invention – a velcro-fastened sheath that slipped over the flower and looked just like a tulip. As I saw my friend L trying not to laugh, I realised this initiative had been a complete waste of my time.

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A basement theatre and mini garaging (Rousse)

When our neighbours invited us to a performance in their basement theatre, it struck me that we could hire the three rooms at Christmas as an amazing venue for our annual party.

I also wondered what use we could make of the ground floor flats further along the crescent, currently used as garaging for brand new minis.

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Purveying French furniture along the streets of Paris (Rousse)

On my first visit to Paris in years, I helped AM and her sister C push an old sofa on its castors from Avenue des Gobelins to Place de la Concorde.

Now that all the members of my host family spoke excellent English, it didn’t matter one jot that my French was appalling

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A safe place for a snog (Rousse)

With builders in the house, we had no privacy. The tiger roaming the rooms added to the difficulty of finding a safe space for a snog.

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AI labels photographs (Rousse)

We were excited to see that the AI had managed to label the photograph of our group.

Rather than actual names, however, under the image of each person were a couple of words to represent their character.

I thought it hysterical that one woman was described as ‘Pass the Varenne’.

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Stitching scarves and a super-rich stranger (Rousse)

I took advantage of the stately home’s in-house sewing team and handed over my enormous scarf with the request that it be cut down to a manageable size.

When I came to the end of the self-guided tour of the house, I realised that I had handed over not my red white and blue Union flag scarf as intended, but the red and yellow royal banner of the royal arms of Scotland. I needed to retrace my steps and fix my mistake.

I turned to the very beautiful, tall Chinese young man next to me with whom I had shared a few words earlier and asked if he would like to accompany me to the alterations department. He hesitated as if he wanted to say yes, but ultimately turned down the invitation because his helicopter was waiting on the lawn to take him home.

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Poor police response times in Edinburgh (Rousse)

‘All our agents are currently busy and unavailable. If you would like to hold to speak to our emergency response team, please wait and we will connect you as soon as possible’.

This was not what I expected to hear when I dialled 999. I needed the police to attend to a burglary that was playing out in real time in front of my very eyes on Edinburgh’s Annandale Street.

The burglars had broken entry into a secure underground car park, forced their way into a locked white Morgan, then attempted to hotwire the car. A young witness to the crime-in-action also on the street with me, ran into the car park in the hope of chasing the criminals away. They responded by giving him a beating.

If the police didn’t answer soon, as well as the burglary, there would be a murder to report.

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Escapees from the Gaelic choir discover a ‘horny’ Victorian (Rousse)

VJ and I made our escape from the Gaelic concert at Edinburgh airport and ran along the cycle path in the direction of Duddingston Loch.

To make the race fairer, I agreed not to use my arms. This soon gave VJ a significant lead. Watching her from behind, I admired the ‘mountain goat’ techniques that she deployed along the route when scaling obstacles such as waterfalls.

I finally caught up with VJ beside the main road in Joppa. I showed her the discarded Victorian gravestone that I had picked up and carried most of the way.

‘I’ll have that!’ V shouted as she made a grab for it.

She thought my bounty ideal as an item to display in her AirBnB accommodation. The guests were bound to appreciate two particular words applied to the person memorialised in the carved stone: ‘too horny’.

Meanwhile I worried about the fate of my iPhone. I’d left it at the airport with a former student who had recognised me in the crowd. I didn’t know his name, and he didn’t know my address. The last that I saw of him was in the departure lounge just as the Gaelic choir was setting up. There was an outside chance that the choir leader (VJ’s friend M) might have spotted him. However, realistically, I had probably lost my iPhone forever.

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