A crummy night’s sleep (Rousse)

Posted on March 28, 2014 by Dreamaticus

I spent an uncomfortable night amongst chocolate brownie crumbs trying to sleep on an airport departure lounge seat.

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Preparations for a stag party in Dublin (Rousse)

Posted on March 27, 2014 by Dreamaticus

Dublin - by Brendan MacNeill

Dublin – by Brendan MacNeill

I was honoured to have been invited to JG’s stag party in Dublin, along with KA (how did she know JG?), and AG. I congratulated the latter on her weight loss and enduring beauty.

I had to tidy my office before I set off. It was a strange day at work because the admin staff were on strike. However, rather than picket the campus, they were all forced to sit at their desks in the school office and stared into space all day. I offered KT a book to read, and she was tempted to borrow it, but this was against the rules.

University pals GW and HP (still teenagers) helped me clear up the mess of my room. By the time we finished we had hung new (to me) heavy pale blue curtains (donated by VJ) in the window, and made up two beds – a single and a double – to match. In the course of our work I found numerous souvenirs of former students, including several pairs of tiny dark metal ear-rings from Africa. I was going to throw them out, but instead packed them up for KA in case she wanted to wear them to JG’s stag party.

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Return to the staff room (Rousse)

Posted on March 25, 2014 by Dreamaticus

Since we’d all been brought together in one big open-plan office I was much happier at work. I particularly enjoyed working more closely with the PhD students. Best of all, PC identified a small area that would become a staff room for us all. This is something that we had been begging for for years.

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Floating flood victims ruin summer idyll (Rousse)

Posted on March 25, 2014 by Dreamaticus

HJ was the first to wander over to the window and look out to the river below. It was a beautiful June day and the water glinting back at us in the sunshine looked very inviting – until we spotted the rotting corpses drifting downstream, victims of the recent floods.

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The perfect Scottish coastal retreat (Rousse)

Posted on March 24, 2014 by Dreamaticus

J and J moved from Benderloch to the far north of Scotland. They had such fabulous open views of the sea from their new house that it was now my ambition to live there too.

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Dog holiday care sorted (Rousse)

Posted on March 24, 2014 by Dreamaticus

I was very surprised to discover that TPR had two dogs. One was an Alsatian and the other a smaller Alsatian collie cross. I wondered out loud who would look after them when we went away on holiday.

“The neighbours, of course” answered TPR.

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Northumbria University’s funfair recruitment drive, and two naughty sisters (Rousse)

Posted on March 22, 2014 by Dreamaticus

When my sister heard that I had a meeting in Newcastle she said that she would like to see me afterwards.

Northumbria University had changed considerably since my last visit. In an apparent effort to recruit more students, the campus was decked out like a funfair. Even the nearby Metro station was decorated in the same fashion. The old and unemployed looked rather bewildered and out of place as they passed beneath the garish displays.

The meeting with my sister did not go well. She wrecked a black Range Rover by driving it straight through a bollarded back alley in Jesmond. Then she did a runner from a crumbly hotel.

When I complained to my mother about my sister’s behaviour she replied that she thought that it was about time that I asked my work to pay my business expenses. I should stop relying on the generosity of friends and family to provide the finance to support my external university commitments.

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Preparations for a run in outer space (Rousse)

Posted on March 21, 2014 by Dreamaticus

AM and I arranged to go out for a run together in outer space. We first needed to catch the space elevator to reach the starting point of the route. We piled in with some other runners and waited for the lift to spring into action.

When nothing happened I was nominated to press the buttons. I had no idea what to do, so AM stepped in, suggesting that the lift probably operated like those on campus at her university. She was right. As soon as she had punched in the numbers the lift headed skywards and we soon arrived at our destination.

We had just disembarked when my Canadian friend BD appeared out of nowhere and stapled a credit card sized rectangle of plastic to my cheek.

“There you are, all set” he announced proudly.

“When will it come off?” I asked.

“Never”, he replied, “It’s permanent”.

AM and I had never expected that our day would turn out like this when we had been merrily eating doughnuts and discussing our husbands in a café first thing that very same morning.

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Electricity theft in Edinburgh (Rousse)

Posted on March 20, 2014 by Dreamaticus

The residents of Edinburgh’s Annandale Street would not be pleased when they discovered that I’d been charging my iPhone, iPad and MacBook Air from the power sockets under their lawns.

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When roux sauce goes wrong (Rousse)

Posted on March 19, 2014 by Dreamaticus

I knew that he should have kept his mouth shout. Instead, he opened up the invitation to dinner at his house to everyone at the meeting.

“My wife won’t mind”, he boasted.

Indeed she did mind – very much. She had prepared a posh dinner for eight around a circular table, and not an informal supper for twelve.

I volunteered to help out by making a carrot layer cake in her Aga. Unfortunately it all went terribly wrong when I grated cheese instead of butter into the roux sauce.

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