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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To Luskentyre by black bull (Rousse)

Posted on March 19, 2014 by Dreamaticus

It was a Sunday and I needed to reach Luskentyre. I travelled most of the way on the back of a black bull, only jumping off when the creature transformed into a roaring bear.

When I arrived at the edge of the bay I saw a woman plunge into the sea fully-clothed. She paddled waist-deep in the direction of my destination. I shouted after her that it would be easier to travel by road. She replied that it was closed.

I should have known this: I’d witnessed JK and EH set off to a meeting at our Luskentyre campus by canoe that very morning.

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From the Internet of Things to the University of Things (Rousse)

Posted on March 19, 2014 by Dreamaticus

Back at Cranage Hall in Holmes Chapel, SL and I were plotting.

“How about a project on the University of things?” I suggested.

He loved the idea. All we needed to do now was recruit some team members. This proved difficult in the empty meeting room. All the other space seemed to be taken up by school children and our own peers appeared to have gone home early.

I headed up stairs to my own room (22) at the top floor of the Hall in the servants’ quarters. It was in chaos because the staff had already tried to check me out.

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Shopping for Morrissey records with Piers Brosnan (Belle)

Posted on March 18, 2014 by Dreamaticus

Living in post-apocalyptic Birmingham wasn’t as bad as it sounds. The most noticeable difference was an apparent lack of DIY skills in the general population. Windows and walls remained broken across the city. I travelled the streets in an American police car with Piers Brosnan and was quite cross that my passenger window had been replaced with cardboard.

Later I joined a queue to buy the latest 10-inch single by Morrissey but was nearly thrown out of the record shop for not wearing shoes. I was amazed at how quickly the lie came out of my mouth – “My only shoes were damaged in a flood”. In fact I just wanted to stare at my newly painted toenails.

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A flying cat, a red-haired witch, and an all-inclusive school reunion in Stockton-on-Tees (Rousse)

Posted on March 17, 2014 by Dreamaticus

A flying cat screeched as it swooped over us, the tips of its ears glowing fluorescent green in the darkening sky at dusk. It landed high above us in the canopy of the bare winter trees, only just visible as a silhouette.

We wondered whether it was a witch’s cat. When a huge semi-naked red-haired woman brandishing a stick next flew past, our suspicions seemed to be confirmed. She landed on the ground, and called my name. When I stepped forward she set about beating me with her stick. I begged her to stop. “Not until you work out who I am!” she shouted back at me.

Eventually I realised that this was my school friend JB, and that she had flown in the for the school reunion at the pub in Stockton-on-Tees. The reunion was now a weekly event and with every Saturday the participant numbers grew and grew. Former pupils came from all the schools that I had ever attended with the result that there was a real mix of people in attendance. I astonished others with my encylopaedic knowledge of the details of our 1970s childhood, and my detailed responses to the question as to why I had spent so much of life in education.

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From Northumberland to Pitlochry in a gangster’s Mercedes (Rousse)

Posted on March 16, 2014 by Dreamaticus

TPR and I lived in a lovely stone house in Northumberland. It had six bedrooms (two downstairs) and four bathrooms.

On the day that I realised that I had forgotten to reserve a table for dinner I volunteered to walk all the way to Pitlochry to do so. I took a very dangerous short cut when I flagged down a vehicle in the hope that I would be offered a lift. The occupants of the black Mercedes were East European gangsters. They slowed down and I happily hopped into their car. Immediately I realised my mistake. What if they never released me?

They did, in fact, let me go, although they made me jump from the car while it was still moving. Now in Pitlochry I marvelled at the fashion sense of its elderly inhabitants. One in particular drew my attention: a white-haired old lady in a white hotpants and high heels combination that really was not appropriate on anyone other than a skinny teenage girl.

I also bumped into JS on the street, even though she had done her best to disguise herself under a heavy coat, woolly hat, and sunglasses. She told me that she would pop over later to deliver my birthday card.

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A charmed life working for Gary Lineker and sleeping with Hugh Grant (Rousse)

Posted on March 16, 2014 by Dreamaticus

Gary Lineker (my boss) supervised our stand at the Online Conference, held this year in the University of Edinburgh’s student union building. Gary wasn’t entirely sure how to find the best position to promote our services, but he wasn’t doing too badly. I was impressed that he’d already managed to sell every place on KB’s Google course.

Personally I wasn’t offering any training so I wandered off to see if I could find my boyfriend Hugh Grant on the Thomson stand. (Whether or not I could really call Hugh my boyfriend was debatable. We’d slept together four or five times – did that count?)

I became distracted when I noticed a set of sales staff near a staircase arguing over a half empty box of ethernet cables. It sounded like one of their competitors had been stealing their stock to network all the schools in Scotland. I sat down beside them and helped count the remaining cables. Then we plotted all the telecomms masts in Scotland on a map. I was both pleased and proud to be able to show off my expert knowledge of the mobile hot spots of Sutherland and the Outer Hebrides.

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