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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A blue-skinned lady (Rousse)

Posted on March 16, 2014 by Dreamaticus

I discovered an anatomically-challenged, over-tall, medical dummy of a blue skinned woman on the Meadows. Her foot was particularly interesting because it detached at the ankle.

Eventually a sculpture student from the Edinburgh College of Art claimed my find. I visited her tutor to confirm that this undergraduate had really produced this model in class.

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A bread and chocolate breakfast feast (Rousse)

Posted on March 15, 2014 by Dreamaticus

I woke up in a single bed in a luxurious Perth hotel. SC, in the bed to the left of me, was already awake and watching a BBC nature documentary on her iPad.

There came a knock on the door and in walked two butlers pushing a breakfast trolley laden with bread, Nutella, and Toblerone. My former colleague KM, my cousin S, and my parents followed them.

As I tucked into my dream breakfast KM initiated an ice-breaker game. This required the person who was “it” to run around the room and snog all the others in turn. My mother could not hide her disapproval of this nonsense.

Meanwhile my father picked up a copy of MacUser magazine and started to read it avidly. This was so out of character that KM felt obliged to photograph the scene on her iPad.

When, at last, everyone settled down for breakfast KM told us about internship in Canada in the mid-1990s, then moved on to the theme of teaching roles for librarians. This set SC’s husband off on a rant about undergraduate stats classes.

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An unauthorised accommodation offer (Rousse)

Posted on March 14, 2014 by Dreamaticus

I was heading for BIG TROUBLE. One of my students needed more drawer space in the office so I her a nice spot at the back of the room, then helped her move in without permission.

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A double performance by the Chinese acrobats (Rousse)

Posted on March 13, 2014 by Dreamaticus

The annual student celebration was more professional every year. I watch in awe as Chinese acrobats executed perfect back-flips while flying massive kites above. It was a pity that they could only stay for 15 minutes, but they had another gig at the Edinburgh Festival Theatre that night.

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