Bob Mortimer and a goth girl threesome (Rousse)

Posted on April 21, 2024 by Dreamaticus

I spotted Bob Mortimer in the huge audience at another comedian’s anniversary retrospective. At the start of the performance he sat in his seat just like everyone else. However, after a few minutes I noticed that he was running from row to row passing a Polaroid camera from one audience member to the next. It looked like he was asking all in the theatre to photograph themselves, perhaps to make a souvenir photo album for the star of the show?

I became more and more anxious as Mortimer worked his way to where I was sitting. This was because TPR had absented himself for a trip to the lavatory and a goth girl had landed in his seat.

In the event I needn’t have worried. TPR made it back in time and we snapped a great threesome selfie with the goth.

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The Canterbury Tales and careers training (Rousse)

Posted on April 21, 2024 by Dreamaticus

We drove to Paisley, looking forward to the careers training session. We were especially pleased that JM had managed to secure a place after someone else had cancelled theirs.

The venue was a great disappointment. It was a shabby wood panelled room above a pub. It also soon became obvious that the level at which the training was to be delivered was far beneath our own expertise. We really wanted to leave, but stayed out of a sense of guilt and embarrassment.

Bored with the course content, I started to play with my phone. When the lecturer spotted this, she made a bizarre prediction:

‘You’ll never win first prize in the Canterbury Tales‘.

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Moth escape (Rousse)

Posted on April 15, 2024 by Dreamaticus

TPR and I were halfway across town when we realised that we had abandoned our elderly charge at home without leaving details of our whereabouts. We made an about turn and rushed back to the house, praying that she had not missed us.

When we walked through the front door, I took off my coat – and in doing so released hundreds of moths into the hall.

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Traitors, faithfuls, and the University of Birmingham Ballroom Dancing Society (Rousse)

Posted on April 12, 2024 by Dreamaticus

Playing a traitor was not as easy as it looked, especially when the other two insisted on tailing me as I wandered around the building. We spent so much time apart from the others that when I asked a prominent faithful if she would like to join forces to share notes, she refused.

Instead I was forced to watch old friends work their way through an ancient ledger of the University of Birmingham Ballroom Dancing Society, hunting for their names in attendance lists from the early 1980s. Such records, if found, would supposedly prove that they were faithful.

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Grand designs in south west Birmingham (Rousse)

Posted on April 11, 2024 by Dreamaticus

The suburb of Northfield in Birmingham had smartened up considerably since the late 1980s. The tumbledown garages behind our old street had been demolished and replaced with a row of neat new houses.

Our old house had been vastly extended at the expense of garden space at the front and back. This allowed for the addition of some astonishing new features including a Georgian portico at the front door, and granite statues and gargoyles attached to all the street-facing walls. The house was so huge inside that the most efficient means of getting from one room to the other was by bike.

On the day that we arrived there, RG was hosting a Champagne party, with my old boss SS nominally in charge of proceedings.

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Developing a small business research strategy (Rousse)

Posted on April 10, 2024 by Dreamaticus

Belle was  in disgrace.

While I had been advising DC and his colleagues that UK research council documentation could serve as the starting point for the development of a government mandated small business research strategy, Belle had sloped off to go drinking with JB and SH.

I shook my multi-braided head* in fear for the future of her career.

*Plaits designed and implemented by primary school bully MD.

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A bedroom farce (Rousse)

Posted on April 5, 2024 by Dreamaticus

It was like the plot of a farce.

My new friend and I bonded on a tropical beach while watching the enormous sun double dip into the sea beneath the far horizon. Then we went back to her room.

She didn’t know that her weedy husband had planned to surprise her at the hotel that night, so the knock on the door was unexpected. As it turned out, this was not her husband after all, but a member of hotel staff.

Not long afterwards another man came to the door. This time it was my old boss JK. He was clearly a little perturbed to find me in this woman’s bedroom, but hid his concern as best he could.

Finally the husband arrived. By this time his wife was in the shower and I was sitting on the bed, chatting with JK.

Everyone was terribly confused, and the husband somewhat annoyed to find his wife taking a shower in a hotel bedroom with a ‘couple of strangers’.

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The drunkard at the swimming pool (Rousse)

Posted on April 3, 2024 by Dreamaticus

I was now so friendly with the lifeguards at the gym that I would often pop in and out of their staff room for a chat.

One day when I left the staff room to return to the swimming pool, I noticed a small hand-written note taped to the back of the door. It read ‘Keep an eye on Rousse. She consumed five spring drinks before coming to swim’.

It was dated the day after my birthday, and the details corresponded with my celebrations of that day. Even so, I was embarrassed that the lifeguards would think that I needed special observation.

This could also be the reason that some of my friends, notably AC and AF, were leaving the pool without saying goodbye to me; they believed that I was a drunkard.

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Peril in a pram, a phony pellet of paper, and political editor Chris Mason (Rousse)

Posted on April 2, 2024 by Dreamaticus

From a distance we could see a baby’s head hanging loosely out of the back of its pram. Its mother, who was pushing the pram along the edge of the dual carriageway, obviously mistook our calls as friendly greetings when she responded with a cheery wave.

My friend was still doing all she could to repeat our warning that the child was about to tumble on to the road when I spotted our bus on the approach. I ran the last few metres to the bus stop and boarded the service, but my friend did not make it.

My mother was already on the bus, so I took the seat next to her. She told me that she was very excited to be heading for Haddington for the broadcast of Any questions, even though I pointed out to her that it looked like she was holding a forged audience ticket.

Unfortunately the BBC’s Chris Mason agreed with my assessment of the tiny scrunched up pellet of paper, and refused my mother entry at the door.

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The 70% driver (Rousse)

Posted on March 31, 2024 by Dreamaticus

They gave me the nickname 70% to recognise the quality of my driving: OK 70% of the time, dreadful for the other 30%.

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