On a recent business trip I enjoyed the facilities of the best hotel in China. Each room boasted:
The latest iPad came with an integrated printer. CF demonstrated Apple’s latest amazing innovation at N and S’s house in Nine Mile Burn, Midlothian.
The server dropped the half-filled ice cream cone when the call came through. It was now snowing very heavily outside, and anyone who wanted to travel any further needed to get back into their vehicles immediately.
TPR and I rushed out of the service station along with everyone else. There wasn’t room for us in the coach, so we had no option but to track it in our own car. This plan worked reasonably well until the coach took an unexpected turning off the motorway into a petrol station and TPR failed to follow it.
We now had to face up to the prospect of spending Christmas lost on the motorways of Birmingham in a blizzard.
No wonder we never went to the cinema. How could the audience tolerate these compulsory political lectures before the screening of each film? We demanded a refund on our ticket price.
My former colleague’s husband took me to one side and revealed his secret:
“I’ve fallen in love with a religious woman in the village and we are moving in together”, he whispered.
“Does E know?” I enquired.
“No, but I will divorce her”, he replied.
I predicted months of supporting my friend, and helping her pursue her idiotic husband for every penny of his pension.
The cats attacked me from all sides. They climbed into my handbag and under my clothes. The most vicious one sunk its jaws into my left hand. All my attempts to shake it free were in vain. I was in agony.
My parents bought a huge Tudor mansion plus all its contents, including a priceless haul of antique oil paintings that lined the walls next to the massive oak staircase.
On the day that I visited, my cousin R was guarding the supply of Hebburn foam that he kept hidden behind the fireplace in an upstairs room. Meanwhile, below in the courtyard, my mother was leading some other visitors to the outdoor spa so that they could visit the pet dolphins.
The only way to lose weight was to take more exercise. My new regime was ambitious: to walk the mountain route from the south of Scotland to North Yorkshire on a regular basis.
I wasn’t the only one with this idea. One day I passed a small set of soaked school boys in their Edinburgh Academy uniforms following the same path over the hills.
I never actually managed to complete the entire route by foot. There was always someone who picked me up along the way. However, my final destination was always the same. This was Tom Robinson’s house at 12 West Green in the village of Stokesley.
The house had changed since my regular visits in the 1970s. Someone had built a bungalow in the front garden, and its beautiful Georgian frontage had been covered by a hideous modern stone design. However, inside the house the two staircases remained intact, and my friend K’s mother was still the best hostess to teenage girls on a sleepover.
Once again I had disappointed my boss with my lack of financial acumen.
Meanwhile I was advising another colleague to be very careful over the content of his e-mail correspondence, and a former colleague was despairing at the cheek of another who thought it appropriate to publish from his decade-old PhD thesis.
Dreamaticus 