Cool accommodation in Edinburgh (Rousse)

Posted on October 18, 2013 by Dreamaticus

Our student accommodation was the best in Edinburgh. SL, ED and I shared a cool open-plan penthouse of pale wood and glass, with its own eight-person indoor jacuzzi bath. Everyone wanted to come and stay with us, including TPR and AC (an Irish girl who I knew from external work events on research methods).

This was in complete contrast with the student union building up the road. In freshers’ week I experienced the filthy state of the toilets, at the cost of 20p per visit. Fortunately I was not obliged to spend long there and instead enjoyed watching Fringe shows on the big screen in a narrow corridor while TPR peered into a maths lecture.

We would have also attended a seminar at the Royal Society off the Strand, but we couldn’t reach London in time.

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Meeting mix-up means Rousse misses Belle (Rousse)

Posted on October 16, 2013 by Dreamaticus

I had two competing commitments on Friday morning and I chose the wrong one! Whatever would Belle think of me, especially since she had travelled all this way so that we could spend some time together?

The only compensation of my meeting mix-up was that I saw ED and was able to wish her a happy birthday in person.

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Bodies on Birmingham’s Bristol Road South (Rousse)

Posted on October 16, 2013 by Dreamaticus

TPR and I lay naked on the tarmac on the Bristol Road South next to the pedestrian crossing. I was freezing. Many of the cars that passed slowed down to look at us, yet nobody offered to pick us up and take us somewhere warm.

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Tricky theatre seating (Rousse)

Posted on October 15, 2013 by Dreamaticus

This was not the easiest way to reach a theatre seat. You really needed to be very precise about your row and seat number when you were dropped in from above. I kept my fingers firmly crossed as I focussed on my target of E5.

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An encounter with the monochrome set (Rousse)

Posted on October 14, 2013 by Dreamaticus

Unused to running late, I was full of apologies when we finally pulled up the gravel drive of the White House in Hartburn. The cyclist was waiting, leaning against the dining room window with his white bike. I learnt later that the woman beside him was his wife.

They both approached us, followed by a small group of people that I half-recognised. It wasn’t obvious until we came face-to-face that their bodies and clothes held no colour. It was as if they had stepped out of an old black and white film into our coloured world. When they started introducing themselves as members of Blipfoto I understood: their lack of colour matched the livery of the Blipfoto web site. They all seemed pretty friendly, but when they all started to sing I had to make my escape back to Edinburgh.

I struggled up Leith Walk. I couldn’t understand why the street was littered with mattresses, nor why I could not see. Had they just forgotten to switch the street lights on, or had I gone blind? And where was TPR?

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An embarrassing toilet tale (Rousse)

Posted on October 13, 2013 by Dreamaticus

We drove west for miles, the entire family squashed into a tiny black car, to Dumfries and Galloway. At our final destination I inspected the bathroom facilities. Whoever thought it sensible to install the toilet in the open conservatory next to the dining room was wrong (even if the green and white fern-patterned lid was pretty). It was highly embarrassing to make a visit there in full view of everyone else, both indoors and out.

What I did enjoy, however, was bumping into my Auntie L (in reality my second cousin one removed) and one of her daughters (my third cousin) with my parents in a car park en route.

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Commune cycle reunion of sorts (Rousse)

Posted on October 11, 2013 by Dreamaticus

I can’t say that it was the most comfortable of nights, but the setting for sleep in the open was beautiful, right next to a beautiful Scottish salmon river. TPR and I would have been better off lying down on the river bank, rather than sitting upright at a picnic table. However, it would have been more advisable to have slept in our hotel room, just a few paces away (despite the problem with the plumbing).

The following day we joined NY and AH for a cycle ride in the hills. I found it very difficult to manage to the tandem on my own, and wondered why TPR had grabbed a solo bike.

Afterwards we found SY (but not CS) and one of the Y sisters, plus assorted friends, all seated at a big round table.

Across the room I saw ECM sullen and dressed in layers and layers of black, so I called her over. She chatted with JMH for a while, then lay flat on the ground. A woman who claimed that she was ECM’s mother (she was not) explained that “her daughter” had never been the same since she took the job in Sudan.

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A miracle escape in Sunderland (Rousse)

Posted on October 10, 2013 by Dreamaticus

I decided to give the meeting in London a miss and instead caught the train to Sunderland. There I visited my university friend SL and her young, and extremely irresponsible, husband.

While S and I played in the snow along the seafront a huge articulated lorry skidded across the carriageway. I leapt from my blue plastic sledge just in time to see it crushed beneath the lorry’s front wheels.

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Rate my professor: Rousse is doing fine

Posted on October 10, 2013 by Dreamaticus

I knew that I should never have mentioned the test: just 6 students turned up for my Thursday morning Knowledge Management class. Determined to hunt the rest of them down, I prowled the corridors. Perhaps they were with JB?

If the students were on campus, they were well-hidden. The only evidence of them that I could find in any of the other classrooms was a dog-eared copy of the student association’s magazine. My eyes were drawn to a “Rate my professor” type column in which I had been profiled. Apparently I wasn’t doing too badly in my job.

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A coping strategy for the strangely blind (Rousse)

Posted on October 6, 2013 by Dreamaticus

I suffered from an extremely rare form of blindness. Although I still had my sight, what I saw was completely different from what everyone else could see. I did all I could to disguise my disability by listening very carefully to what was going on around me.

On the morning of my fiftieth birthday my sisters-in-law led me outside to see my presents. I knew from memory that I was staring out onto a suburban street in the East Midlands. However all I could see was a beautiful sunset over the hills of South Harris.

I heard the engine of a high performance car, and concluded that TPR and my brother-in-law R were test-driving one of my birthday surprises. It sounded like a sleek black Porsche 911.

From further in the distance I could hear a blast of pop music and the excited shrieks of my nephew and nieces. I guessed that they were playing some kind of dance pad game in a neighbour’s garden.

I chatted excitedly to the others about what I could “see”. So far so good – but for how much longer could I keep up my pretence of vision?

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