Although it looked like a simple cheese grater, I had in fact invented the ‘Time Twizzler’. I wasn’t sure what it did, but I knew that my life would be tranformed.
Later – and much to my horror – I discovered that my two secret boyfriends (one of whom was Russell Tovey) had become firm friends and were now seeing each other behind my back.
From the bus stop on York Place I travelled just two stops. Nearing my destination, the grumpy bus driver scraped the vehicle down an incredibly narrow street and pulled up next to the main of St James Centre. Here I was to join my sister-in-law SM and her friends for her hen party in Uptons’ department store. My mother also promised to come along.
We were barely through the doors when a small, dumpy wedding guest reached over to a rail of cornflower blue taffeta dresses, rapidly chose one, then raced straight to the till to pay for it without even trying it on. I realised that I would have to act fast if I were to get my first choice of outfit on this shopping expedition for the wedding day.
We ended up taking a break in the shop’s café. I was anxious that my mother had not yet turned up. I checked my phone every couple of minutes to see if she had made contact, and tried her number a few times, but she was nowhere to be found.
Meanwhile as I admired another shopper’s green satin shoes, one of the other hen party members attempted to persuade my god-daughter that she would enjoy a long coastal walk. The latter was unconvinced.
SC took TPR by the hand and positioned him in the middle of the room. She whispered a couple of words in his ear, and within seconds his body started to lift into the air. How generous of SC to teach my husband how to levitate.
Virgin Money scored an enormous coup with its advertising campaign for the Edinburgh International Festival Fireworks concert. Nobody could work out how it was done, but at about 08:00am on the morning of the concert itself the skies over Edinburgh suddenly darkened. A live 30-second trailer of the evening’s festivities then burst into view from above, complete with a shower of fireworks over the castle.
All attempts to capture this display on camera failed and – without any documentary evidence – many of those who missed it refused to believe that anything out of the ordinary had happened.
I later discovered that some of the “magic” from the ad campaign had leaked out into the streets. The mainly residential Claremont Crescent now offered an international chain hotel at number 20, and a huge Pizza Express at number 21. When I asked my god-daughter what was going on (she was swinging on the railings outside number 22), she suggested that I photograph the scene.
In a single snapshot everything was back to normal. This was a great relief: I could now put my black cow and the calf back out to graze in the crescent garden.
JW led me up the secret spiral staircase to the famous hilltop where all the great and good were gathered. I’d known of the existence of this exclusive sunbathing spot for some time, but because I had never been invited there before, I had never been able to find it by myself.
For a venue labelled “exclusive” it was somewhat crowded, and I wondered how my school friend AH had wangled her way into the party.
Of course it was no surprise that NP was there! She was busy negotiating a place on a mountaineering trip with a beautiful dark-haired man in his mid-twenties. She generously suggested that I might like to join the expedition too. In response the young man looked me up and down and announced that the trip would be too strenuous for the likes of me.
He was right. Even now I was wondering just how I was going to pick a way back down the steep hill after the party.
Although he had already graduated, PN was keen to come along to my Knowledge Management revision classes again. A man in a wheelchair accompanied him.
Of course I wasn’t surprised when their initial enthusiasm wore off after a couple of hours and they both realised that they were no longer interested in preparing for an exam that they were not required to take.
My university friend HP backed his black Land Rover into our cellar. How he managed to get the vehicle down our steps, I had no idea. I would have to interview the witnesses to the accident: my friends DT and JW, and the man caught smoking beside our kitchen bin earlier in the evening.
My elderly neighbour Mrs Frazier was dying of a deadly disease, and for this reason I was helping her with her walled garden. I half expected that she would leave it to me, along with her tiny mews house. I didn’t know whether I would maintain her rule that any visitors who wished to enter the house should don a blue scarf.
After an afternoon of weeding I got stuck on the top of a tall plinth just outside the garden wall. From high above I watched a troupe of French Canadian Fringe performers accost people in the street in an attempt to persuade them to come along to their show. When I shouted down to them “Go home! The Fringe is over!” they threw a flock of “magic birds” at me. From here, of course, I could tell that the birds weren’t magic at all. They were tiny jointed plastic models attached at regular intervals along a clear plastic fishing line.
By now I was fed up of sitting on the plinth. I hoped that someone with a crane would come and lift me down. In the end it was a very tall person who rescued me. Dressed in a green tweed suit, he introduced himself as “Grandpa”. He reminded me of someone very dear to my heart.
Following an afternoon of driving around aimlessly and missing meetings, BB, TPR and I ended up in a traditional tea room. Here I ordered a pot of Earl Grey and a bottle of Opium perfume. I hoped that nobody noticed that I was wearing a bright red patterned onesie. The look on the proprietor’s face as we walked into the place, however, gave the impression that she has spotted it.
Unwilling to admit I was attending the ball alone, I told people I was with the footballing twins, ‘Marcel’ and Didier Deschamps.
Dreamaticus 