Even though I had requested a quiet 60th birthday, TPR ignored me. He engaged KW to round up all the graduates, and KA to make me a pop-up fruit cake – 10 years ahead of schedule.
Meanwhile I spotted X going into a toilet cubicle at the gym. I had no idea what to do with myself when she tried to strike up a conversation with me.
I was impatient to join the others at the Oxford University reunion. Meanwhile my friend P was hesitating. I was keen to get through the door and track down any single men. P wanted to wait a while to see if her 80 year-old mother would turn up.
When it became obvious that P’s mother would not be joining us, we walked gingerly over the cobbles and down to the hall. It was hard work to stay upright in our ludicrous black satin high-heeled shoes. Once through the door we found that the others were not as welcoming as we had hoped. I concluded that this was poor hunting ground for a new husband: all the single men here were gay.
On my way home again I met a German woman in the street. She told me that she was interested in making new friends. I took her to the shop where the German hippies sold imported goods from India, and promised to introduce her to my friend WB later.
I was furious with the decorator. First, he splattered my brown winter cashmere coat with paint. Second, he was already half-way along the windows of our Georgian flat before he confessed that he was painting them pink.
I couldn’t work out how I would get to my office across the flooded swamp of campus. The assistant dean appeared to be leading us one way, but just behind us his younger self (plus wife and three children) was issuing a different set of directions. How extraordinary that my colleague’s powers included time travel!
Perhaps it would just be more profitable to play in the abandoned blue truck, or sit through the West End musical that we could hear blasting out from the theatre across the street?
I had been whisked off to a beautiful hotel by my ex boyfriend G, a former professional footballer. However, it was now Saturday afternoon and I hadn’t actually seen him since we checked in 24 hours previously.
I sought assistance from the housekeeper who helped me locate him in the cleaning cupboard just behind the supermarket tills. He had decided that being cramped in the cupboard with his work was much more interesting than spending time with me. He had also transformed into Rupert Everett.
I was justifiably livid. “Why did you not tell me you were the UK’s leading homosexual?” I shouted.
I enjoyed watching the workmen dig the trenches across the Leicestershire field as they prepared the ground for a new motorway. They invited me to jump down into a small pit where they had piled up interesting objects discovered during the excavations.
Most of the debris comprised pre-decimal coins from the twentieth century. However, I also recognised some Roman currency, and several heart-shaped silver coins stamped with the word “Prague” or “Antigua”.
When I asked what the workmen what they planned to do with all this treasure, they replied “We always give our finds away to the tinkers who live in the hills”.
JG astonished all when she admitted at the university reunion that her big career move in the past ten years was to offer up her body as a surrogate mother. She reported no psychological damage from giving up the baby that she carried for nine months, and that her husband G gave her his full support.
TPR announced that we were setting up a cat stud. We would start with four golden-striped Russian tabbies.
Back from our holiday, TPR resumed his cruelty towards me. I couldn’t work out why he had attached an electrical cord to me, nor why his university pals were now pulling on it, but I was determined to escape from whatever his evil plot comprised.
I broke free and ran down to the shore. The sea was just too tempting. Although I was drunk, fully-dressed and knew that this was madness, I leapt into the waves. This was where I really belonged: playing on the beaches of the Outer Hebrides.
Dreamaticus 