DMcN didn’t pursue a career as a dentist, but instead joined the civil service. We caught sight of her dressed in a tailored black suit, coming out of a meeting carrying a dossier of government papers.
She stopped dead in her tracks on recognising old friends from her undergraduate days. We all stepped forward for a group hug and tears.
Then, resuming her professional stance, the top civil servant brushed herself down and set off on her mission again to deliver her clutch of precious documents.
A woman opened the shed door, pulled out my bike, and rode away on it.
TPR explained that he had given it away to her because I hadn’t been using it.
‘That’s because it is winter’, I responded, doing all I could to hide my distress.
I lost TPR and LF in the maze of a Paris RER station on our way back to the main venue of the incentive holiday. When they boarded the train heading in the right direction, I went the opposite way.
Since TPR was carrying all our valuables – train tickets, bank cards, phones, and cash – I had to rely on my wits to find a way back to our hotel. I made my way to the ticket office at the next station and cornered a member of staff. Then, with supreme effort, I managed to dredge up enough French to plead for help.
The station official was delighted with my archaic, extremely polite, and (surprisingly) grammatically accurate request – so much so that she made it her personal responsibility to guide me all the way back to the Hilton hotel at no charge.
En route we ran into a bunch of my friends. I must have offended them because DTJ ignored me, SC did not pick up on my compliments on her beautiful teeth and new slim frame, and LB chose to sleep between the train lines rather than engage in conversation with me.
My friend invited me round to see her latest pets: two golden brown bunnies.
They were so soft to touch, and didn’t seem to mind being petted. I was surprised to feel such tiny bodies under the mass of fur.
TPR couldn’t wait for the delivery of his computer part so he flew to Washington and back in a single day.
This seemed rather excessive to me, especially since the value of the part was only £3.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Dreamaticus 