An undesirable neighbour (Rousse)

Posted on February 19, 2013 by Dreamaticus

We moved back to Birmingham into a large Victorian house on a busy road.

Our new next door neighbour wore a long dark beard and kept his hair tied up in a black turban. He told us that he was Korean, and that he had inherited the crumbling house from his father. He didn’t know why his front garden was littered with potatoes, but I was welcome to gather them up for cooking any time. What a friendly chap!

Our impressions of our neighbour changed on the day that he gave us a guided tour of his premises. As he led us up through the house we were appalled to discover that each floor was filthier than the last. How could anyone live like this?

At the very top we emerged into the light onto a roof-top car park next to a wide canal filled with boats and cranes. In a small office our host explained that this was where he ran his car park space rental business, amongst “other things”. From the way that he dealt with my questioning – including a threatened physical attack – we were highly suspicious that these “other things” (including the potatoes) were not legal. What kind of neighbourhood had we joined?!

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Kate shops at Topshop (Rousse)

Posted on February 18, 2013 by Dreamaticus

Catherine Duchess of Cambridge crossed Princes Street from opposite the Balmoral Hotel and headed right towards Princes Mall.

“Catherine!” I called. She ignored me. I called again, and then she turned round. She looked so beautiful and elegant in a deep purple wrap dress. Goodness knows what she made of me in my purple fleece pyjamas, yet she walked over to find out what I wanted.

“I heard that you wanted to shop in Topshop”, I said. “You’re heading in the wrong direction. Topshop is a bit further down Princes Street on this side of the road.”

Catherine was clearly delighted with my advice and gave me three kisses as a thank you.

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A love affair in outer space (Rousse)

Posted on February 17, 2013 by Dreamaticus

I paid VJ a visit to find out if she wanted to travel up to work with me. I was also keen to know whether any of her colleagues could help me find some materials to prepare a tutorial. She wasn’t interested in either question. All she could talk about was her newly acquired box set of PC’s latest film, the plot of which focused on a love affair in outer space.

I had no idea that PC had a sideline in film-making, so when I saw him later that morning I quizzed him closely. He admitted that he had been making films for charitable purposes, mainly to support an unemployed bearded technician friend of his. He invited me to show my support too by wearing yellow a plastic band around my wrist. I could also buy some yellow tights, if I was interested – although I had to be careful because they were not colourfast and would bleed in the wash.

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But is it art? Ride the purple flume and admire a stick of celery at the Baltic (Rousse)

Posted on February 16, 2013 by Dreamaticus

I launched myself into the purple flume with no idea of what I would land in or on at the bottom. My eventual destination turned out to be an art exhibition at the Baltic curated by staff from Northumbria University.

As I slid the last few metres into the exhibition space a woman stepped forward and welcomed me by attaching a name badge to my top with a pale green glass-beaded pin. Although she knew who I was, I was clueless as to her identity, but I guessed that she might have something to do with the chairs laid out in lecture hall format in readiness for some presentation or other.

Then the star of the show arrived. The invited speaker was my pal RB, all the way from New York! The main prop for her talk was not her vast back catalogue of fine art photography, but a stick of celery.

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A gifted child (Rousse)

Posted on February 15, 2013 by Dreamaticus

TPR and I were very proud of our new baby. Just two days old, she was already crawling at speed on her six long black legs, chattering to herself. The latest additions to her vocabulary included four syllable abstract nouns, such as “experience”. She was so advanced for her age!

My only concern was that our child resembled an overgrown beetle. TPR assured me that this was normal. Next she would be a dog, and then eventually she’d transform into a “normal” human baby just like all the others.

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Congratulations to the one-legged widower father of the bride (Rousse)

Posted on February 15, 2013 by Dreamaticus

My one-legged widowed father had done a fabulous job preparing the house for my sister’s wedding.

With the help of a woman from the village, he’d set up three mini-dormitories so that all the guests who had decided to stay overnight had somewhere to lay their heads – even if it meant sharing a single bed, possibly with a stranger.

We both congratulated him on a splendid job.

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Questions of etiquette (Rousse)

Posted on February 14, 2013 by Dreamaticus

One friend accidentally copied in a second when he sent an e-mail reply to say that he couldn’t make it to my birthday party – so now she knew that she hadn’t been invited. How could I explain why not without hurting her feelings?

Then, because we’d all gone out running as a crowd, SEB had managed to wheedle her way into our flat when we all came back to the house for showers. She knew that she would not be welcome, so why hadn’t she taken evasive action?

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Nepotism in the workplace (Rousse)

Posted on February 14, 2013 by Dreamaticus

There were three new members of the senior management team: me, RG-J, and a tall tanned blonde rower. The latter, whose name was Karen, turned up to work in a bikini and sunbathed on the lawn outside while the rest of us were engaged in important tasks. I, for example, was busily sorting through my publications to display in front of the fireplace.

The more established members of staff included three grey-haired men (one of whom was clearly in awe of my 118 published papers) and an overweight woman.

Just as we were settling down for the meeting the office door burst open and a first year law student barged into the room with a shriek of “Mummy!” It was immediately obvious that she was hunting for the overweight woman. In a complete fury she levelled an insult at each of us. When it came to my turn she turned her rage to the monograph that I published in 1998.

The student’s mother was mortified. She grabbed her daughter and dragged her from the room screaming. Although it was a relief that she was gone, I knew that this student would continue to get away with this bad behaviour for as long as her mother held a senior management role.

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Selling timeshares in Spain with coconut cakes and coffee (Rousse)

Posted on February 12, 2013 by Dreamaticus

We knew that KMcM lived and worked in Spain, so it came as no surprise to find her in a hotel ballroom delivering a presentation on timeshares in a long shimmery black backless dress that showed off her tan. We hadn’t seen her since Birmingham University days, and although she was a little wider in the hips, she was easily recognisable.

I sat in KMcM’s audience next to a woman from the University of Hertfordshire who asked my advice on modularisation. I started to run through all the reasons why modularisation is a wholesale disaster until she interrupted me to explain that the students on her programme would be taking just big fat module per year. This didn’t sound like modularisation to me, and none of the concerns that I had just expressed were applicable.

Our conversation was interrupted by the arrival of tea, coffee and coconut cakes brought into the room by Spanish students. EH and I wandered over to the trolley to help ourselves to refreshments. I was deeply disappointed that the flasks only contained dregs of coffee.

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A sister’s wedding, smokers and cycling (Rousse)

Posted on February 11, 2013 by Dreamaticus

We all gathered at my parents’ house in a small town off the M4 corridor for my sister’s wedding. It was a huge affair, largely because the expected guest list of family and friends was supplemented with the names of numerous vague acquaintances. Most astonishing of all, the tiny bridesmaid in shocking pink was a toddler called Lucy. This child was only known to us up to the wedding day as the daughter of NH, a woman I had met online through Blipfoto.

With so many guests to deal with, setting up the room was hard work, and we only managed to get the seats and tables in place with five minutes to spare. Then we had to deal with the smokers. I patrolled the room and ejected anyone who lit up.

After the wedding day, and for the remainder of my stay down south, I cycled through the commuter towns of the south of England. I almost reached M and AP to the east in Reading and KG in Bristol to the west – but not quite.

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