Belle was in disgrace.
While I had been advising DC and his colleagues that UK research council documentation could serve as the starting point for the development of a government mandated small business research strategy, Belle had sloped off to go drinking with JB and SH.
I shook my multi-braided head* in fear for the future of her career.
*Plaits designed and implemented by primary school bully MD.
It was like the plot of a farce.
My new friend and I bonded on a tropical beach while watching the enormous sun double dip into the sea beneath the far horizon. Then we went back to her room.
She didn’t know that her weedy husband had planned to surprise her at the hotel that night, so the knock on the door was unexpected. As it turned out, this was not her husband after all, but a member of hotel staff.
Not long afterwards another man came to the door. This time it was my old boss JK. He was clearly a little perturbed to find me in this woman’s bedroom, but hid his concern as best he could.
Finally the husband arrived. By this time his wife was in the shower and I was sitting on the bed, chatting with JK.
Everyone was terribly confused, and the husband somewhat annoyed to find his wife taking a shower in a hotel bedroom with a ‘couple of strangers’.
I was now so friendly with the lifeguards at the gym that I would often pop in and out of their staff room for a chat.
One day when I left the staff room to return to the swimming pool, I noticed a small hand-written note taped to the back of the door. It read ‘Keep an eye on Rousse. She consumed five spring drinks before coming to swim’.
It was dated the day after my birthday, and the details corresponded with my celebrations of that day. Even so, I was embarrassed that the lifeguards would think that I needed special observation.
This could also be the reason that some of my friends, notably AC and AF, were leaving the pool without saying goodbye to me; they believed that I was a drunkard.
From a distance we could see a baby’s head hanging loosely out of the back of its pram. Its mother, who was pushing the pram along the edge of the dual carriageway, obviously mistook our calls as friendly greetings when she responded with a cheery wave.
My friend was still doing all she could to repeat our warning that the child was about to tumble on to the road when I spotted our bus on the approach. I ran the last few metres to the bus stop and boarded the service, but my friend did not make it.
My mother was already on the bus, so I took the seat next to her. She told me that she was very excited to be heading for Haddington for the broadcast of Any questions, even though I pointed out to her that it looked like she was holding a forged audience ticket.
Unfortunately the BBC’s Chris Mason agreed with my assessment of the tiny scrunched up pellet of paper, and refused my mother entry at the door.
They gave me the nickname 70% to recognise the quality of my driving: OK 70% of the time, dreadful for the other 30%.
It was still dark at 4:00am when I turned the key in my red Peugeot 205 to drive it up the hill past the community centre and round the corner to the village car park. This was the easiest place to complete a turn without blocking the main road.
Another driver entered the car park at the same time. As I made my turn, I clipped his vehicle pulling into a parking space. Then I nudged a parked car on my way back out on to the street. This car then took out another one. Now there were three cars heading down the hill, the two at the front driverless.
What a disaster! I pulled into the right hand side of the road to bring my car to halt next to the park railings. I then readied myself to face an angry mob of neighbours.
One, a police officer, instantly started treating me like a criminal caught at a crime scene. It was when she started photographing my car that I realised that perhaps I was not responsible for my dreadful driving. The car looked in much worse condition than I kept it. Had joy riders been out in it without my knowledge, or someone else tampered with it overnight?
I was desperate to get home to wake my husband and tell him everything. He would sort it all out. He was David Tennant, after all.
Last held in 2013, we all believed that that was the end of the annual Online conference – until this week, when it was revived in London.
LVZ was operating the complicated lifts, and my colleague BMR selling miscellaneous books on a stall at the base of a wide spiral staircase. I started watching a film with TPR in an auditorium, but left early to attend an exercise class.
The strangest aspect of the event was its timing at Easter. I missed the ‘Christmas is coming’ feel of Online in the olden days.
Why did we ever buy this inconvenient house in the Highlands? The only advantage of living here was that you could leave your front door unlocked without any risk of burglary.
The layout of the building was ridiculous. You walked straight through the front door into a dingy sitting/dining room with a tiny cupboard of a kitchen at the back. Upstairs was a box room labelled as a study (previously used by PB – a man of low morals who stole JT from my long-dead friend BT). Next to this was a stunning medieval dining hall, which would be great in an appropriate building, but not here. The one tiny bathroom, also upstairs, was impractical for anyone taller than 4’11”.
The next door neighbours were keen to explain how it was possible to change the layout to make the house habitable. Horrified at the level of required investment, we decided to leave things as they were.
Having ended her relationship with AO, in the sitting room of my dead paternal grandmother, KA introduced us to her new partner.
When Niklaus and I shook hands, we recognised each other. I’d seen him at work just a few days earlier. I would never have expected KA to fall for a rough skinny man with rickets. The only thing that she and he had in common was that they both came from Liverpool. Even so, they supported different football teams.
I turned my attention away from the pair of them to concentrate on the job in hand: to select items from my grandmother’s estate. The mirror over the fire was attractive, but I had nowhere to put it. The Chinese rug was also lovely, but a corner was missing. In the end, there was nothing to interest me here.
I started to write my report about the Research Excellence Framework (REF) in pink ink along the top of the low wall. My source material was a huge A4 binder bulging with print-outs and notes from 2021.
I left my position for a while to chat to EH about a recent vacancy at the University of Edinburgh. Her application had been rejected in favour of that of our mutual colleague F.
When I returned to my report, I found several men in suits gathered along ‘my’ wall. Some were examining my pink scribbles on the stone; others were leafing through the contents of the binder. Furious with them, I threatened legal action for interfering with my confidential work.
Dreamaticus 