Cake decoration disappointment (Belle)

I didn’t need to wait for Mary Berry to tell me. My marzipan lattice work had really let me down this week. I was, however, thrilled with my well-crafted one-liner: “It looks too bad to taste too good”.

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Simon Cowell and Outlook calendar chaos (Rousse)

Simon Cowell gave me a big hug and congratulated me on my recent work.

Then I got back to the Sunday afternoon business of working out how on earth I would fit in a visit to the University of Birmingham to examine a PhD. According to updates to my Outlook calendar I was teaching two modules across every day of the week in semester 2.

This was news to me. I would be having words with KM on Monday

Simon Cowell can be found elsewhere on Dreamaticus. See:

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Drowning by white gloss paint (Rousse)

My sister-in-law S and I had a few minutes to spare so we took a quick look around the gift shop. There was nothing of interest to us there. Still with time on our hands we popped through another low door, thinking that this was also the entrance to a shop.

Inside two elderly, deformed men were playing table tennis, while a third lay drowning in a vat of thick white gloss paint. When I rushed to pull the dying man to safety, the other two captured poor S and wickedly submerged her in the place of their rescued companion.

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Belle the economist, detective and pornographer

I was extremely upset to find that once again someone had dumped rubbish on the grass verge at the top of my street. This time it was at least a dozen litre sized empty drinking yoghurt cartons. I stopped to tidy it up and was joined by local pensioners. The more we tidied up the more money we found. The pensioners helped themselves to ten pound notes and piles of two pence pieces. I found three 50 Euro notes.

Determined to track down the perpetrator, I followed clues left in a van and eventually uncovered a story of a young woman who was living a double life. She had two husbands – one younger and one older – and one baby. She was commuting between the two families as a passenger in a Waitrose home delivery van. This must be the source of the cash, I surmised.

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It was a lovely sunny day as I walked down the street of fruit and vegetable market stalls. How I loved this market but I felt sure it could be contributing more to ‘economic cohesion’. I shared my ideas with Dominic West.

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There were 15 of us in the monthly editorial meeting. The elderly and glamorous matriarch of the company entered and held up a pornographic magazine. “Last month we gave you this to get stuck into but this time we have something for the ladies”. She then held up the first issue of our new magazine, a pornographic comic for women. We all cheered.

At this point a colleague leant towards me with a comb and said “I thought so – you have nits”.

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The farmer PhD supervisor and Motown hopefuls (Rousse)

This was the strangest of PhD tutorials. The chair of the session sat at the front of a room and a full class of students, most of whom looked like undergraduates listening in on the discussions. What surprised me most of all was that my cousin TB’s best friend AFW revealed himself to be a skilled PhD supervisor. I was astonished. I’d always believed that he was a farmer.

After the tutorial discussions a Motown girl group sang at the front of the class. The singers clearly hoped that their performance might be worthy of a doctorate. It was not.

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Rousse’s unintended drug overdose

I was struggling to make sense of the huge American hotel and how to navigate my way up and down the building by escalator and lift. It was very obvious that I was a stranger here, so I was an easy target for the malicious teenage girl who pinned me against a wall and pushed several soft clear gel tablets into my mouth.

I couldn’t be certain, but I was pretty sure that I had been forced to overdose on recreational drugs for the entertainment of others. My only hope for survival lay in the hands of my friend JM, officially on business in the US – and now responsible for my rescue.

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A fruity evening with Vincent Price (Belle)

I called the others, Vincent Price amongst them, to look out of the front window. A large cherry picker had arrived and a small child was being elevated on the platform. It seemed oddly dangerous. And why wasn’t the child in school?

The workmen – and child – shrugged off my safety concerns and set about tidying the blueberry bush in the back garden. In order to do this they had dug a hole and filled it with quartered strawberries and sugar. A swarm of wasps was enjoying the feast.

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A job role too far (Rousse)

I was in big trouble at work (again). I’d turned up 15 minutes late to the graduation ceremony. I sneaked up to the balcony and found a seat so that I could listen to the choral music.

ED and an unknown woman were already there. As soon as they saw me they launched into a well-prepared speech that listed all the reasons why I was unsuitable for my role. I looked over to BP in appeal, but he was clearly reluctant to take my side in the argument.

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Paris attractions (Rousse)

I’d only just arrived in Paris and already I had bumped into two people from my Gallic past. First I saw PG on his way to work. He was now a grey-haired father of three, yet had kept his great sense of humour.

Then I came across JG. She was in the city to check up on the flat that she had bought in 1982, with a view to putting it up for sale. I followed JG to her flat. It was a low-ceilinged corner apartment, currently used as the admin offices of a fashion house. JG showed me into the meeting room and invited me to stay for a fashion show.

“Where will the models parade?” I enquired.

“Along the table” JG replied.

This didn’t make sense. I was of average height. If I stood on the table, my head would touch the ceiling, so how would the taller models be accommodated?

A hay field by Brendan MacNeill

A hay field by Brendan MacNeill


Later the same day I met up with a third friend. MY had flown to Paris with a special delivery. She presented me with a massive canvas of the pair of us as teenagers, sitting in a hay field.

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Rousse’s Northumbrian anxiety

This was a worrying prospect: taking LM to meet my parents in Northumberland. Whatever would she make of their house?

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