It was Dolly Parton’s fault that I lost the train. I was out on the platform looking for her when the carriage doors slammed shut and the train pulled away. Of course, it should not have done so without its full quota of passengers, and the others who were stranded were just as upset as me.
The station staff did their best for us. The most likely solution to get me home to the UK from Switzerland would be to travel south to either Geneva or Lyon, and catch a flight from there.
Waverley Station by Brendan MacNeill
Whether I would make it home at all was my next problem. I accidentally knocked a gas valve on a station platform and a poisonous vapour filled the air. Some colleagues from a stint of work in London in 2006 rushed about in a panic, while attempting to ask polite questions about my job in Edinburgh. It didn’t seem worth the trouble of trying to explain to them how things really were in my current role while all around us were attempting to deal with a full-scale emergency.
MSB and I switched our training programme from running to swimming. Now that I was no longer a gym member and had no access to the pool, this posed a practical problem.
When I sneaked up to the gym reception desk to pick up a pink towel, the attendant shouted after me “What’s you name?”
“MSB?” I replied, weakly.
I knew this was hopeless. Within seconds a quick check of the gym database would pull up a photograph of a blonde Scandinavian beauty. Nobody would ever take the glamorous woman in the picture for me.
The criminal was sitting on the floor of the school hall, handcuffed and mouthing obscenities. I, however, had no time to react. I had to get home, change, pick up my boyfriend and get to the FA Cup Final.
The car journey took me through a beautiful mountainous landscape, and eventually we pulled up at a glorious beauty spot. Johnny Depp, clutching two tickets, led me to two barstools at the very edge of the cliff. “Are these our seats?”, I asked – amazed. Far below us in the valley I could see the pitch of Wembley Stadium. Everything it seems had been taken care of – next to my glass of mango juice stood a ‘half time toaster’.
I’d only met C in real life once before. Since our brief encounter earlier in the year all our recent contact had been online, where C’s alias was A. He’d agreed to pass on some photography hints to TPR so we set off to meet him in a bar on Leith Walk.
After half an hour of amiable chat we made to leave and C, accompanied by what looked like his entire family including his pregnant wife (who I congratulated heartily), followed us out on to the street. C’s relations came across as incredibly friendly, especially his Chinese mother. She delighted me with the gift of a clear red plastic-bound Filofax-style 2012 diary, handed over just after we passed the Edinburgh Central Youth Hostel.
Our original intention was to walk with C as far as McDonald Road or Pilgrig Street, and TPR did just this before heading home. I, however, missed the turning and before long I had no idea where I was. Strangely it appeared that we had been transported to the Isle of Skye. The group that had formerly just comprised C and his family now included many more people, and it was only now that I realised that they were all members of a sect intent on recruiting me. I had to escape – fast!
My new “friends” put on an almost-credible act that gave the impression that they cared enough to make arrangements for my return home from our current location just south of Portree. I was not convinced of this. I saw through the offer of a young man to drive me home in his car as a means of avoiding my inevitable delivery to the “facility”. I guessed that it was more likely that he intended to take me straight there. Equally, I could tell that the man who flirted with me in front of his wife and two babies (born five months apart) was a fake, even when he handed his house keys over to me in case I couldn’t wake up TPR to let me back into my own flat once I reached home again. It was obvious that they wanted me locked up, and locked up for good.
The first person to attempt to release me from the clutches of the evil sect was a complete surprise: my long-dead Granny H. Her entrance was one of bravado, but the moment that she came face to face with my captors she collapsed into a flat, lifeless version of herself, and was of no use whatsoever to my plight.
My spirits then lifted with the arrival of Great Dane MSB. As a former inmate of the facility herself, she knew a trick or two. She declared out loud that we both needed to go to the toilet then legged it across the yard straight past the guards, and into the main road to hail an ambulance.
I followed close behind, but at the very last moment a leaning, drunken tramp weaved his way towards me and blocked my escape. “Could things get any worse?” I wondered out loud. “Perhaps he’ll lunge forward to kill me?” – which is precisely what happened next.
The Birmingham University reunion switched venue to Aberystwyth. There I caught up with SC, HW and CP and others – supposedly to reminisce about our undergraduate days, but in practice to moan about the deficiencies of the modern-day husband.
Also on the agenda was the pact that SC and I had made to embark on a PhD in French together. I was panicking. How would I manage this after almost three decades removed from any engagement with the French language and literature? The only strategy that had any hope of working would be for me to take a taught course where the assessment was based on French novels that had been turned into films. That way I could probably still manage the exams without struggling to read the books.
This was, of course, absolutely pointless given that I already had a PhD to my name.
I travelled to the Queen Mother’s funeral on the back of G’s enormous motorbike. This was my first such experience, and I was grateful for the protective clothing that G lent me, including the special contraption to attach my feet to the pedals of the bike. G’s outfit was even more sophisticated: invisible spikes ran the length of his yellow trouser legs, ready to pierce anyone who came too close.
Just about everyone else lining the Thames on this sad state occasion was dressed more sombrely in black, with many of the women in hats and veils. G assured me that I could change into my funeral garb just as soon as we reached the riverside beach huts. There he took one hut, and gave me keys to another. I’d never been inside a riverside beach hut before, and was impressed at how spacious they were. This one was especially well kitted out for bathing, with a wet room as well as a full-sized bathroom.
The only problem was that two other parties believed that the beach hut belonged to them. Instead of watching the funeral procession, we spent the rest of the afternoon arguing over the single set of keys.
The basement man cave was almost ready. I was really looking forward to clearing the upstairs study’s shelves of all of GC’s aviation and DIY books so that I could make the emptied room mine (all mine). I already had my patchwork cushions on stand-by to scatter around the redecorated room. GC’s wife JC would be just next door. It would be so much fun for we girls to be close together on the ground floor with GC installed just below.
I took a moment to reflect on how JC had gone up in the world. Here she was now, the owner of a Manchester mansion where there were enough rooms for guests to be allocated their own quarters. She’d come a long way since her days as a poverty-stricken laundress.
