Digital media experts flummoxed by musical suitcase (Rousse)

Posted on July 13, 2012 by Dreamaticus

What fun: at last KA and I had wangled things so that we were both heading to the same conference! Ahead of us lay two days of academic discussion of digital media.

My father-in-law drove us to the venue from Hexham in his battered burgundy estate car. During the journey he explained that he planned to fill in the swimming pool at 6 Broadway Gardens because nobody ever used it. He was right – none of us had taken a dip in the back garden for years – but I vowed that I would, just as soon as I was back in town.

The conference registration desk was not yet open when we first arrived so KA and I headed straight up to our hotel rooms. We never made it back downstairs again. Instead we spent the whole afternoon puzzling over the strange noises coming from my new suitcase. Even when we emptied out all the contents on to the bedroom floor there was not a clue as to the source of the odd buzzing sounds.

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Mid-afternoon okey cokey fun ruined by Restoration battle vandal (Rousse)

Posted on July 13, 2012 by Dreamaticus

TPR and his two friends knew that before long the enemy would come over the hill. The three of them anticipated hand-to-hand combat, and were prepared. I was terrified, but at least I had an escape route through the attic door into my sister-in-law SB’s bedroom.

The enemy arrived and I scarpered upstairs to raise the alarm. In the adjoining building my mother was in bed and my father in the bath – but I wasn’t interested in them. I needed my brothers-in-law MF and RH to take up arms and defend the family from the marauders.

Outside I could see that two massive armies had assembled beneath the castle. It was difficult to tell who was on which side because all the soldiers were dressed in regulation Restoration costumes, their hair styled in identical Charles II ringlets. The poison dart shooting pirates didn’t care who was who, and fired their deadly ammunition indiscriminately at any likely target.

Then some lunatic set a torch to the field. I only just survived the blaze by scaling the secret staircase to take refuge back in the castle once more. Everybody was furious with the vandal, sorely disappointed that the highlight of the whole afternoon would now be ruined due to one person’s idiotic antics. The set-piece mid-battle okey cokey dance, eagerly anticipated by all, was now cancelled.

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The effects of global warming, old school friends, and a recruitment question (Rousse)

Posted on July 12, 2012 by Dreamaticus

In this topsy-turvy world the sun hadn’t risen for weeks and the streets were under snow, even though the calendar told us that it was the middle of the summer. It was so cold outside that the thick soles of Dr Martens barely protected your feet from the frozen pavements. I was staying in a dormitory with DT and KJ, where there was so little space that we were all forced to sleep in shifts. This was no way to live.

On this day there was so much to do. From the dorm window I could see the moon racing across the sky, occasionally illuminated by the light of the sun that we on earth saw no more. I was desperate to photograph it. I’d also booked a table for lunch at the restaurant across the road with one of my dorm pals and my friend PM, but hadn’t managed to find a suitable bottle of wine to take along. Then I was waylaid in the canteen by half a dozen of Teesside High School’s Upper V 1978/9 (including ED, CC, CR, and RL) and a cute baby that TPR required me to return to its parents in a shoe box.

Still stuck in the canteen and wondering if I would ever reach my lunch date, a senior member of staff from my own institution sought my advice as to whether or not he should interview a candidate without a PhD for an academic post. I lied when I replied, making up some nonsense about Sheffield University’s open recruitment policies. In my honest opinion, anyone appointed to the level in question should hold the highest academic qualifications – only I didn’t have the courage to say so.

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The smoker of Stockton-on-Tees (Rousse)

Posted on July 11, 2012 by Dreamaticus

By complete coincidence all the people at our end of the table were from Stockton-on-Tees. There was even a spot for my brother-in-law MF, despite his lack of PhD. Of course, ST had sneaked in (as usual). It amused me that after all these years he was still a smoker, and was obliged to leave the meal between courses to top up the nicotine supply in his bloodstream.

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Ex-prison officer questions practice of announcing deaths in service (Rousse)

Posted on July 11, 2012 by Dreamaticus

I should never have told the Principal how I abhorred the prison service’s practice of announcing staff deaths. I complained at length about the lack of professionalism in the short e-mails that I received in my former career as a prison officer.

On this basis of my moaning the Principal ordered HR to set up a new University-wide system for disseminating news of deaths in service. As luck would have it, some poor soul in Finance died that day, so the system could be implemented immediately. In fluorescent pink writing on a restaurant blackboard kept just outside the door to the main HR office the update read “Christie from Finance has just died”.

How this system was any better than the one operated previously, I did not know. And who was Christie anyway? I trotted along the corridor to find WS, the one woman on campus who knew the answers to all my questions.

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Everton fan survives road traffic accident only to be mugged by drug addict (Rousse)

Posted on July 10, 2012 by Dreamaticus

I looked out of my kitchen window and spotted PC in his Everton strip heading out for a run across the Meadows. He hesitated when he reached the road, appeared to decide to wait for the car to pass, then changed his mind, made a dash for the other side, and disappeared under the vehicle’s wheels.

Had I just witnessed a death? Apparently not. PC leapt from the tarmac without a scratch on his body. I felt obliged and go and check in person that all was OK, so I rushed out the house to the site of the accident.

By the time I got there PC was nowhere to be seen. A passer-by explained that PC had left for the police station. This was nothing to do with the recent accident. PC was apparently was making a report on a more recent adventure: immediately after surviving the wheels of the car, he’d been mugged by a drug addict.

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I was due to sit an exam about ‘Barcelona’ and decided to watch a documentary about the city’s most famous film director. An actor, speaking directly to camera said: “Of course, all this took place when he was going through his ‘only wearing wooden clothes’ period.”

Later a parade of unwanted furniture marched down my street.

Posted on July 10, 2012 by Dreamaticus | Leave a comment

The naughty teenager’s tattoo (Rousse)

Posted on July 9, 2012 by Dreamaticus

My niece AF and her friend HH returned home from a shopping trip to celebrate A’s sixteenth birthday. When they confessed that they had spent the whole afternoon in a tattoo parlour on Edinburgh’s Cockburn Street we feared the worst. Our anxieties turned to horror as A slipped off her top to reveal an enormous tattoo that stretched from the base of her neckline all the way down her back. The design was a very odd abstract shape, picked out in red and gold (which would doubtless degenerate into an inky blue eyesore, we all pointed out).

For about half an hour A and H enjoyed our hysterical reaction to A’s folly. Then they admitted that the “tattoo” was, in fact, nothing more than glitter sprinkled over a square of clear sticky-backed plastic that H had temporarily positioned on A’s back.

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Game show failure (Belle)

Posted on July 9, 2012 by Dreamaticus

Unsure how I had become a contestant on this ‘women only’ game show, I watched horrified as the other players competed in the first round. They were scaling a horizontal climbing wall while other contestants were firing high velocity water cannons at them. There was no way I was going to be able to do it. Not only had I not trained, but I hated heights and was not wearing waterproof mascara. I talked my way out of round one, only to discover that round two involved strategic clothes swapping. The aim was to convince the others your own clothes were ‘better than theirs’ and to swap outfits.

In this,too, I failed.

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Rousse meets Puffing Billy on train spotting commute

Posted on July 7, 2012 by Dreamaticus

Who would have thought the commuting could be so exciting?

On a sunny summer’s day TPR and I caught the red steam train from Bath to Bristol. Because we were the second and third people to board, we won the privilege to carry the train’s whistle and loud hailer. The man ahead of us was awarded the top prize: a French horn.

The trip only last 5 minutes, and the carriage was packed, so I was a bit disappointed that there wasn’t room or time to take any decent photographs. However, catching a glimpse of Puffing Billy at the end of the line more than made up for this.

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