For a horrifying ten minutes, I was drafted into the Chinese men’s doubles table tennis semi-final match. As I walked towards the table in the arena, an official admitted the administrative error and took the bat out of my hands.
To compensate for the trauma, the trainer of the Chinese team handed me a hard boiled egg.
To coincide with his retirement TPR admitted that over the course of our 25-year marriage he had slept with 21 different women (or 22, if he included me). Of these, he paid six for their services. I was relieved that none were amongst my closest friends.
It was another argument about badges that got me into trouble again. It was agreed that it would be useful for everyone to wear badges at the new series of evening networking sessions set up by the British Computer Society exclusively for women. The question was who would pay for the badges, and whose responsibility would it be to make them up?
I fought for my idea to be heard. “The solution is simple”, I shouted. “The committee members already have BCS badges, so they are sorted. As for the rest of us, all we have to do is take a badge from another event, take the card out of the plastic holder, cut off any logo, and pop the card back in again. Hey presto – badge for the night!”
Committee member EH responded with passion: “That will never work. Who would ever keep their badges from one event to wear at the next?” Above the noise I started to explain how I kept a whole set of badges intact over the course of five networking events in 2011/12, but nobody was listening.
I’d offered again and again to help, but this time it really was too late.
K had finally admitted to her affair with Terry and (unsurprisingly) her boyfriend J had thrown her out. The only place that she could go was her neglected, and now uninhabitable, old flat. It was completely infested by the pests that had already eaten their way through her extensive collection of clothes and hats, and had made a start on gnawing through the structure of the building.
This was not a job for a friend. It was time to call in the professionals: Rentokil.
I arrived at the guest house by airborne bike. I had followed the route along the cycle path from its source in the Meadows, all the way to the white cliffs, taking care not to knock over the hundreds of walkers in my path. The journey ended in a huge swoop over the Arabian Sea as I descended into my final destination of Arius.
My week in the guest house was not terribly comfortable. The landlady took an instant dislike to me, but did not say why. Indeed she refused to speak to me at all, but instead communicated to me in silent stage whispers. When I complained at the end of the week that someone had stolen my collection of antique needlebooks from the bedroom she did not care. All that interested her was whether or not I’d be checked out by 10:00am sharp that day.
When my boyfriend came up the stairs to collect me I waited for her reaction. I couldn’t imagine that any of her other guests were as intimate as I was with Hans Solo’s hairy Star Wars sidekick Chewbacca.
As was the tradition in my family, a member of the next generation volunteered to give birth to the child of a celebrity. So now I was a great aunt, and my 16-year old niece AF the mother of Alex Kaparonos’ baby.
This was very interesting: Mrs S versus Mrs W. Who would win the battle for glamour between the mothers of my friends VJ and JW?
While they fought it out I pushed past the servants setting tables in the dining room to hunt for my copy of Scotland the best. Eventually I found it, but by then the room had all closed in and the only way back to the others was through the hot fireplace and up the chimney. I was brave, proudly facing up to my claustrophobia as I squeezed past the grate.
Self-nominated Hartburn Primary School high achievers AG and ST took root at a committee table in my bedroom. I had no idea what they were plotting, but apart from the following Wednesday (when AG had to pop back to Stockton to visit his wife Pammy in hospital after her operation), they planned to stay with me for at least two weeks.
Our new butler was amazing. I’d only mentioned in passing the night before that I’d like my lunch at 06:30am the next day. At this precise time I awoke to finding him standing at the side of my bed, dressed in smart trousers, a blue shirt and tie, and proffering a bowl of home-made carrot soup.
