The young Irish woman standing by the window declared “I know you from somewhere”. A few minutes later a slightly older one said exactly the same.
We eventually worked out that long ago we’d trained together at my old running club. I was ashamed to admit that I barely ran these days.
MI caught up with me on Middle Meadow Walk. I called TPR over on his bike and we looked at the print-out of the work that MI had completed.
“It only took one iteration and now it’s ready”, she claimed.
Sure enough, in just a few minutes she really had created a complete new technical infrastructure for the tracking of UK library and information science research.
Everyone in Edinburgh was on the move.
Local KL put her tiny two-bedroomed flat overlooking Bruntsfield Links up for sale.
Then G and JG gave up their big family house in Devon for a flat in Marchmont. Their new place really didn’t have much to recommend it other than a huge, beautiful green and blue stained glass panel that hung in the kitchen opposite the fabulous fireplace. However, with both daughters now living away from home – one in Sheffield and the other in Chile – G and J had moved north for a better quality of life, and a higher standard of education for their young son under the superior Scottish school system.
I had a huge row with NP over conference badges. Our relationship would never survive this – and all all because she thought it wouldn’t matter if delegates were asked to hand-write their own names on sticky labels…!
I thought differently. For this reason I brought 100 beautifully crafted, laminated and logo-ed badges in my briefcase to the conference. NP should have waited for me before dishing out the cheap felt-tipped pens and tawdry stickers to the first arrivals.
The bed and breakfast owner was exceptionally generous. When he heard that I didn’t have a camera to photograph the sunset he gave me three brand new iPhones.
So now I knew the reasons why I looked nothing like either of my two sisters, and my parents clammed up whenever the topic of genetics came up in conversation.
AP confessed to me that back in 1962 he embarked on an affair with healthcare librarian Sheila Moore in Newcastle. Sheila was now dangerously ill and it was time that I learnt the truth: I was their daughter!
I looked up Sheila’s profile in an online community and could see a family resemblance. What puzzled me, however, was why my adoptive parents were considered suitable candidates to look after an unwanted new-born baby. They were only just married themselves, and my father still a poor student at the time that they kindly welcomed me into their lives.
The first person to whom I revealed my new secret was BP. I told him as we implemented the new University measures to deal with postgraduate students upset with the changes to the academic calendar: placating them with bowls of fresh fruit and ice cream.
The next person in on the secret was AB. We were working on a joint paper at the kitchen table when the Internet went down. It seemed as good a time as any to share my extraordinary news.
When I first took the phone call I thought it was my mother speaking, but as the north east accent became stronger I began to have doubts. If she were to be believed, an aunt had died and the funeral was on Thursday 1st February. I needed to make plans – fast.
First of all, what would I do about work? I taught on Thursdays. Then there was the more important question of my hair. I couldn’t tun up to a family funeral looking like this!
I jumped into the yellow Volvo estate and followed the A286 to the retail park. I should have gone directly, but I made a short diversion up Walwyn Close in Birdham thinking that this would save my having to turn right later. I was wrong: this decision cost me even more time.
By the time I reached the retail park the car had conveniently transformed into my tandem so I was able to take my vehicle into the main mall.
Here I bumped into SS who had just bought a stained glass ornament for her nephew from a rather good-looking bald security man. The ornament snapped when I took it in my hands so SS sent me back to buy a replacement. The route back to the stained glass stall took me through a series of luxurious bathrooms. Here women soaked in bubbles side by side in neat little rows. I was very tempted to jump in with them, but there was still the question of my coiffure.
Eventually I made it to the hairdresser to see what could be done about my shocking hairstyle. None of the stylists was willing to take me on. Eventually the boss talked one of her employees into giving me some advice. This man was clearly wearing a toupée: I could see the plastic slots in his skull to which his black wig was attached. There was no way I would trust him with my hair, even after his smooth sales talk of “nourishing unctions” and “flamed ends”. When he announced that the estimated cost of all this treatment would be £150 I made my excuses and left.
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.
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.
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.
