Police equipment security failure causes alarm (Rousse)

Posted on February 21, 2012 by Dreamaticus

There was a scuffle in the street and the idiot policeman dropped his taser gun. He made no move to pick it up so a passer-by walked off with it, firing lasers into the sky. This could only end badly.

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Secrets of the golf course: how to preserve eggs (Rousse)

Posted on February 21, 2012 by Dreamaticus

Three weeks earlier in the first week of term I stuffed some bits and pieces – including a few loose eggs – into a carrier bag and left it in the car on the floor behind the driver’s seat. I only remembered this when the posh man on the golf course showed me his own collection of out of date eggs. His were strewn across the fairway, each one covered in small bumps. I commented that I thought the rotten contents would have exploded by now. My companion explained that they would last forever in this state. It was a relief to know that it would still be safe to fetch the forgotten cargo from my car.

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Stockton-on-Tees welcomes Dreamaticus fans (Rousse)

Posted on February 21, 2012 by Dreamaticus

By now Dreamaticus was a popular tourist attraction. Coach parties travelled to Stockton-on-Tees to learn about its beginnings on Darlington Road, and the vital roles of the 224 and 268 buses. Today my school friend KM (now KC) led another group of clamouring fans to meet Belle and Rousse. Were we famous now? We surely hoped so!

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Staffing priorities in hard times (Rousse)

Posted on February 19, 2012 by Dreamaticus

As far as I could remember we had never received any presents from the G-J family. So when their servant asked us to return “everything” it was difficult to know what to say. The servant explained that R and S were on the breadline and selling all their belongings to feed the children. I offered the contents of our freezer to help them out. I did, however, wonder why they had not yet cut back on their domestic staffing costs.

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Library rules for tandems (Rousse)

Posted on February 16, 2012 by Dreamaticus

TPR wheeled the tandem into the bookshop. So far, so good – nobody stopped us. However, further into the main body of the shop a member of staff told us that this was, in fact, a library, tandems were banned, and that we should leave immediately.

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Write early for Christmas 2012 (Rousse)

Posted on February 16, 2012 by Dreamaticus

JK was away so DB chaired the meeting in her place. Instead of discussing business, however, we all sat at the table writing our Christmas cards. After a few minutes of addressing envelopes EH mentioned that perhaps this was something that we should do in our own time at home. The others agreed and they all left the meeting.

I was obliged to wait a while longer in DB’s room. Unlike the others I’d been using a fountain pen for my Christmas greetings. I couldn’t leave until the ink had dried on all my envelopes. I waved them one by one in front of the open fire in an attempt to speed up the process.

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Selling hosiery – with a difference (Rousse)

Posted on February 15, 2012 by Dreamaticus

Following a long, happy and successful career at the British Library, SK came out of retirement to mastermind a massive marketing campaign for the Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Theatre from a secret base in Edinburgh.

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Rousse samples seaweed, cream and orange peel pudding

Posted on February 14, 2012 by Dreamaticus

SS gathered us around her kitchen table and served the Chinese takeaway feast. There was so much to eat, and by the time the pudding was unwrapped at about 3am I really didn’t think I could consume anything more.

SS dollopped a huge mass of seaweed and cream gloop onto BM’s plate. Then she mixed some orange peel into the bowl and asked TPR how much he would like. Meanwhile the other guests agreed that perhaps they would give running a miss the next day.

I glanced at TPR in hopeful expectation. It appeared, however, that our long run would still be on – but first I had to find a way to force this “food” down myself without offending our hostess (or, more likely, throwing up).

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Mark Zuckerberg vents anger at Harvard in Simpsons episode (Rousse)

Posted on February 13, 2012 by Dreamaticus

There was a television at the far end of the room, but this was largely ignored. Most of us preferred to watch The Simpsons on personal devices such as iPads balanced on our knees.

This hysterical episode was based on the antics of famous Harvard graduates and drop-outs whose statues on campus periodically came to life. What made it all the more interesting was that if you switched the red button, you could follow the plot with the cartoon superimposed on the real campus landscape. This made for fascinating television.

My favourite moment came when Mark Zuckerberg’s statue lost his temper and almost jumped out of the screen in anger.

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Unbearable workloads: could cloning be the answer? (Rousse)

Posted on February 13, 2012 by Dreamaticus

Locked away in a hall of residence room in Nantes, I wasn’t coping very well at all. I had returned to the city to take some extra courses and gain credits for a full French undergraduate degree, even though it was hard to imagine why I would ever need any more qualifications.

Simultaneously I was also organising a reunion for graduates of the University of Washington iSchool, amongst whom numbered several ex-pupils of Teesside High School. These grown-up “girls” were readily identified because they never went out of the house without first donning their brown school berets.

My body responded to the stress of all these demands on my time by doing something extraordinary. I cloned myself!

Rousse 2 looked almost identical to me. She was perhaps a little younger and less out-going in her personality, but otherwise she was instantly recognisable. Unfortunately she was unaware of “her” back-story of studies in France and the American reunion. In fact, dressed in a long floaty cotton skirt, she was under the impression that she was on a beach holiday in Florida. I dreaded to think what she would make of the news that she was now obliged to give up her precious time off to help deal with the never-ending duties of Rousse 1.

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