How to fake a hedge (Belle)

By far the most successful session at the conference was the workshop how to create a fake yew hedge using Christmas tree offcuts.

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Salmon fishing in Scotland, and disability in the animal kingdom (Rousse)

We’d already reached Fife by the time that I summoned up the courage to admit to JK that I’d forgotten to pack any socks to wear with my wellies. “Well, I suppose I could buy some in Braemar?” I suggested. “That assumes that we’re salmon fishing on the Dee today” she crossly replied, “but I was actually thinking of the Tay”.

She suddenly applied the brakes as we hit a rural traffic jam. Hundreds of children were crossing the road to a field full of cute brown cattle and tiny horses. I begged to join them, camera at the ready.

The children were strangely quiet. Soon I worked out why. They were deaf mutes on a special trip to study disability in the animal kingdom. The cattle, lacking eye sockets, were blind, and all the horses were without ears.

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Rousse’s stalker

How had this crazy woman, who had stalked me online for the past couple of years, now managed to break into my house?

The scrap of paper pulled out of the pocket of our captive – now pinned bodily to the hall floor – provided the answer to my question. All the information she needed to break in was noted here, scribbled in my own hand writing on the back of a till receipt. I must have passed this on to her long ago, well before her bizarre reputation was common knowledge amongst my external work colleagues. I worked this out from the office phone number found at the bottom of the note. It was at least a decade out of date.

Even though it was I who had issued this ancient invitation, I was determined that X be charged with breaking, entering, stealing my CDs, and generally causing havoc, so we dialled the police. There was no reply. The next plan was to “hail” a police officer in the street. The first uniformed woman that I approached was no use: she was merely a captain in the sea scouts. Then a host of mounted police officers trotted by and they all stopped to hear the story. What surprised me most was that a young officer actually recognised the offender’s name. When my nephew PF ran out the house screaming that X had made her escape to Waverley Station, the same young officer assured me that the authorities would apprehend her on the next train to London Kings Cross.

(I was really looking forward to the trial, already thinking of RG in the prosecutor role.)

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School reunion surprise in store for ST (Rousse)

SA and I were really enjoying ourselves busy plotting our evening at the school reunion. When ST walked past, however, my interest in SA evaporated. “Just wait until we meet up properly in a couple of weeks” I called after ST. “You’ll be astonished at how frequently we’ve been seeing one another here in my dreams over the past 30 years!”

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Corridor card games (Rousse)

Instead of dealing with my mounting e-mail backlog, I helped RK set up the playing card game along the red-carpeted corridor at work. We laid the enormous cardboard figures of the jacks, queens and kings flat over black plastic sheeting, then attached the sensors to the floor. Each card would spring up whenever anyone who walked by hit a sensor.

Two students came along and suggested that it would be fun to wear a disguise of black bin liner and hide next to the upright cards, thus bringing them to life for those who participated in the game. Then one said that he even wanted to swim across a lake dressed in a card to attend his island graduation ceremony. “How very silly” I muttered to myself.

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Charity shop bargains (Rousse)

This was turning into a very profitable rummage around the charity shops. I found a small green stool that I could use for step exercises at home, and a beautiful 1950s food processor which apparently still worked.

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David Morrissey spreads gossip (Belle)

David Morrissey blogged and tweeted a scandalous story about the orchestra’s cellist. It was perfectly obvious to everyone that the only source of this story was me.

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A night of clubbing (Belle)

My ex-boyfriends agreed how wonderful it was that we were all such good friends after so many years. “Let’s go to a rave to celebrate” said the Geordie one. The nicest ex-boyfriend agreed and we went to a big warehouse with flashing laser lights and danced the night away.

Later I got locked in the toilet.

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Tony Curtis and the world’s least imaginative quiche (Belle)

It had been foolish of us to try to re-capture those Cornish holiday memories. Eventually, Tony Curtis summed it up beautifully. “We should only come back just as summer is turning into war”. Later I shouted at him for throwing his coke bottle over some roofs.

Meanwhile, my entry for the most imaginative vegetable quiche was turning out badly. I hadn’t rolled out a full pastry circle, had burnt the pastry during the blind bake, had forgotten to put any vegetables into it and was now attempting to put matters right by snipping stolen cress over the top. The only way to retrieve the situation would be to ‘accidentally’ drop the thing as I transferred it to the judging table.

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A highland journey by car, foot, boat and the Flying Scotsman (Rousse)

We took the Loch Awe route to the ferry port by car with RG-J, SG and their two children. S was at the wheel, swearing at every turn, while R and I ooh-ed and ah-ed at the full-bloom purple rhodedendrums that lined the route.

When the road narrowed to the point that we could drive no further we bailed out and set off by foot through the snow to the boat. Along the way we picked up some others, including a school party and a man who tried to get me to carry his life-jacket shaped rucksack.

This all seemed to be taking much longer than planned. When I confirmed that the schedule had well and truly slipped, I ran back to hurry along the straggler children. They were unconcerned. No matter how late they turned up, they knew that the Flying Scotsman would wait to take them home.

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