We were playing Bananagrams with S & N when I pointed out the sharks swimming up the river. Nobody paid any attention to me.
Similarly I was ignored when I told my mother-in-law that if her youngest daughter really did go ahead and give birth to five sons, she would never cope.
My new market stall was decorated with medieval streamers in candy stripe colours. How proud I was of my new venture. Matt Cardle stopped by and asked me to write an introductory email on his behalf to my former best friend A. The strangeness of this request didn’t strike me as I struggled to get the tone right. Only later did I wonder why he hadn’t just telephoned her.
I visited my ex boyfriend and watched him cooking potatoes. As we chatted I discovered he was dating two different top women racing drivers. Why then was he still living in that dump of a flat?
If you have ever wondered how the typical academic spends a Sunday, the answer is straightforward: either at work, or thinking about work.
This Sunday was no different from most others. TPR was entertaining himself elsewhere when I set off to join my colleagues on campus for a staff development seminar. On arrival I pushed open the door to the tower board room. I checked the layout, and managed to contain myself (just) when I realised that the only space left where I could comfortably sit would be on the knee of X. He didn’t object at all. In fact, he was most enthusiastic (unlike my my boss who shot us a barrage of disapproving glances from the other side of the room). However, I didn’t stay here long. When the title PowerPoint slide indicated that the focus of the presentation was the use of English in assignments, and the first discussion would be the etymology and various meanings of the term “arm”, I quietly sneaked out of the room.
Out on the staircase I bumped into PT, ST and an Australian woman who were also giving staff development a miss, this time in favour of conference organisation. Then I found AD in the library, complaining that a prematurely-promoted professor had just belted him. I was about to investigate this assault further when a librarian approached me for a favour. I glanced at the colourful maths handout that she pushed under my nose. Unfortunately it made no sense to me all: my skills in algebra were lost long ago, some time circa in 1979. I suggested that VJ might help, while noting my great admiration of the handout’s hedgehog illustration.
Heading home again, on the way out of the building I vowed to do something about the main staircase. Granted it was very beautiful as a piece of 21st century modern art, but it was also dangerous with multiple unexpected gaps in the steps. Moreover, this was a university, not an exhibition space for funky art installations, and it was about time someone said so.
Exactly how many house-mates did I now have? As I sat in the kitchen, drinking early morning tea, more people poured in through the doors. Already disorientated, I realised that the scene through the kitchen window was changing. The house was slowly rotating.
Mark Radcliffe popped out of the studio, so I took advantage of his absence for a private chat with Stuart Maconie. After some preliminary small talk about preferences for co-hosted shows, I got down to the business of my complaint. Why had they agreed to move their evening Radio 2 show to afternoons on 6 Music? Didn’t they know that this had ruined my nightly routine of e-mail shovelling? It just wasn’t the same sending spam to trash while listening to documentaries on Radio 4.
Stuart failed to address my concerns. Instead he became increasingly agitated because it looked like Mark might not come back. Fifteen minutes passed and Mark was still out on the streets of Salford. What an opportunity! I offered to take Mark’s place at the microphone. The underlying fear was clear in Stuart’s simple reply to my suggestion: “I don’t think so”, he croaked warily.
See Stuart Maconie elsewhere on Dreamaticus in Bonding with Radcliffe and Maconie over the Farmer’s Boys and the BBC (Rousse); Stuart Maconie radio chef (Rousse)
This new, steampunk world seemed to have passed me by even though we were already in season five. I had read the listings in Radio Times and was astonished to see that one of the characters was campaigning in real life for UKSG against ‘click per view’.
I was in the crowds travelling on up escalators to the stadium. On another escalator a man was wearing a home-made cardboard castle on his head. Concerned that I stood out from the crowd, I asked a friend for advice. I discovered it was a considered a major offence to repeat yourself in this world. “But what do we DO?” I asked. “Oh, we diminish things”, she told me.
For some reason this was the funniest thing I had heard and I found myself laughing and repeating it. I had already broken the rules.
I was upset to discover that someone had created a commercial success out of MY business idea. The creative naming of lipsticks had long been a hobby of mine, but to discover that ‘Tiger Tail Orange’ and ‘Leopard Love’ were now bestselling colours was demoralising to say the least.
I was the reluctant leader of a small running club expedition to Glencoe. Unqualified for the role, I was making a complete mess of it. First, we arrived far too late in the afternoon to tackle any of the interesting routes. Then, when checking to see which climb would be achievable in the time available, I discovered that the brand new Ordnance Survey map that I’d just received from Amazon was useless. It presented a full-scale atlas of the world on one side and a chart of British myths and legends on the other. “I’ll put it away for our niece F when she’s a bit older”, I remarked to TPR.
While the others hung around waiting for me to make a decision on where we were heading, their conversation deteriorated to discussions of the perennial quest for a suitable boyfriend in Edinburgh. The latest tales of woe centred on the theme of being stood up. As the anecdotes piled up they became more and more outrageous. The ultimate was a supposedly true tale where the man had chosen to die quietly rather than meet his date.
Meanwhile I realised that I’d forgotten something else for our day out: my walking boots. Fortunately I knew that I had my trainers somewhere, but I was somewhat embarrassed to get them out. I’d laced a music chip into the left shoe and was pretty certain that a Take That track was playing. I wasn’t entirely sure that I wanted to share my dodgy musical tastes with everyone.
