Campus horror (Rousse)

Posted on July 29, 2011 by Dreamaticus

We were excited to learn that our new colleague held a degree in hospitality management. As well as returning financial order in our group, she offered to bring salads to all our Friday meetings. Just as I was thinking what a boon it was to have the support of such a friendly person, in walked another admin colleague who grumpily dumped a pile of papers in front of me and asked if I would prepare them for one of her meetings. I reluctantly agreed, but I did wonder why it was always this way round. Whenever I asked her for help she always found a reason why my request was no concern of hers.

In the meantime I had to get back to my own work. I’d recently moved offices and there was building work on campus. Confused by these two factors, I got lost trying to find my new room. All the staircases had been removed so the only way down to the lower levels of the building was to abseil the walls using the plumbing pipes for support. I was not the most talented of abseilers and knocked a valve on my clumsy descent from the first to the ground floor.

As I fell from the wall noxious gas poured out of the pipes, as did horrific ghosts of surgery victims, all bleeding profusely. The immediate reaction of all around, including myself, was to throw up. Covered in vomit, the girl on the floor next me asked if I thought that we’d now fail our placement interviews. I was flattered that she thought I was a student too, but my main concern at that point was to pick sick out of my hair. However, there was no escape. As I made a bid to sort out my sticky state a number of staff approached me, all desperate to discuss REF 2014.

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Do you wear underwear with leather trousers? Is a tandem a useful weapon? How do you converse with the dead? Rousse investigates…

Posted on July 28, 2011 by Dreamaticus

I sat with the Spanish holiday-makers in the leaky summer house looking out at the torrential rain. It had been pouring for weeks. Would the sun ever make an appearance this “summer”?

Bored with the weather, I made a dash for the pub where my husband worked in exchange for our small flat on the first floor. TPR was serving in the bar, and attracting all sort of attention from one set of drinkers. They were fascinated by his black leather trousers and the question as to whether or not he was wearing any underwear.

Then the weather changed. It was suddenly glorious outside. I persuaded TPR to leave his work for a while and follow me out into the sunshine. Everyone was so happy that summer had finally arrived, and the parks were packed with picnickers. We wanted to relax too, but noticed a family of litter bugs. I boldly strode over to them and demanded that they clear up their mess. This was a huge mistake. The teenage boy turned on us, picked up our tandem as a handy weapon and headed towards our car. It looked like he was planning to put the bike through the windscreen. We knew we had to stop him, otherwise we would have no means of transport for our forthcoming holiday.

(Later I asked a nice middle class murder victim whether she could tell that she would be killed by her assailant. Her response was that it was difficult to judge. Given that she was dead, a more interesting question would have been how we were managing to hold this conversation at all.)

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Promoting public libraries and chaos at work (Rousse)

Posted on July 27, 2011 by Dreamaticus

I was super keen to show BR the publicity material that I had developed to promote public libraries. She picked up my MacBook, adjusted the settings (I had no idea that the screen was detachable), and clicked “play”. The video was set in Birmingham and starred a much younger version of me, all slim, fresh-faced and glossy-haired – and speaking with a Brummie accent. Supporting roles were played by JB and KB, who danced in a scene set at the edge of a forest. I could tell that BR was not impressed, but the only criticism that she voiced was that the credits were not presented in an appropriate font. Apparently Calibri should only ever be used on warning notices.

Back at work I was trying to run a research seminar. We had spent so much time getting organised that only 20 minutes were left for my presentation. We knew that the meeting couldn’t over-run because FG had already interrupted once to to say that he needed the room at 10:00. We changed our plans and decided to go round the table for a quick update on project news. I went first. From the looks of the other staff I could tell that they doubted the contribution that I declared I had made to their projects over the summer. Worse was that in the chaos of the meeting JG found her leaving card.

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Haunts old and new, and party dresses (Rousse)

Posted on July 25, 2011 by Dreamaticus

The small Birmingham back garden was crowded with people clamouring to climb trees, the shed and the summer house. Even I managed to scale the trunk of a bare apple tree. From the top I looked back up the garden to the white-painted rear of the tiny terraced house. “That’s where we used to live” I told the person who followed me up.

Afterwards we checked out office accommodation. Until recently I had made my work home under the arch of a dripping Victorian bridge. Although I’d managed to build some shelter from the elements with the clever use of red room dividers, most of the year I had suffered from the wind, rain and cold. The recent refurbishment improved everyone’s lot considerably. KT even had a full-sized double bed complete with lime green counterpane and silk cushions in her new office space. I was hopeful that I would be granted something on a similar scale. LO said that she would check this for me.

While I waited to hear where I would be accommodated I discussed party dresses with a stout dark-haired girl who happened to be standing next to me. She looked great in black satin and lace. Her outfit was just the thing that you would pick up in Monsoon or Laura Ashley, so I was very surprised to hear that it was a £10 bargain from Somerfield.

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A literary cousin and vandalising grandmother from the dead (Rousse)

Posted on July 24, 2011 by Dreamaticus

I opened the parcel from Canada. Inside was a beautiful travelogue presented as a book by author “Ann Jones”. My colleague Ann Jones, seated opposite me, said that this wasn’t her. From a quick inspection of the contents page we worked out that my cousin DT had adopted the pen name “Ann Jones” for a self-published account of her summer holiday in Europe. I was astonished that she had so much to write about such a short trip. Particularly impressive were the exhaustive histories of my ancestors, as well as those of another cousin in Somerset.

Meanwhile another relative was causing me no end of trouble. Eighteen years after her death my paternal grandmother was back! I’d spent hours organising a set of tiny black and white photos from the early twentieth century to be used later in a collage (when really I should have been revising for my finals). I could recognise some of the faces and locations of the shots, but most were unknown to me. Granny – the one person who held most information about the pictures – took it upon herself to sort them further. Her method was to keep only photos for which we had certain information. By the time she had finished her audit most of the pictures were crumpled in the bin, and my collage project was no longer viable.

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Rousse defends her position, welcomes a friend, and attempts to teach

Posted on July 23, 2011 by Dreamaticus

I travelled up the building squeezed into a lift with two colleagues. Over months one of them had developed a dangerous patter in snide remarks about my leadership. When yet another oblique and insulting comment escaped from his dirty little mouth I faced up to him with a reminder of what the alternative could be. Trapped with me in confined space, he backed down.

Out in the corridor once more I was delighted to run into BD again. However, I was rather puzzled. Wasn’t he destined for Canada after his trip to Italy? He announced that he had changed his mind. BD followed me along to my new office. He chose the desk by the window with the view over the housing estate and the city in the distance.

I then set off for my first class of the new academic year. Over the summer vacation my fame had grown and the classroom was packed to the point that there were not enough chairs for everyone. While working out how to handle the seating crisis I screamed at a mature student to get off her mobile phone and comforted a small skinny lad who was in tears because I hadn’t been able to offer him a free place at a conference. I knew that I was in trouble when I glanced at the clock and noticed that it was already 10 minutes past the hour.

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Rousse pays homage to shark-wrestling Finnish immigrant

Posted on July 22, 2011 by Dreamaticus

It was a bad day: I lost my shoes (black patent leather Mary Janes), mislaid my headphones, and couldn’t face a bare-footed music-less walk home. To my rescue came Professor JM. She offered me a lift down the A1 with a stop-off in the fishing village where her Finnish mother spent her childhood. I paid homage to her mother’s bravery when JM showed me the fossilised shark. This was the exact same creature that her mother had wrestled with on the floor to victory when she was barely a lass.

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A visit to Gilbert and George’s pizzeria (Belle)

Posted on July 21, 2011 by Dreamaticus

An unlikely group of us had been gathered together in the east London home of artists Gilbert and George. For many years I had made no secret of my loathing of their work yet now I found myself charmed by both of them – and their home. The eclectic collection of beautiful and amusing objects was exactly what I was trying to achieve in my own home.

Gilbert and George kept a pet pig who had once competed at Crufts disguised as a dog. The yellow winner’s rosette was displayed in the downstairs cloakroom.

Over the course of a long dinner our hosts kept gently moving guests and items on the dinner table until I glanced in the mirror and was astonished to see that they had used the dinner party guests to re-create a living tableau of The Last Supper. What an amazing, transitory, act of creative genius! And no-one else had spotted it. I jumped up and cheered enthusiastically. From now on, as far as I was concerned, Gilbert and George were the bee’s knees.

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Rousse tries – and fails – to relax

Posted on July 21, 2011 by Dreamaticus

Belle knew that I had been overworking so she invited me to her hospital where I could take a few hours away from my computer. The catch was that I had to do this incognito and in silence. Creeping around the operating theatres really was not my style, and the only way that I could keep my mouth shut in the staff room was to cosy up on a sofa next to Belle with a copy of Take a break.

It was not long before I was drawn back to work. I’d already been fretting about my next conference keynote and my anxiety levels rose even further when I sat under a table at the front of the auditorium listening to first speaker. I concluded that they must have all the time in the world at the Oxford Internet Institute: this guy was delivering his entire speech in verse.

In another attempt to relax I visited my sister J and her family in the beautiful south. There’d been a few more changes to her house: a stone sign to direct walkers off their land and onto the railway path, and a strange contraption that looked like a cross between an upturned bath and an oven had taken the place of the front door. It was now extremely difficult to get into the house and I wondered if our mother would ever be able to stay there again. Somehow I managed to negotiate entry. I then headed straight upstairs to raid J’s wardrobe and came away with a shocking pink denim skirt and a matching mohair bolero cardigan.

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Nobody is impressed by Rousse’s recent awards

Posted on July 20, 2011 by Dreamaticus

I picked up two more awards: one for my skilful canoeing and another for exemplary pedestrian behaviour. However TPR, RG and BM took little notice. Although it was a beautiful day, they refused to spare even half an hour to come with me to the enormous beach to celebrate.

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