Rousse attends her first ever “pre-wake”, complete with watermelon feast

Posted on March 27, 2011 by Dreamaticus

With KB I was attending my first ever “pre-wake”. This comprised a formal presentation by my friend (the future corpse) followed by a reception for all her friends, family and former colleagues. While I listened to the friend speak, I identified that the terms “cave” and “roses” would probably come in handy when the time came to write the letter of condolence to her partner. I scribbled the keywords of the speech onto the red napkin then stuffed it into my handbag. Then the food was marched into the room, held high above the serving staff’s heads. It was a feast of enormous watermelons, twice the size of footballs.

Afterwards I sought out someone to share the journey home. There were no trains available so the best option was to share a taxi. It didn’t take too long to find another academic destined for Preston.

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Rousse nets £25 million research grant, and mends her glasses

Posted on March 26, 2011 by Dreamaticus

The bad news at work was that I couldn’t shake off the ranting member of library staff from the University of Birmingham. It was unclear why she felt that she had to tail me all day, but I wished that she would just go away. Her shouting was extremely tiresome.

The good news, however, was that I’d won a £25 million research grant. I’d never seen my boss so happy.

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I joined the huge queue at the veterinary surgery and waited my turn. Eventually it came and I followed the nurse into the optical workshop. There she taught me how to insert the rice grain-sized pieces of rubber into the slots of spectacle arms, and I soon mended my glasses.

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10k personal best opportunity squandered at the supermarket (Rousse)

Posted on March 25, 2011 by Dreamaticus

I powered round the last bend of the race cheered on by FM. With a personal best of 48 minutes, she glowed with pride. There were just a few hundred metres to go and even I would make it within the hour, most likely with a remarkable finish time of 53 minutes! Then I spotted the yellow diversion sign. Ever-obedient I sped along the path into the supermarket car park, through the automatic store doors, and into the biggest Wal-Mart I had ever seen. A fully-functioning IKEA store was contained within it and – to my horror – I realised that I was running against the flow of Sunday afternoon shoppers. All my dreams of a sub-60 minute race were well and truly over.

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Elizabeth Taylor’s multiple husbands not unique (Rousse)

Posted on March 24, 2011 by Dreamaticus

Counting Richard Burton twice, Elizabeth Taylor had eight husbands – and so did I! By some miracle there were eight TPRs in the house. This was extremely handy, albeit a bit of a squash at bedtime.

One day as I returned home along North Bridge and down Leith Street I spied one of my TPRs hovering beside an Edinburgh City Council recycling unit. On closer inspection I realised that I had caught him in the act of throwing out a cupboard-full of my “may come in useful one day” clutter. I shot him a dirty look, then dived into the bin to retrieve the lid-less Tupperware boxes. There I also dug out a huge hoard of toddler equipment, some of it brand new. For my niece F I picked out some pretty little booties in the shape of a pair of grey mice, then stuffed them into my pocket.

When I re-emerged I was rather surprised to come face-to-face with a council employee. She demanded payment, quoting sums that were way higher than the recommended retail price for the goods that I had “rescued”.

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Celebrating Twitter’s fifth birthday in a London skyscraper (Rousse)

Posted on March 23, 2011 by Dreamaticus

Our new offices were on the fifteenth floor of a London skyscraper. I was pretty pleased with how my old belongings fitted into my new space until RK invited me into his new room – or, should we say, “suite”. His boss had given him a free hand to appoint a team of interior designers and builders, as well as funding for new furniture and fittings. Now my new office looked really shoddy in comparison.

Further up the building TM and I discovered the conference centre, managed by my school friend ECM. She enforced strict security measures. Before you could go through to the lecture halls you had to empty the contents of your handbag into a bin, and then the bag itself. I begged to be allowed back to my room where I would dispose of my belongings and – more importantly – get to keep my handbag. Most reluctantly, ECM sneaked me and TM past the security guard over to the lift and we set off on our journey back to the fifteenth floor. Unfortunately, by this time neither of us could remember the route. We caused huge embarrassment when we stumbled through a black curtain directly onto the stage where a woman was in the middle of a conference presentation on mobile communications: MO was there and she laughed. Then we mistook a tube carriage for the lift. We only realised our error when the train pulled into Redhill station.

In the middle of all this I pondered the role of Twitter at conferences. If you weren’t permitted to take your belongings into sessions in the conference centre (including laptops and mobile phones), how on earth could the conference facility claim that it supported amplified events?

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Duran Duran and a new TV detective drama (Rousse)

Posted on March 22, 2011 by Dreamaticus

Simon le Bon and other Duran Duran band members milled around the set, but the real star of the new detective drama was RH. It was RH’s first performing role, and quite a departure from his day job as assistant information manager for a professional body.

Given the proximity of Holy Island (the setting for the show) SS encouraged members of my running club to volunteer for walk-on parts. I was looking forward to starring in the scene when I would discover a clue in a lime green Croc.

To win my role, however, I had to fight two homeless women in the lower levels of a dark multi-storey car park. With the help of another amateur actor, who came to the rescue when he heard my screams, I managed to despatch this pair by bundling them into a gap in the car park wall. I then kindly referred my assailants to social services, other agencies and charities in the hope that they would soon find somewhere to live.

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Duchess of Cornwall and the Queen share a drink (Belle)

Posted on March 21, 2011 by Dreamaticus

I was standing at the bar with the Queen and the Duchess of Cornwall. I was telling the Queen about how my tour of America with the Duchess had gone. “Of course, most people haven’t got a clue who she is” I said, rather rudely.

At this the Duchess collapsed onto the floor and I bent down, trying to revive her. The Queen rolled her eyes and drank a glass of the house red.

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A campus love affair rudely interrupted, and a seaside crime (Rousse)

Posted on March 20, 2011 by Dreamaticus

While most colleagues met for Friday night drinks in Bruntsfield, I discovered that the senior staff held a private reception on a secret campus. I set off to investigate. I spotted current and former colleagues through the windows of a beautiful conservatory. These included SC, as well as Professor PS. I hadn’t seen PS for years – not since he’d left Edinburgh for London about a decade ago. Another colleague joined me on my mission and we began to explore the entire secret campus. We ended up in a luxurious hall of residence room where we settled into the big double bed to watch the Simpsons and snooze. As we sneaked away we believed that we had got away with our illicit stay – not even our partners would know of our tryst – but then a bossy member of staff appeared out of nowhere and cornered us. As far as she was concerned, I was an out of control drunkard and we both deserved to be sacked on the spot.

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I was suffering from cabin fever. We’d all been crammed into the Islay hotel bedroom for about five days. By now my parents were so worn out with this version of holidaying that they were happy enough to sleep all day, regardless of the mess that was accumulating around them. I could tolerate it no longer and dragged my nephew PF and niece AF away from their books to take them to the beach. There we bumped into SC and TM with their daughter A, still a six month old baby. Periodically TM burst into song, recalling his rock star past. I do not know what crime my nephew committed on this outing, but when I later took my place at the meeting in the police station I was determined to use to academic status to fight his cause. Heaven help anyone who dared to underestimate me.

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Anti-French feeling and fossilised fruit (Rousse)

Posted on March 19, 2011 by Dreamaticus

We even surprised ourselves when we signed up for the mediterranean cruise. However, this was a cruise with a difference. The small wooden boat was so packed that we fought for sleeping space at night, and most of the other passengers resembled refugees rather than holiday makers. The purpose of their trip was a means to travel from A to B. It was certainly not for pleasure. Since few were interested in the visits to islands en route, TPR and I took full advantage of the expert guides who led us to the ancient sites. The highlight of our holiday was hunting for fossilised fruit deep underground beneath the remains of a lost civilisation. This prehistoric people had buried hundreds of apples, bananas, pears and plums as offerings to the gods. Centuries later we took enormous pleasure in pulling their solid forms back out of the rubble.

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I’d forgotten just how officious the French could be. I’d last experienced the lengthy queues, multi-page forms, barked instructions, and rude staff wielding rubber stamps as weapons of officialdom in 1984. It all came back to me as we waited in line until midnight just to collect documentary authorisation for a short visit to the country. My university friend KH (now KN) complained that they had exactly the same problems each year when recruiting French teaching assistants to her school. I added this to the list of reasons why I was grateful not to be a school teacher.

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Queen cuts down official duties (Rousse)

Posted on March 18, 2011 by Dreamaticus

The pensioner at the till was agog. Could it really be true that the Queen would put in an appearance later in the day? What on earth was she doing in a tea shop in St Ives? Yes, came the explanation, so long as the Queen was not feeling too tired, she would come downstairs and meet her subjects. The catch was that the tea shop staff were talking about the Pearly Queen, not HRH Queen Elizabeth II. They didn’t let on. Meanwhile LM, rewriting her conference paper at a table by herself, paid little attention to this conversation.

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My sister S and I tackled the fridge. Just how many forms could rice take? We threw out a rice ring preserved in aspic, a solidified rice pudding, and a wilted rice salad. The Thai chicken curry looked edible so we ate that cold. It was actually quite nice – until we reached the foil-wrapped scalpels at the bottom of our bowls.

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Many of the reading rooms in New York public library were closed due to the flooding. As I descended the stairs I passed a number of young men who defied gravity by travelling on snowboards in the opposite direction. As they whooshed past me I thought “I want to learn how to do that!”

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