My efforts exceeded all expectations.
Not only did I donate two of the plumpest rhubarb stalks to the war effort, I also led others to the Dutch embassy next to Buckingham Palace to ensure that they also made their own mandated contributions.
While I had been away on holiday, the gym had undergone a massive transformation. Pilates classes were now taking place in a huge gym hall, with three instructors simultaneously leading sessions. The two instructors on the lower level favoured ‘traditional’ pilates. I was more interested in the activities on the mezzanine, where the focus was on dance moves.
I had travelled to the gym by car with PM, intending to join the same class as her. However, when my colleague BP rushed up to me to invite me to partner him in the dance pilates class, I abandoned my friend. We struggled at first with headphones and ear pieces, but not long afterwards BP and I were soon dancing our hearts out. What a blast!
The next day I learnt that BP had fallen down a well at his sister’s house in Australia. My dance partner had survived his fall, but broken many bones.
My skills as a bus driver were called into question when I offered an apologetic explanation for poor stop management.
‘I saw that there was a stationary bus in front of me, and another behind, which I guessed was also hoping to pull in. I used intuition to determine my manoeuvres.’
‘Intuition is irrelevant to insurance claims’, said the other driver.
My sister S snapped down the lid of her laptop when she noticed that I had been observing her editing a blog post. When had she learnt this skill, I wondered?
Under the impression that I could not have possibly had time to clock the URL of her site, she boasted that I would never discover her innermost thoughts, whether online or elsewhere.
Of course she was wrong. I couldn’t wait to scurry back to the privacy of my bedroom to download all the posts tagged ‘sistas’.
When my sister S ‘accidentally’ dropped an ornament into her bulging handbag, my other sister J exclaimed ‘So what else from this shop have you dropped in there?!’
It was a mistake to speak so loudly within earshot of the store manager. She marched over and demanded that S empty her bag – and tip out a hefty stash of stolen treasures.
I grabbed my ‘hand luggage’ of soap bag, a pair of black ankle boots and a pair of socks, and headed to the meeting point at Reception. There I greeted the others. Then, with just a couple of minutes to spare, I decided to go and clean my teeth.
The ladies’ room was packed, and I only managed to get a basin to myself by pushing others out of the way. In the meantime, my friends had left Reception to board the huge limo destined for the airport. I had to hurry to be certain that the driver would not leave without me.
The route to the airport wound along narrow lanes, and the driver did well to negotiate all the bends in so large a vehicle. At one point, however, she needed to take a break from concentrating on the road. She pulled up into a lay-by on the coastal road. Here all the passengers disembarked, walked down the a path to the shoreline, and transferred to a waiting boat.
I was left behind because I wasn’t paying attention to the instructions for the next stage of the journey. Instead I was distracted, watching in fascination at a man riding through the surf on the back of a huge whale.
My new boyfriend was obsessed with me. He was an aristocrat and heir to a large estate and a stately home. He liked to wear high heels with his Savile Row suits. Due to his status, and me being common, we had to keep our affair a secret.
Unfortunately, his parents found out about me and made it their life’s work to split us up.
I had made arrangements for a group of colleagues to attend a week-long conference in Finland. However, I had forgotten that the Winter Olympics were scheduled at the same time, and my colleagues were going to find it almost impossible to travel across the city. Realising my mistake, I warned them that a new sporting venue had been built between their hotel and the conference venue. Sadly I couldn’t remember the name of the sport and called it “the fancy toboggan”.
The proprietor of the bed and breakfast was just as surprised as we were to find a formal French garden, complete with a miniature railway, laid out between his guest house and the vast beach of Uig Sands.