Matt LeBlanc promotes Episodes by signing autographs and decorating a cake at Chateau Impney (Rousse)

Posted on January 7, 2011 by Dreamaticus

DE and LP had organised the graduation ball and it was a complete honour for me to travel there with them. The three of us sat on the back seat as TPR drove us through Stockbridge and then along Ferry Road. DE and LP were dressed in smart jeans and matching baby pink and blue short-sleeved cashmere jumpers. I had been in such a rush to get ready that I had run out of time to wash my hair, thrown on my cerise ballgown in a hurry, and forgotten to put on any tights. At least I had remembered my blond hairpiece. (In the end I left it behind in the car because it looked so silly.)

TPR himself couldn’t attend the party due to a business meeting commitment in Torpichen, West Lothian. Instead he dropped us off outside the main gates of the hotel. He seemed quite upset to leave us, and passionately kissed DE and me in the face of on-coming traffic. Then DE, LP and I crossed over the road and picked our way up the uneven path to the party venue, which I now recognised as Chateau Impney from a visit in the late 1980s. We were rather startled to come across a bunch of ragged school children at the top, but were reassured by their teacher that their activities were taking part in a completely different part of the building, so they would not disturb us.

I left DE and LP for a group of immediate colleagues and a tray of petits fours. The conversation was focused on the latest exploits of KT. She had written in to a fashion magazine with an idea for a feature. The editor had liked it so much that a whole section of the magazine was given over to KT’s fashion tips, including full-length photos of KT taken in a very posh hotel bedroom. I was most impressed. However, what happened next is something that only dreams are made of…

Matt LeBlanc was at the party, and it appeared that I was the one that he wanted to be with! I worked out that he was in the UK to promote the new BBC comedy Episodes, and asked him whether he considered attending the ball to be for work or pleasure. As soon as he declared that it was a work commitment I raked through my handbag for scrap paper and a pen, then asked him to sign autographs for all my female relations. He willingly obliged, taking his time to write out his name (in – it has to be admitted – quite childish writing). Other party guests around us became impatient. They were worried that their turn for time with Matt would never come. I was also concerned at what the students’ reaction would be once they spotted Matt LeBlanc in our midst. Just as we were about to go through to the dining room I noticed that Matt had forgotten to dedicate one of his autographs. To make it up to me he iced a cake. The design was hilarious: a picture of Matt’s Friends character Joey’s face in brown and green icing with the hair, dedication and autograph in swirly white lines. Just as it was finished one of Matt’s incisors dropped out. When he said that I could keep the tooth as a souvenir of the evening I wondered how much I’d get for it on eBay.

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Rousse’s “pregnant” pal publishes pathetic post

Posted on January 6, 2011 by Dreamaticus

After much persuasion I allowed a friend to publish a post on Dreamaticus. Belle and I read it together. “It’s not funny at all” I moaned, deeply disappointed. “It looks like she doesn’t even know that she is pregnant”.

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Rousse’s disturbed night’s sleep and cheating husband

Posted on January 5, 2011 by Dreamaticus

Such was the urgency when I woke that I immediately reached for the pen and paper on the bedside table. It was imperative that I capture my funny dream before it had a chance to escape into the night.

It was hunger that woke me the second time. I quietly padded downstairs to the big kitchen, drawn by the smell of freshly baked bread. I found two large hot white rolls on the table, and – luckily – I also noticed that we had forgotten to turn off two pans of stock before going to bed. Soon after I settled down for my midnight feast, I was joined by our university friend GW. By the time TPR appeared – complaining at the disturbance – barely a crumb was left on our plates.

The next time I woke it was in a panic. There was a gun in the bed! TPR was so sound asleep that I struggled to rouse him. Five shots rang out and all I could think was how relieved I was that there was nobody else in the house.

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I recognised the couple from earlier in the day. They were also tourists, and had been browsing the same antique shops as us. It seemed a little forward of them to now take seats at our outside bar table, especially when there was plenty of space elsewhere. However, neither I nor TPR (now French) exhibited any signs of surprise. I started to pay more attention to the couple when the husband painted two saucer-sized areas on the rough wooden table. I guessed correctly that he was marking out areas for playing some sort of game. Once the paint was dry, the pair of them took out pencils and covered the painted areas with columns of figures. I couldn’t work out the rules of the game, but it looked like a hybrid of noughts and crosses and sudoku. Just as I was about to ask how to play, TPR declared that he’d made his last Scrabble move, and he’d won with a score of 702. He must have been cheating: I was yet to lay a single tile on our board.

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Old records, new media and Lassie (Belle)

Posted on January 4, 2011 by Dreamaticus

I was travelling on the old East London Line from New Cross and I was weighed down with boxes of vinyl records and plastic bags and goodness knows what. The dog was off the lead and I spent the entire journey worrying about where he was. It would be just like him to get off every time the doors opened so I had to shout his name loudly like a lunatic at every station. At one point there was a public service announcement that an animated character was now back online, and several trendy young men took out their iPhones and other devices with an air of celebration. I shook my head at them. Let them have their games. I had a boxful of 1970s Top of the Pops tribute albums, and more besides.

We were travelling to see C and D who were now living in a big house overlooking the A1. I was embarrassed about how much I was carrying. It seemed to have expanded and C had to help me out of the station. As we watched out of her upstairs window, Lassie was causing chaos, crossing eight lanes of traffic and sometimes climbing over the cars. I tutted and then remembered something. Where was my dog?

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Rousse astounded by Edinburgh taxi fares, abducted colleagues and brown jelly fish

Posted on January 4, 2011 by Dreamaticus

We ended up in the lobby of the Scotsman Hotel on North Bridge in Edinburgh. The journey taken earlier to collect a couple of documents from my office was less than half a mile, so I guessed that the five pound note pulled from my purse would cover it. My work visitor also started scrabbling around in her handbag for cash, but I persuaded her to put her money away on the grounds that I could claim the cost back on expenses. The taxi driver – a tiny old lady with a fierce stare – scowled at my offering and said “£13”. I put the five pound note away and extracted a twenty. She crossly rejected this too, with the words “I said £30!” I reluctantly handed over the full amount, but no tip. This was the last time I would book an Edinburgh taxi on a Sunday morning in the holidays.

There was yet another surprise at work when I returned after the break. My old office mate had vanished and was replaced by a small Japanese woman who could barely speak English. She had colonised my space on the left hand side by the door, so I was expected to take position on the right by the window. I popped next door to ask MR and AA what was going on. However, like PT, it appeared that they had been abducted too. Their room was bare, expect for a large man huddled over AA’s computer keyboard. He looked dangerous, so I backed out of the room as fast as possible. Fortunately I don’t think that he spotted me.

On another day TPR and I were sunbathing near the dune at the top of the beach when we spotted the first tsunami warning signs. As the sea disappeared into the distance beyond the usual shoreline we reminded one another of the routine: take a deep breath and cling to each other when the wave strikes. This time it wasn’t as painful as before and we survived. The brown jelly fish shaped like enormous sultanas thrown up by the wave were new on this occasion.

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An unhappy house swap (Belle)

Posted on January 3, 2011 by Dreamaticus

I swapped houses with my friend P and found myself living in a seaside town where I knew no-one. I was desperate to move back to London, but it seemed P had other ideas. She had called a meeting of friends to tell us all exactly how we were to behave now that she was living in my home. She had a strategic plan while I had just drifted along! It proved impossible to tell her that I wanted to swap back. I was disconcerted that every time I looked at her, she had a new hairstyle. One minute she was Floella Benjamin, then she sported a royal blue mohican. At the end of the meeting she told us she was going to shave her head and we had all better like it.

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Rousse reassesses her office accommodation and professional dress

Posted on January 2, 2011 by Dreamaticus

I found a solution to my office accommodation problem. If I “temporarily” moved downstairs to share with visiting Professor GW, when she returned to Finland I’d get the whole room all to myself, including the emerald green carpet and the huge antique mahogany wardrobes. Another bonus would be a position next door to BP. The single drawback was fewer reasons to run up and down the stairs between floors, so I would get less exercise than of late.

Next on the agenda were PhD supervisions. I rang my sister J on Holy Island for advice. She suggested that the students might take me a little more seriously if I dressed more professionally for work. Did I really expect to command their respect when sporting my purple fleece pyjamas?

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Belle cooks Rousse’s bacon and applauds Princess Diana

Posted on January 2, 2011 by Dreamaticus

I had been a guest at Rousse’s. While she was out, I decided to pay my way by performing domestic tasks. The obvious first step was to grill all the bacon on the eye-level grill. I then cleaned up after the vomiting cat and wandered off to have a nap. On returning to the kitchen, I bumped into the cleaner, who wasn’t too pleased that I was dressed in her pinnie. The bacon was still under the grill, half cooked. I wrapped it in foil and put it in the fridge.

Rousse was NOT impressed with my labour saving pre-cooked bacon. Frightened by her temper, I decided to leave the house, and ended up on the deck of an enomous grey destroyer, wearing a wet suit and being encouraged to participate in dangerous sports. This was not my cup of tea, so I wandered off to see Princess Diana. To get there I walked through a quaint, medieval estate that seemed to have been taken over by the English Defence League or some such. I put my head down and refused to take a leaflet from them. Eventually, I reached the corner of the street where a delighted Princess Diana was walking in a procession, celebrating her second wedding. She was wearing a bright pink sari and had dyed her hair to match. The crowd was thrilled and we all cheered. The whole event was so joyful, I walked round the block and travelled back in time so I could see it all over again.

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Snowy conditions and dodgy map cause travel chaos near Cambridge (Rousse)

Posted on January 1, 2011 by Dreamaticus

Our journey south was severely hampered by the weather conditions and resulting traffic chaos. As we attempted to join the A12 in the snow just outside Cambridge, others were reversing up the hard shoulder of the slip road in an attempt to escape the gridlock. TPR hesitated at the roundabout, turned the car around again, and declared that we would have to find an alternative route ourselves.

A consequence of this was that I was appointed to my least favourite role: navigator. I reached for the road atlas on the back seat and hunted for the right page. The map was useless. Down the west of England it showed only one thin road that followed the route of the M6, but none of the major towns such as Liverpool and Manchester featured on the pages at all. I concluded that the map was simply out of date, charted before the Industrial Revolution. However, there were further problems with the information as presented on the pages in front of me. Since when had Andover and Axminster been relocated to Peterborough?

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How RG could practise law in Scotland from a base in England did not concern him, nor BM. When we visited them in their new London flat they seemed to be very pleased with their move south.

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A one-legged soldier wins Belle’s heart

Posted on January 1, 2011 by Dreamaticus

I was living in a new house-share, overlooking Greenwich Park. Every time I came home, yet another long-haired cat had moved in. Where were they all coming from? One of my new flatmates was a handsome one-legged soldier, who had made an Oscar-winning documentary about his regiment. What a heart-throb! Everytime he walked into the room my knees buckled. Embarrassingly, after naming one of the cats ‘Clint’, I realised that this was the soldier’s name too. My crush was revealed.

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