Expelled for missing the bus (Rousse)

Posted on August 28, 2025 by Dreamaticus

It was a huge honour to have been appointed to this high profile expert panel to work with the most senior UK academics and the country’s top civil servants.

After Day 1 of important confidential debate, the chair released us for the evening with strict instructions to return on time in the morning. Anyone who dared to arrive late would be expelled.

I spent the evening at my cousins’ farm in Somerset, happy to take a break after the serious business of the day. The next morning, it felt like therapy to sit on the floor and play with my tiniest relatives.

Then I noticed the time. If I didn’t move quickly, I’d be late for Day 2 of panel work. I raced out of the house and tried the flag down the bus that was just pulling away from the stop.

The mean driver refused to wait for me. In that moment I knew that I was doomed to carry forever the shame of being expelled from the most prestigious role of my career.

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A chaotic evening in Peckham (Belle)

Posted on August 27, 2025 by Dreamaticus

My friend S encouraged me to attend what promised to be a ‘spectacular’ event hosted by the Peckham Society.

Things went wrong immediately when S handed me her phone and told me I was now the official videographer for the evening. However, she refused to give me the code to unlock the phone, so I found myself in an endless loop of walking to where she was sitting, having her enter her code, walking to the front of the stage, finding the phone had locked again, and back around.

The first performer arrived. It was an elderly man weaving on an ancient loom. He explained what he was doing in a foreign language. No translator was provided. Then several dancers took to the stage. It was clear, however, that dance partners were meeting for the first time on stage, there had been no rehearsals and none of them knew how to lindyhop.

The evening dragged on. I hadn’t eaten all day. I started to giggle hysterically and other audience members joined in. I knew I was going to be blamed for this fiasco.

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A bonus bungalow (Rousse)

Posted on August 26, 2025 by Dreamaticus

TPR and I thought that we had bought just one house in the country. Then the estate agent pointed out that the dormer bungalow along the lane was also ours. This would be a great bonus for our guests. If it suited them, they could have the complete privacy whenever they came to stay with us.

RH was our next visitor. After some debate over the location of white cotton bed linen, TPR and I wandered along the road to check whether the bungalow was in a fit state to receive guests.

It was not. The previous owners had not fully cleared the house before the sale. Instead they had left behind hundreds of ugly ornaments on every available surface. With the exception of an angular glug jug, these knick-knacks were not to our tastes at all. But now we faced a dilemma: to take everything to a charity shop, or start selling to collectors on eBay?

The next problem was the upper floor of the bungalow. Of the three internal staircases that appeared to lead there, only one actually did.

There was also an external set of steps and this was teeming with people. Above us we found that the entire top level of the bungalow was used by the locals as a community centre. They were horrified to learn that we – as the new owners of the property – might close down the facility.

It seemed to us that RH would be staying with us in the main house after all.

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Pensioners purchase Perthshire sporting estate popular with Germans (Rousse)

Posted on August 25, 2025 by Dreamaticus

My elderly in-laws bought a sporting estate in Perthshire. It came complete with a majestic main house, numerous workers’ cottages, stables and other outbuildings, and a stretch of prime salmon fishing (normally let out to rude German tourists who had never before in their lives caught a single fish).

The main house was so difficult to navigate that my father-in-law had posted little notes on all the doors and along the corridors to keep everyone straight.

Given that they were now into the eighties and in declining health, I saw no advantage in this ambitious move, other than to join the general family migration north.

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Seaside town tourist car parking woes (Rousse)

Posted on August 25, 2025 by Dreamaticus

My old head of department JH found the perfect parking spot right next to the harbour in the crowded seaside town. We considered ourselves very lucky – until a huge wave crashed over the harbour wall and left the car bobbing in the water.

We all raced back to the vehicle, desperate to prevent it drifting out to sea. TPR grabbed the wheel, then the rest of us jumped in. We managed to speed uphill to higher ground to find a safer place to park.

Here, however, we were too far away to walk back into the town. Senior Lecturer AT, who had never taken a driving lesson in his life, insisted that he drive the car back downhill and hunt for a more convenient spot. He managed the former, but in attempting the latter he bounced the car across a ditch, destroying its entire undercarriage. Now it made no difference where we parked the car. Nobody would ever be able to drive it again.

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Mugged on the way to a pantomime (Belle)

Posted on August 23, 2025 by Dreamaticus

I was escorting my colleague L to the pantomime when a stranger ran up to me and pressed an envelope into my hand and said “this is the the last of your inheritance”. I peeked inside and saw an attractive mid-20th century diamond ring. This made it even more important that my colleague stopped showing off her phone as we walked through east London. “Keep your eyes on the swivel” I said to her. Despite my warning, she found herself being mugged by a young couple. I just stepped back and watched everything being taken off L while I casually started breaking the mugger’s girlfriend’s fingers. She barely noticed the pain, and kept watching her boyfriend empty L’s pockets.

Later, after the pantomime, my inheritance ring fell to the floor of the stalls. The ‘diamonds’ fell out of the ring and were glowing in the lights. My inheritance was cheap costume jewellery after all.

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Living in two parallel dimensions (Rousse)

Posted on August 21, 2025 by Dreamaticus

TPR was upset that I had chosen to sit next to HVJ rather than him on the tiny plane to Shetland. ‘That’s because I was thinking of our guest’, I argued.

HVJ was confused when she saw that the streets of Lerwick were identical to the streets of Cardiff. ‘That’s because we exist in two parallel dimensions, one in a familiar town and another in one that (technically) is not’, I explained.

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Fake retiree organist outed by the press (Rousse)

Posted on August 20, 2025 by Dreamaticus

All the shops on Edinburgh’s Broughton Street opened late to cater for Festival visitors. I felt particularly sorry for the staff at Crombies, still dressed in their white butchery outfits at 9pm.

Nevertheless, my father-in-law and I took advantage of the extended shop opening hours to buy some cut-price gifts (including a lime green snakeskin wallet), and to pick up a steaming joint of lamb that my sister J had paid for earlier in the day.

Our purchases were soon forgotten when we returned home. We found everyone glued to the television news. It seemed that a whistleblower had finally informed on the least popular member of our household.

When she returned home later, she marched into the flat screaming that all the accusations were false. She had not faked her retirement. Nor was she an ‘organist’, whatever that meant.

I did not respond, but simply wondered when the rest of my revelations would be made public.

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Kidnapped by vegans and rescued by a drugged fruit salad (Belle)

Posted on August 19, 2025 by Dreamaticus

The conference had taken an unexpected turn when a small group of people stormed the venue. They were reviewing the menus and checking the biscuits for butter content. The delegates spent the night sleeping on the floor.

The next morning, one of our captors sought me out. She offered me a bowl of fruit salad and winked at me conspiratorially. She told me I could easily leave the venue by carrying the bowl with me and to enjoy the ‘cream’ as it had “really good hallucinogens”.

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The trial of Nicola Sturgeon (Rousse)

Posted on August 19, 2025 by Dreamaticus

The trial of Nicola Sturgeon did not live up to the hype. Indeed, at times it was more entertaining for me to observe other members of the audience than fix my eyes on the screen. Given that we were in a cinema in Edinburgh, some of these people must have known the film’s two protaganists (Sturgeon and Alex Salmond). I actually slept through the most boring scenes.

Afterwards I lost TPR’s yellow and pink striped jumper and my navy blue swimming costume when cycling back through the city to our hall of residence for grown-ups.

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