While TPR fixed my cousin A’s computer, I was watching my father in conversation at the other end of the room.
He was telling someone about his contacts inside, and their assumptions about his work as a vet. He was looking forward to seeing them again after his couple of days of Christmas release.
Finally I had an explanation for my father’s recent absence. He’d been in prison! But what had been his crime?
Pressed up against KJ, I could feel his erratic heart beat through my clothing. I whispered ‘Are you OK?’, and he nodded his head.
At the other end of the dining table, another friend raised his eyebrows in question. I interpreted this as a silent comment on my apparent intimacy with KJ. I mouthed back that I was checking up on an ill friend, and not to worry.
DTJ, seated between us, observed this exchange. She was of the opinion that KJ was faking his illness. She pointed across the table at another guest and shouted ‘Look at him! He’s the one who is really ill!’.
Before she was a housewife, HVJ worked in publishing.
She kept a tiny souvenir of her short career in her beautiful house: a proud display of blue-backed Mills and Boon titles, tastefully encased in a table-top cabinet.
My husband scampered up the narrow wooden foot-ladder, dropped down into the next room, then rushed off to seek the rest of his family at the massive party. I followed him up the rungs, but hesitated at the top. This route to the celebration wasn’t as straightforward as I thought.
I saw TPR’s sister JLR in the room beneath me.
‘Please could you call TPR back to help me?’ I shouted down to her.
I waited for a while, but when nobody came to my aid, I managed to make my way down to the huge hotel room. I walked along a corridor and peered into the conference halls. In each one there appeared to be a different party underway.
When I eventually cornered TPR, he looked pale and sheepish.
‘You’ve not fallen in love again?’ I asked him. I was really beginning to tire of his pathetic infatuations.
Ancient deer antlers transform into the most beautiful fossils. They keep the same shape and texture, but as sections of heavy glassy amber.
The passengers swarmed at the foot of the ferry steps, then formed a queue to leave the boat. Once on the quayside, I realised that I had left my 3 foot tall replica Lewis chessman on the vessel. Fortunately, however, one of the other passengers coming up the ladder was carrying it in their arms.
‘Thank you so much’, I said, lunging forward to take my holiday souvenir from her.
‘Whatever do you mean?’ cried the stranger, hugging the chessman to her chest. ‘This is mine, and not yours.’ It was obvious that it would be pointless arguing with her.
I waited until all the passengers had disembarked, then climbed back down the steps to complain to the CalMac crew about their criminal customers. They were very sympathetic to my plight. As compensation they allowed me to select a souvenir of my choice from the on-board shop. My brand new Lewis chessman was so much smarter than that purloined earlier.
The entire class – along with PC, who was calling himself Tom Mortimer – squeezed into a tiny yellow mini. Former PhD candidate LK took the wheel.
We bumped across the Edinburgh cobbles into Moray Place. When I pointed out that our destination was at the other end of the New Town, LK turned right into Forres Street. Her intention was to take a left turn at the junction with Queen Street.
‘This won’t work!’ I shouted from the back seat. ‘There are bollards at the top’.
‘That doesn’t bother me’, replied LK, somehow weaving the car between them, then travelling along the pavement for a few yards before joining the stream of traffic heading east along Queen Street.
Suddenly from the right, a yellow taxi swept in front of us and forced LK to bring the mini to a halt back on the pavement again. The taxi driver declared that he had all the footage necessary to convict LK of dangerous driving, and that we were all about to be arrested as her conspirators.
TPR and I fell in with Glasgow comedian mop-haired Jello and his crowd on tour in Germany. When TPR wandered off, I ended up alone with Jello and a few of his German friends in a château for an evening of partying – or so I thought.
On arrival at the grand venue, the staff showed us into an enormous, beautiful (if rather chilly) formal drawing room with long tall windows offering magnificent views down the valley. Then a tall, skinny, dark-haired German took me to one side to tell me that he was looking forward to spending the evening with me. This was fine as far as I was concerned – so long as this was in the context of the group as a whole.
Then I noticed that everyone else had disappeared. The German opened another door into a large room that contained an oversized bed covered in a single white sheet. He hurried out of his clothes and evidently expected me to do the same.
This was not on. I explained that I would happy to sit and chat with my companion, but I was not interested in anything more. After I convinced him to leave me alone, Jello appeared, suggesting that I climb into bed with him. What was wrong with these people? They had met my husband, we came across as ‘respectable’, and it had already come up in conversation that I was a Member of the Scottish Parliament (MSP).
Then I spotted the cameras. This was a set-up. The idea was to catch an MSP ‘with her pants down’ and sell the story to the press. My priority now as to get out of here fast so that I would reach TPR and the British newspapers before the Germans.
A free woman again, I was making up for lost time.
My first assignation was with EF, a French engineer. We shared a white tandem ride along the East Lothian coast, comparing the beaches that we passed with others that we knew in France and the Outer Hebrides.
The most remarkable sight of our journey, however, was the most enormous seal. The size of a elephant, it pulled itself out of the water and lumbered up the shoreline to the settle in a sand dune for the afternoon.
I had my suspicions when TPR told me that he would pop back to our flat in the middle of the conference for a shower.
These strengthened when he asked where he would find my hair straighteners. This was a strange request from someone with a very short, close-cropped, haircut.
When he said that it would not be a good idea for me to follow him home, I asked him outright: ‘You’re having an affair, aren’t you?’
He nodded, unable to resist a triumphant smile.
Dreamaticus 