So few people used Ellansgate in Hexham these days that the former tarmac road was now an overgrown rooted path.
At the junction with Quatre Bras I showed SL the old salmon pool, the obedient yellow ducklings, and the tall, thin, 26-room, white-bricked house that I used to call home.
We climbed through the steep woods of Lanarkshire, then over the heath to the loch. Our nephew FG did well to keep up with us.
I was the first to reach the ridge above the water. I laid my camera down on the grass – from where it rolled downhill. I ran into the loch to retrieve it from the waves, calling for TPR at the top of my voice.
Further along the shoreline, chatting to the others, TPR could not hear me. Not only was I soaked through, but now I was also completely hoarse.
While Princess Anne drove, I told her all about my new self-driving car.
‘It’s amazing in multi-storey car parks’, I boasted. ‘It can even loop other vehicles when coming down the exit ramp’.
The only drawback that I had noticed so far was the car’s confusion when it entered a pedestrian zone. This happened to me in Birmingham city centre. Even the car’s specialist binoculars were of no use to help it navigate to a road.
Then I changed the subject to the Princess Royal’s hair. How long was it exactly?
The Princess shrugged off my enquiry, more concerned that there was an accident ahead. If we were held up in traffic, she would be sure to be recognised and then her safety compromised.
I came across KS in Cambridge, keen to see the medieval tapestries that I had catalogued. I showed her into the exhibition.
I didn’t dare ask why she wasn’t at home caring for her demented husband.
JS and I met out old university friend JG on a grassy bank. Dressed in a huge 1980s style fawn jacket over jeans, there was something rather strange about his demeanour.
We learnt that he had suffered a stroke that had disabled the left side of his body. This explained much – including the static, plastic-looking ‘Hollywood hand’ hanging from the cuff of his left sleeve.
The posh man to the left of me asked if we would be going to the Saturday night disco at Edinburgh airport. He assured me that the music would be to our tastes – but then I realised that I already had a commitment that night so couldn’t join him there.
I couldn’t reach SD’s house in Stirling in time for our book group meeting so made a separate arrangement to meet LM in Greenock.
While I streamed the gathering in SD’s garden to my phone, I negotiated the ticket barrier and fierce railway station staff to catch a train west.
This ‘train’ was, in fact, a small boat. It carried a mix of passengers, including school children and a couple of people on stretchers, across the choppy sea to an island in the distance.
LM was nowhere to be seen. Perhaps meeting at book group in Stirling would have been an easier option for us both?
The pock-marked intruder was chewing on a cabbage leaf from my vegetable patch. There was no indication of how he had scaled the high wall, and I was certain that he had not come through the house, so it was a complete mystery as to how he had managed to gain entry to my garden.
As I asked the stranger about the purpose of his ‘visit’, I saw that the small spiral notebook in his left hand was opened on a page where three different spellings of ‘Haydon Bridge’ had been tested. I wondered if – rather than a former student or work colleague – this man might be a genealogical researcher.
I was right. He was pretty certain that we were connected to family D. When I told him emphatically that we were not, his face dropped. He has been hoping that we would be the final piece in the jigsaw to explain his deadly inherited disease.
TPR bought us a second home in Lanarkshire – without making a single viewing. The details in the printed sales brochure was enough to convince him that this was an excellent investment.
On arrival at the cottage for the first time, we discovered the reason that it had been on the market for so long: traffic thundering along the M74 just a couple of hundred yards from the overgrown garden.
Hiding my anger at my husband’s foolish purchase, I started to investigate the building itself. Behind the first door, I found a small room filled with colourful fairground equipment, including gleaming carousel horses. Beyond this was a huge well-equipped workshop with every tool you’d ever need for household DIY. This pleased me, but not enough to forgive my idiot spendthrift husband.
I left TPR in the garden while I took a wander round the village. It took ages for me to find my way back again because I got lost on the golf course.
TPR was divorcing me. I needed a new husband fast. LA, now known as ‘George’ and a recently-appointed colleague, was the best candidate.
I wondered (a) whether AN would approve when she found out that I had not revealed my connection to LA when we interviewed him for the job, and (b) how I would cope with all my new step-children.
Dreamaticus 