My mother’s teenage face covered the advertising hoardings of Leith.
When I pointed out to her the pictures and accompanying quotations, she confessed that she had no recollection of ever volunteering her image and views for any 1950s publicity campaign.
My mother’s driving was truly terrible. Why was she in such a rush to reach the coast? The beautiful weather was forecast to hold, so there really was no hurry.
When we stopped at the hotel for lunch, it all made sense. My mother sat at a white-clothed table with my father, showing him underwater photographs of dead fish.
I listened in at a distance, amazed to hear my father’s voice again. He was in good health for someone who was dead. I was not, however, invited to join them for the meal.
I was the star in a theatre production of a new pirate play called Palm.
My university friend HB was waiting for me in the lobby of the Welsh Assembly with a slightly overweight woman who resembled her.
‘Hello’, I said cheerily as I introduced myself. ‘You must be HB’s sister.’
‘No, I am Liz Truss, the Foreign Secretary’, she replied in disgust.
Then the three of us found our positions in a meeting room for a televised debate. The politicians became increasingly annoyed when they noticed that the members of the public in attendance were more interested in sports news broadcast on a large screen in the corner of the room than they were in the views of the Foreign Secretary. Technical staff hovered in the background, ready to pull the plug on one or other of these two forms of ‘entertainment’.
He called himself ‘Rikki’, but we really had no idea of the real identity of the dark, masked stranger. He could well be a con man.
Even when he spilt red wine all over the cream sitting room carpet at my in-laws’ house, they instantly forgave him.
By now I was beginning to doubt that he was even a living creature.
I opened the oven door for the first time in months, only to discover a whole roast chicken inside. How long had it been there, I wondered. Still confused, I opened the parcel I found on my doorstep. Two packs of frozen peas, that should have been delivered to a gentleman in Doncaster. “What a loser,” I thought, “buying frozen peas from Amazon” – only to remember he wasn’t the person with a mysterious forgotten roast chicken in his kitchen.
My office was the size of a bus shelter. It contained a desk, shower cubicle, and a toilet – plus two other workers. It really was too small for three, and was quite unpleasant whenever any of us used the facilities. There was a also a large shared kitchen across the corridor, but nobody ever took responsibility for keeping it clean and tidy. If you needed a dinner plate, there were plenty available – so long as you were prepared to do the washing up.
I escaped for an hour or so in a borrowed Smart car. My driving was even worse than ever. I nearly rammed into the back of a small truck at a busy road junction, took a wrong turn on to the walkway that ran along Mason Hall (on the University of Birmingham Vale campus), and almost knocked over two students as I bounced to a halt.
Life would be so much easier if I could just continue to work from home.
The room started to rumble, three women in British Airways uniforms stepped to the front, and it felt as though we were in flight. However, since we had not heard the safety briefing, I doubted that this were possible. When I ask the cabin staff, they pointed to the notice on the wall. We should all have read this, rather than expected to rely on verbal instructions.
Our room landed at Heathrow airport and we disembarked. For months, I had not seen so many joyful crowds of people gathered in such close proximity. I concluded that the pandemic was well and truly over.
A rag tag mix of former colleagues and students – including ED, LG, DMcA, and JC of the National Library of Scotland – formed a loose company of actors. We gathered for ‘rehearsals’ in the mews building of my childhood home.
As the date for our opening night approached, it was obvious that our play would never be ready to perform in time. So we changed our plans and created an exhibition about climate change instead.
Later LE and I gave into our feelings and kissed. We’d be in a huge amount of trouble – especially with our husbands TPR and GE – when the world at large came to know of our deep love for one another.
Dreamaticus 