As aunt to one of Boris Johnson’s children, I was invited to the big family wedding.
I pulled back the shutters and looked out of the window of the first floor. Imagine my surprise when I saw a someone come flying through the sky on the back of a man-sized robin! Also, on the branches of the trees were hundreds of colourful birds. Here was confirmation that the UK parakeet problem had hit Edinburgh.
Then hundreds of people climbed over the far garden wall into my own plot to congratulate me from below on my newly acquired horticultural skills.
I came up with my new business idea when standing next to a large black Edinburgh street refuse bin. Inside I could see several cellophane-wrapped mounted pictures. They were left over from the recent degree show at the art college. I inspected some more bins nearby and found further pieces of unsold art work. If I could gather all this material together, I was sure that I would find buyers for the new graduates’ output. I would offer the artists a cut on the sale price, if they allowed me to market their work.
Muscular Stuart from Dumfries (my new boyfriend) could be my business partner. I just needed to confirm that he was debt-free, and not simply courting me to gain access to my vast fortune. (There was also the minor question of his wife and two children. They knew me as a ‘family friend’. I wasn’t prepared to continue this deceit indefinitely.)
I accidentally spilt a vat of apple purée over the entire floor of the staff common room of Sheffield University’s iSchool – but nobody seemed to care.
We spotted the Bs when we were out running on Portobello promenade. My former colleague had grown his hair so long that it rivalled that of his wife for length. One of their two sons was with them. Like us, they were eating chips out of polystyrene tubs.
EB’s first words to us were ‘Give me a hug!’ I stepped away in alarm. Had she no idea that we were living in pandemic times? When I mentioned this, she brushed aside my concerns. To her, the whole coronavirus ‘story’ was just that: a tall tale made up to alarm us all.
We left the COVID deniers, then stepped on to the beach to look at some rather elaborate sandcastles.
My bride-to-be was a Spanish heiress who was due to inherit a massive fortune from her financier father. Her parents approved of our match, even though I was foreign and female.
The one thing that I looked forward to most of all was siring bi-lingual children.
I watched in horror as the tiny little dog that I was petting started to disintegrate. Within seconds it was nothing but a pile of canine body-parts floating in a dirty pool of blood. Its owner cried hysterically, but there was absolutely nothing that I could do.
How was I supposed to have known that her four week old puppy was so fragile?
The keynote speaker – Professor EG from Berlin – was so excited to see me that she stretched out her hand and brushed my arm. I recoiled in horror. How could she be unaware that we were still social distancing in the UK?
On the hour, every hour, one set of tweeded academics traded places with another as delegates made their way in and out of classrooms that served as conference halls. I considered missing the last session of the afternoon, but decided that I should put in an appearance. I plonked myself in a seat next to my old running chum EJ and waited for the chair to introduce the speaker. Then I checked the duration of the session and thought it a good idea to pop to the ladies before the start.
When I returned I could tell that I was in trouble. I had completely forgotten that this was the session that I was meant to be chairing. Everyone else was waiting for me to call the room to order and introduce the first speaker.
An officious German woman was particularly peeved at my lack of professionalism. I was just grateful that she had worked out all the timings so that I could concentrate on reading the bios of the speakers that I now (suddenly) found myself required to introduce.
SL was a COVID19 super-spreader. She reached out to hug everyone that we met as we wandered the quiet lockdown streets of Edinburgh.
Over the course of our walk, SL told me that the acclaimed artist MO was working with RL on an exhibit at the Edinburgh International Conference Centre (EICC). I was delighted to boast of my connection to MO. I astonished SL by telling here that MO and I were friends in France in the early 1980s when working as au pairs in Paris.
‘You could tell her that you’ve seen my patchwork quilt’ I said. ‘She’ll definitely remember that’.
Dreamaticus 