I hadn’t seen SA – a boy I first met aged 7 at primary school – since a school reunion in 2011.
I thought that he would have better manners at our surprise meeting than to start the conversation with a run-down of the outcomes of the previous night’s football fixtures.
Jason Isaacs was a local hero on the housing estate. He wore an almost floor length black coat and his frequent mysterious disappearances were the subject of thrilling speculation.
When we met on the street, he took me by the elbow, sat me down on the brick wall by the communal bins and proceeded to tattoo my left upper arm. There was no discussion about the design, or his competence. He simply wrapped my tattoo in cling film and said I could watch it ‘develop’ like an old-fashioned photograph but he had places to go.
The excitement was raw: every single one of us would have 30 minutes or so to chat with a royal couple! My friend found out first that hers was the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge. Mine was Diana, Princess of Wales and her ten year old son Prince William.
My allocation did not make sense. How could I be sitting at a table playing a video game with the ten year-old version of the grown man seated with my friend across the room, and his dead mother?
It was then that I realised that we’d been tricked. These members of the royal family were no more regal than anyone else. They were hired lookalikes.
The roads were treacherous so we hired a nun taxi driver to take us over the snowbound hills. She skidded (safely) just a couple of times.
The only real inconvenience of travelling with a cabbie bride of Christ were the frequent breaks in the journey for prayer.
So delighted was TPR to be with his entire family again, on arrival at his mother’s house for Christmas he disappeared straightaway into the large cinema room with his sisters.
That left me with his step-father to set the table for dinner. I knew that this would be a terrible meal when TPR’s step-father plonked two stale ends of bread (one white, one brown) on the table, convinced that this would be sufficient to feed the entire family. I wasn’t in a mood to wait and see if he was right, so left.
I spent the rest of Christmas Day with KS and RS swimming in an icy loch. The pair of them annoyed me somewhat when later buying trinkets in the lochside gift shop.
I heard a knocking from above, looked up, and saw a beautiful red and white woodpecker tapping on the wooden classroom chandelier.
I stopped the class so that we could all take out our phones to photograph the beauty.
Finally, six months later than anticipated, at the end of June 2021 we were permitted to host our annual Christmas party (2020). But first, I had to remove AD from the kitchen. JS, who knew exactly who he was and couldn’t quite believe that he had been invited into my flat (he hadn’t), observed as I gently expressed my desire that he leave – immediately.
Meanwhile TPR was debating whether or not to put up the Christmas decorations. The decision was ‘no’ to the tree, but ‘yes’ to fairy lights and tinsel (including that beside the television accidentally left over from Christmas 2020 ‘proper’). TPR’s other priority was to set to work on making pastry for our production line of mince and crecy pies, and mini quiches.
We were just about to ask our morning guests (including DM and my mother) to leave when a gang of six youngsters in a British racing green Mini came trundled down our steps. My instant fear was that they were about to burgle us. In fact, they were archeologists interested in the secrets hidden within the cellar walls of our basement flat.
I blame DP of Strathclyde University for the debacle over my iPhone. Under her watchful eye, I plugged it in to charge for ten minutes in the café of the Forth Road Bridge service station. Then we we set off to find the others at the car park and board the coach to the Isle of Skye.
It was then that I remembered my precious phone, now probably in the hands of an opportunistic criminal.
My generous sister-in-law S volunteered to drive to the service station to look for it, despite her terrible driving skills and poor sense of direction. We watched her leave the car park in her tiny jeep at top speed, come off the road at the first roundabout and land headfirst in a bush. Although unscathed, she wouldn’t be driving any further that day.
It really was too much to ask my 81 year-old mother to walk all the way from London to Edinburgh, so I suggested that we cut a few miles off the route by taking the train to Oxford.
In the fine university city we admired the old colleges and stopped in the doorway of a tea room to speak to the proprietor. She offered us a table at the back, but we explained that we couldn’t linger.
As we hunted down the blue cycle path signs that would point us north again, my mother confessed that she really couldn’t face any more walking. She confirmed that she still had her senior railcard in her handbag and I agreed to her plan to catch another train for the rest of the journey home. Even if it cost a fortune and we had a long wait for the next train, this would be preferable to a long, slow trudge back to Scotland with an unwilling geriatric.
Hundreds of faster runners passed me as I headed south along the cycle path. I wished that I could run faster.
Perhaps my times would improve if I abandoned carrying the soil-filled, red, 60-litre, flip-top kitchen bin?
Dreamaticus 