Holy Island pre-death giveaway (Rousse)

Posted on December 10, 2020 by Dreamaticus

Several of my former colleagues flocked to the Holy Island of Lindisfarne to attend AT’s pre-death giveaway. The ceremony was rather like the reading of a will, except that AT was still alive and you took away your booty on the spot.

I travelled there in a red foot-powered child’s toy car. Meanwhile JH gave KB,  her husband IB, and their daughter HB, a lift in BT’s old Lomax. I was proud that I could keep up with them on the narrow coastal road.

Along the way I met a woman who was taking a two centre holiday in Scotland and the north of England. She had just arrived at Holy Island after a week in Dumfries and Galloway. I told her all about our fun holiday there a couple of years ago, with fond memories of castles and bird watching. I also issued advice on a career in publishing for the benefit of her son.

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A fold-up four-seater bicycle (Rousse)

Posted on December 6, 2020 by Dreamaticus

EH offered me a lift home from work: on her fold-up four-seater bicycle.

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Blond cat-whiskered half-gorilla baby swept out to sea (Rousse)

Posted on December 5, 2020 by Dreamaticus

She really was a beautiful baby, with a beaming smile and a few tufts of blond hair. I thought, however, that the cat whiskers were rather out of place on her sweet face – until someone explained to me that her father was a gorilla.

Whatever her parentage, I agreed to babysit her on a boat for a couple of hours. This would be no trouble at all, I claimed.

I was wrong. The baby mysteriously turned into a long blue balloon, then a gust of wind took her from my arms and swept her out to sea. How would explain this to her loving parents?

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Tiger shopping deterrent on Easter Road (Rousse)

Posted on November 29, 2020 by Dreamaticus

Three tigers lived in the posh dress shop on Easter Road.  Despite the glamorous proprietor’s assurances that the tigress and her two cubs were ‘perfectly harmless’, there was no chance that I would ever tempted to enter and browse the clothes rails while they were in residence.

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Salvaged: a single-footed skateboard and an antique secrétaire (Rousse)

Posted on November 26, 2020 by Dreamaticus

Back in Birmingham again, TPR, my father, and my little sister were picking through the contents that we had left three decades earlier in our old house in Northfield. Much of it was junk. This included a narrow skateboard with a moulded plastic single foot insert – an invention that (unsurprisingly) never gained widespread popularity.

While my sister identified a crammed bookcase that took her fancy, I gathered up all the blue cushions. Then I discovered a beautiful three quarter size mahogany secrétaire hidden behind a very ordinary set of shelves.

‘It’s OK. I don’t want a davenport for Christmas after all’ I called to TPR, who was laying paving slabs in the back garden. I told him that the desk met all my requirements. Now we just needed to book a van to to transport it home with all the items that we had salvaged from our old house.

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String sorting wife clings to marital home (Rousse)

Posted on November 24, 2020 by Dreamaticus

Just days before his great revelation, TPR and I had been smugly working our way through albums of old photographs, congratulating ourselves on our long and happy marriage. Now we had returned to our old house in Birmingham (the rooms bigger than we remembered) to meet his family, and for him to confess that he was leaving me.

While I sorted out old bits of string into a neat skein, he was preparing the wording of his announcement. His new girlfriend (blonde, in her 30s) and her three kids were also milling around. ‘That woman might take my husband’, I thought but ‘No way on this earth will I allow her to force me out of my Edinburgh flat’.

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Chatting with Kylie Minogue and Melanie Sykes in make-up at the BBC (Rousse)

Posted on November 23, 2020 by Dreamaticus

Since the BBC opened up its building to everyone it had the feel of a public library on a busy Saturday afternoon. Some offices were off-limits but – just as my mother and I had done – you could plonk yourself just about anywhere to watch the workings of the huge public sector broadcast corporation.

My mother embarrassed me somewhat in make-up when Melanie Sykes (very overweight) and Kylie Minogue sat down next us. ‘Hi Kyle!’ she greeted the Australian pop star. ‘She could have at least used her correct name’, I muttered under my breath.

We headed back to Edinburgh by taxi with GB. This was a huge mistake. The taxi driver was a violent criminal out to get my poor octogenarian mother. He made his move just as we crossed the city bypass, lifting her into the footwell at the front of the vehicle. His swift action was like a hawk reaching for its prey.

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Dangerous diving in Denmark (Rousse)

Posted on November 20, 2020 by Dreamaticus

A tiny Danish island was our holiday destination. Here the only other holiday-makers were Danes, all enjoying themselves splashing around in the water in long thin canoes.

‘We’ll do that later’, promised TPR, leading the way to a tiny hut almost completely choked by honeysuckle. We climbed on to the fence round the hut so that we could climb onto its roof.

TPR missed his footing and fell headfirst a hundred feet into the ravine below. Happily he was not injured. However, true to form, he lost his glasses.

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When an ex refuses to exit (Rousse)

Posted on November 17, 2020 by Dreamaticus

It seemed a good idea at the time to invite my ex ST to visit while my husband TPR was away.

My plan fell apart when ST didn’t understand that he was expected to leave as soon as TPR returned home.

Now it was only a matter of time before they would come face to face with one another in a corridor – and TPR’s heart would shatter into a thousand pieces.

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Unwelcome gate-crasher knowledge extractor (Rousse)

Posted on November 16, 2020 by Dreamaticus

DTJ set a large table in her garden then erected a tent-like structure around it. This allowed her to host a party under some form of shelter outside in winter. She then asked me to carry a sputtering candle from the house to the garden to use as a table decoration. Her daughter H followed me out, keeping an eye out for wax drips.

Eventually all our girlfriends arrived and gathered around the table, half-sheltered by the flapping tent. It was wonderful to see everyone together again.

Then I noticed a sinister man fiddling with a huge white contraption at the other end of the garden. When I challenged him, he admitted that he was a gate-crasher. His plan was to insert all the guests, one by one, into his machine. Then he would squash them until he had extracted their knowledge and expertise – all to use for his own personal gain.

(Meanwhile the SEB, having ditched KA’s husband SM for ‘being weird’, was chasing TPR again.)

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