The season seems to have changed whilst we have been away.
There was a cool breeze this morning, and the feel of autumn in the air. I can’t smell this yet and so am having to imagine it. Nevertheless I think that this is still something of a bonus. A friend of ours, who had bat flu when we did, is stuck with the smell of decay permanently in his nose, and poor Lucy is just smelling burning rubber the whole time.
The Getting Better Gods have been kinder to me than that, and I am grateful.
I abandoned my summer dress for the first time for weeks and am now rather more warmly clad in jeans once again. Mark said that this was probably a good thing because my summer dresses look like grain sacks and are most unflattering. I do not mind this, because they are splendidly loose and comfortable, and in my soul I am with CS Lewis, whose description of Heaven included the beguiling detail that there was no trace of starch, or flannel, or elastic to be found from one end of the country to the other.
We sat wearily in bed with coffee, feeling that the last couple of days have been like being swept up in a whirlwind. We are still entirely doddery, and sorry for ourselves in lots of other little ways. My mouth is full of irritating little sores, and Mark’s legs and feet have become pink and swollen.
After he had buzzed off to work, I had the ridiculously anxious task of taking the dogs out on my own for the first time. The Peppers have moved house now, gone like leaves in the wind, off to Scotland and new adventures. I have not really noticed this for the last week, because the children have been walking the dogs with me, and when there are three of you to jog off after a lost ball, or a trying-to-be-secretive poo, it is not so bad.
This morning there was only me, and it seemed like a terribly long way.
I thought halfway round that I might stop and have a little sit on the bench, but there was somebody there already, and I thought they would probably prefer not to be joined by my hacking cough and over-excited terrier, so I staggered on.
Goodness, it is a long way around the far end of the football pitch.
In the end it was quite all right, of course. There was one exciting moment when the world suddenly became a long way away, and a bit swimmy at the edges, but I leaned on the railings and breathed hard, and the world returned to where I thought it was probably supposed to be, and all was well.
I could not even stop when I got home, because of posting all of the things that we had forgotten to put in Oliver’s trunk, although I confess that after that I had had enough, and collapsed, gratefully, in front of the computer, where my start-of-day job was to set up my university registration with Cambridge.
This must be a final hurdle to determine whether or not you are actually too thick to be allowed to study within their hallowed portals, because I can tell you now that it was ridiculously, stupidly complicated. Not only was there the whole impossible difficulty of logging into an IMAP server with a new username and log in details, all of which were sent to me with a ticking clock, to expire and vanish after ten minutes of inadequate fumbling, but there were lots of personal details to be added as well. The list of potential next-of-kin was about thirty functions long, including things like Accepted Child, but omitting anything so crudely descriptive as Husband.
I think that I am not too thick, because I think that I have managed to set up an account, and even better, to add it to my email account on my computer. I am not entirely confident that I have managed this, we will find out when somebody tries to send me an email.
I am now allowed to use the University of Cambridge library, and Mark has suggested that perhaps we might go there for our holidays.
I can imagine nothing so glorious.
Still no pictures, mostly because my telephone is not working.
