This is the most rubbish heatwave ever.
Anybody who has had enough of it need only pop up the road to the Lake District for a cool shower provided free of charge, by the environment.
Things are going to get better on Monday, we assured ourselves this morning. I was talking to a lady in the park, from the depths of our woolly jerseys and umbrellas. We watched the dogs tearing about in the muddy grass and sighed heavily. Monday might be better, we said, hopefully.
The heatwave was supposed to be starting this afternoon, so I pegged my washing out in the rain just before lunchtime, hoping that it would have steamed dry by the time we went to work. It hadn’t, but the sun had finally appeared, along with a chilly little breeze to make sure we weren’t suffering from any Red Warning consequences of climatic abuse.
It has stopped raining now, and we are enjoying a fine October evening.
Hurrah for the Lake District.
Apart from that, I have had a day of obsessively checking my computer to see if the Diploma results had come through, which in the end they did. They didn’t all turn up to start with, and I had a terribly anxious half hour, checking and re-checking, until the university admin sent an apologetic email and the results were there.
You will be pleased to hear that I have got a First, and so do not need to shoot myself. However, I was mildly disgruntled to discover that I have only managed to exceed the baseline for this grade by ten percent.
I did not quite know what I would have liked to achieve. On contemplation I realised that what I would actually have liked was the thing where the student’s work is acknowledged as being so brilliant that it does not actually achieve any comments at all, the tutors merely stand and applaud as the student comes in.
I liked that idea, except it is difficult to achieve in an email, and also they don’t do it at Cambridge anyway, it is an Oxford thing. I scowled when I realised that and wrote a letter to Oxford, asking if they had any places on their Masters’s’ course. I know they haven’t, applications closed ages ago, but they might make an exception.
Mark rolled his eyes when I told him and said that of course it was my belated education and I could do with it what I wished, but that perhaps I need not feel that Cambridge was an inferior educational establishment, and it seemed pretty good to him.
Mark does not know about dreaming spires.
Of course half of our beloved leaders went to Oxford. I have been following the current Tory party squabbles with interest, and have not quite decided who is my preferred candidate for the newly-vacated leadership, not that anybody cares. I have been quizzing taxi customers about their preferences, and have been truly disgusted to hear several women saying either that they liked Boris, because he was handsome, or that they like Rishi, for the same reason.
I told one lady, as witheringly as I could, that one of the reasons once proffered for not allowing women to vote was exactly that, that they were so stupid that they would only vote for the good-looking ones, and that in my opinion she was a disgrace to the hallowed memory of the suffragettes.
I did not get a tip.
There might not be a diary entry tomorrow. It is a working weekend, so the day will be short, and also dull, because my activity will be a continuation of today’s. This is the Summer Holiday Ironing Project, whereby all of Oliver’s luggage is emptied, laundered, pressed, folded and replaced. It is so dull I will not bore you with a description. Also tomorrow night might be busy.
Especially if the sun shines.
Fingers crossed for the heatwave tomorrow.
