We are in Cambridge.
I do not think I am going to write much, although I might change my mind by the end of this, you never know once the thinking starts going. Sometimes it just grinds painfully to a halt, and sometimes I have got loads of things I want to tell you.
Tonight we have done loads of things, but I am not quite sure that they will tell easily. After having woken up on a windswept beach somewhere in Lancashire with a not-dead dog, we wandered along the sea wall and stared out to the horizon. That was in another life, and we are now a million miles away in every sense.
The world down here is so dry you could peg your washing out even if it was raining. It is so dry that the breeze is practically sucking the moisture out of our eyeballs. The dogs are all refusing to poo because they can’t find any grass, the flaky brown stuff that they have down here just won’t do.
It is another world.
We are in the camper van with all of the windows and doors open in the middle of the city, but it still feels as though a stray spark from the keyboard of my computer might ignite an inferno.
Fortunately the camper van carries an intrinsic dampness in its very woodwormy soul.
I have been surprised to discover that I like Cambridge.
I did not expect this. I do not always like alien places. They are wrong in all sorts of ways. Somehow, so far, Cambridge is really jolly fine.
In fact it is a truly glorious place, very quiet because of the absence of cars, and we have been wandering around with our eyes on stalks. It does not seem to have worn with the centuries in the way that northern cities do, probably because the weather is noticeably less rubbish. The stone-carved details on the great colleges are still as fresh and sharp as they must have been when they were first chiselled, hundreds of years ago.
We have stared and stared, at the lead guttering and the iron-wrought gateways, and at the most truly amazing clock, with a terrifying grasshopper sitting on top of it, eating our lives away. This transfixed us, and we stared at it until it struck the hour, which it does not do with a cheerful dinging like the grandfather clock at home, but with a distinctly pessimistic noise which we read afterwards represented the rattling of chains and the thud of a coffin lid.
It was probably designed by somebody on our poetry reading list.
We went to try on black Master’s’s gowns, and resolved to come back in the morning and purchase one. I could have purchased one today, but I was in far too much of a flap by then, and it was thoroughly beyond my capacity to think about it. The chap was very nice, and showed me the usefully sewn-up ends of the sleeves where students keep their sandwiches and handkerchiefs.
In the end this seemed a practical design feature, and also they are decently warm, perhaps some of the colleges do not do central heating.
We walked out to Lucy Cavendish college, which is not one of the ancient turreted affairs, but tidy and sensible, with gardens and an hospitable air to it. I think it will be all right. It is a little way out of the centre of town, easy to walk but I think a bicycle might be handy.
In the end we tottered back to the camper van, worn out with sightseeing and excitement. We have walked so far along the dusty streets that the soles of my battered feet have split into cracks, and I was limping by the time we got back. We are just about to chug out of the city centre and find ourselves a quiet spot to park for the night.
We are setting off now.
I do not know if I will write tomorrow, it might all be a bit too exhausting.
I will see how the day goes.
