Domestic administration

I am beginning to hope that the education at Cambridge is very much better than the administration.

I have had a threatening email letter from them today, warning me that the fees for the course should have been paid by August 1st, and I might lose my place if I don’t pay them instantly, immediately, within the next ten minutes.

I checked back to the initial invoice that they sent, which incidentally did not arrive until August 3rd. It says very clearly, underlined and in bold type, that payment is due on August 12th, which fortuitously just happens to be the date on which I have arranged a cash transfer.

I wrote back to them expressing my concern and asking for immediate clarification. They ignored this. Instead they sent me a form wondering if I had considered ways in which I might meet the costs of further education, and requesting a letter from my parents confirming that they would meet any shortfall if I failed to meet their bizarre and inconsistent financial demands.

I contemplated forwarding the letter to my parents but regretfully decided I had better not.

I tried to log in to their web site to check the actual details, but all of my login attempts failed. This turned out to be because it is necessary to have several accounts with them, all with different passwords, and I was using the wrong one.

You can’t just have one account. There are several different departments involved and you have got to log in to all of them in a different way. All of their web pages look identical, and it is just a matter of guesswork which password you use.

I think I am just going to ignore them.

In other news, Ritalin Boy has gone. We are sorry about this as we have enjoyed his company, although I must confess that the sudden silence that descended upon the house as he left it was not unpleasant, rather like the feeling when the Gas Board depart after having spent the day excavating the pavement in front of your kitchen window.

He occupied the day writing a book. It is a book about Pokémon, complete with illustrations, and he was utterly absorbed in its production for  hours and hours, whilst maintaining a detailed running commentary. I was so very impressed that I agreed he had earned considerable quantities of his confectionery incentives provided for schoolwork-completion, and he availed himself of some disgusting-looking strawberry affair. This had to be ingested in the form of a spray on the tongue, providing instant sugary revival should your child begin to flag a little, which he hadn’t, although I might not have been sorry for a quick squirt.

He departed with his Other Grandma, insisting on taking the book into the front seat with him, promising to tell her all about it.

We could hear him chirping through the open window even as they drove away up the street.

Once they had gone I took Oliver back to the optician, who wanted to separate me from more of our cash. Eye care is free for the young, unless they have contact lenses, at which point the parental wallet has to be prised open yet again. We purchased sufficient eye-equipment to last him the term.

He will be gone by the end of the week. The summer seems to have passed very quickly.

A last footnote. A man got in my taxi last night. As we went through the dark country lanes he stared up at the yellowish half-moon.

“What’s that?” he asked.

He wasn’t joking. He didn’t know. He said he had only seen pictures.

He was from London. Perhaps they don’t have one down there.