We did not stay in Ripon in the end. It was all just too difficult to organise, and so in the end rather than making a huge event of it, we buzzed across in my taxi and back again when it was all over. It did not take all that long, and in fact it is only just after eleven, so early that we could still go out to work if we wanted to, which of course we don’t.
It has been lovely, and we have enjoyed every minute.
It started off very well indeed. We rushed around having mid-afternoon showers, and faffing about getting changed. Getting changed into smart clothes is spectacularly easy if you are a chap. It is Pick Some Trousers, then Pick A Shirt. It is so easy that Mark never bothers with either and I do that bit for him, quite often just by hanging them on the same hanger when I have finished washing and ironing them.
We had a minor kerfuffle because his tie was not in the box of ties, but then it turned out to be carefully folded around the collar of his tweed jacket, from last time he wore it. He put it all on again and that was him sorted out, having carefully knotted his tie into one of those secret knots that shows you are middle class. We know how to do this even though we are only taxi drivers. One of the things that made us both howl in derision at The Crown was that the chap pretending to be Prince Philip clearly did not know, and neither did anybody else on set.
Mark’s dressing is entirely simple and easily accomplished.
Mine is quite another matter.
I decided that since I was going to wear boots, because of it being December, I ought to wear some narrow trousers. This turned out to be a very happy moment, because I have not worn my respectable trousers for almost a year, because of not needing to look respectable, and always wearing dungarees.
To my complete astonishment they seemed to have become slightly too large in the meantime. I even checked that they were not an accidental pair of Mark’s, but they weren’t, and I had the irritating experience of trying to hitch them up all evening.
I do not know how this has happened because I am entirely and completely convinced that I have not lost a single ounce in weight, perhaps they stretched in the last wash. Either way it was a cheering moment.
I tried four shirts before finding a respectable one that did not make me look as though I was about to go and fill wheelbarrows with horse muck, even accompanied by pearl earrings. Eventually I settled on a beautiful peppermint-striped one purchased by Number One Daughter, who has reliable taste, and a large wine-coloured jumper knitted by Mrs. Number Two Daughter, which was warm, and soft, and wonderfully comfortable. Feeling like Cinderella in the film where the mice arrange her ballgown on her behalf, I thought that I would do very nicely.
We belted off to Ripon, where we arrived at almost exactly the time that we should, being just early enough to have dinner in the Italian restaurant across the road from the cathedral. This was splendid, we had prawn risotto which was creamy and lovely, although of course the restaurant was packed with Yorkshire’s middle classes, because everybody eats there before the concert, and the poor staff were rushed off their feet.
Then everybody in a tweed jacket got up at practically the same moment, and we all ambled across the road in a dignified, middle-class sort of way, into the cathedral, which is just beautiful. The carol concert was celebrating twenty five years of Macmillan carol concerts, and one thousand three hundred and fifty years of the cathedral. It has been there a long time.
The concert was divine. the new music master must be a clever chap, because the boys from Oliver’s old prep school sang beautifully. They had the haunting angelic sort of voices that make you wish you were a better person, and forget all about the time when you actually sat close enough to them to see what they were doing, and spotted one of them blowing his nose on his surplice. They were all very little, what sort of heartless parents could possibly send such tiny boys away to boarding school, we wondered, and remembered going there when Oliver was a tiny boy in a surplice. We had smuggled in forbidden tuck for him to eat before the coach whisked him off back to school for the end-of-term celebrations, and had sighed to leave him behind.
There were speeches and lessons and readings, and the Dean of the cathedral humbly and charitably hoped that people who did not pray would not be upset by those who wanted to. This struck me as a very tiresomely woke thing to say since people who object to other people praying presumably would not have chosen to occupy their Monday evening by visiting the church.
The High Sheriff did a reading in full regalia, and the Lord Lieutenant did another, and a chap who had just retired from being Head of the Armed Forces gave a brief talk about not worrying too much about the state of the world, and there was a wonderful soprano solo. We all bellowed out the wonderful, familiar carols, until it was time for O Come All Ye Faithful, and we sighed happily, content in our superior middle-classness, and trundled to the back for some self-satisfied sherry and mince pies.
We saw the headmaster, who remembered us and told us to bring Oliver to school to see them, and we saw some familiar faces, and then it was over.
We are home. It has been the loveliest evening.
I am going to take off the trousers. I have had rather a lot of wine, risotto and mince pies, and they are perhaps not quite as roomy around my waist as they were this afternoon.
Ah well.
