I wasn’t going to write, but I have had a Thrilling Moment, and thought that you might like to share it.
I have had a reply to my letter.
I don’t know if I mentioned that I am doing a Master’s’s’ degree at Cambridge University, well, I am. You might also recall that I have been in a state of high dudgeon, presumably as opposed to my normal condition of average-to-low-dudgeon, about the approaching industrial action which our lecturers might or might not be considering next week, instead of teaching us how to write screenplays, which is what they are jolly well supposed to be doing.
Never one to keep my always-magnificently-well-informed taxi driver opinions to myself, I wrote to the Vice Chancellor of Cambridge University and told him what I thought, and much to my complete astonishment, this afternoon he replied.
I feel as one might, if instead of instructing an underling to deal with your run-of-the-mill prayers, and delegating to them the task of pointing you to a handy parking space, God had taken the time to pick up his Mont Blanc pen and creamy notepaper and replied to you himself, with a Pearly Gates postmark on the envelope and one of those special enormous new stamps instead of the tiresome ones that went unexpectedly out of date just after the Christmas strikes were over.
I saw a beautiful Mont Blanc fountain pen in a picture the other day incidentally. I coveted it very much and even looked it up online, but it was £3,700 so I didn’t bother. I will just have to carry on with my usual Parker pen, which I like very much anyway, although the filling pump is irritatingly stiff and keeps getting stuck. I don’t suppose God has to rush to the bathroom for loo roll to swab up the inky mess, and I bet he has remembered to order more blotting paper, which I still haven’t.
Anyway, I was so excited about getting a real email from a real academic icon that I ran out in the rain where Mark was doing something oily to my taxi prior to my departure, and made him come inside so I could read it to him.
He, the Vice Chancellor, not Mark, obviously, thanked me very courteously for my observations but thought that he would probably not implement my suggestion of capital punishment for any lecturer sufficiently bloody-minded to insist upon being on strike. He explained that he cared about striking staff members as well as students and although he was very sorry about the disruption to my education, he did not seem to think that mass executions would be a workable solution.
He did not mention whether or not my letter had distracted him from his cornflakes, but since he is a real academic he might have muesli with wholemeal toast anyway.
Mark said kindly that it was a very nice letter indeed and that he could quite understand why I might want to frame it, but if it was quite all right with me he would like to continue trying to find out why the ABS light was flashing on my dashboard.
He did find that out in the end, the wire is broken. I don’t mind this in the least, cars that think they know better than you about driving are a real nuisance. It is entirely irritating to be correctly dabbing the brakes or doing exciting handbrake turns around corners and to have some stupid automated safety system interfering, with, of course, alarming and potentially lethal results.
I floated back upstairs, feeling as though my Voice Has Been Acknowledged By The Great, and carried on with my packing. I am leaving for the hallowed portals tomorrow, and I have worked myself into the most colossal state of panic it is possible to imagine.
As you know, I would normally inhabit the camper van during these excursions, but Mark is still bashing the new suspension into place, and it will not be ready in time. Hence I will be staying in the college, and you will not be surprised to hear that I am in a complete flap about the whole thing. I will not be in my own little Wendy-house, with my own specially transported northern water for making cups of tea instead of the upsettingly chalky Cambridge water, and for the first time I will not have the poor now-deceased dog.
This is a little ache of sadness, because it made me very happy to come back to the van in between classes and poke him into wakefulness to go and walk in the lovely grounds together. It meant that there was one little admiring soul in my world, even though I was spending my days in a class stuffed with surgeons and lawyers and BBC journalists. The dog never asked me what I did for a living, necessitating a hasty Goodness Is That The Time? and his passionate enjoyment of my breakfast meant that my trousers still fitted me when I came home.
In any case I have discovered to my horror that since my last visit the college has banned dogs from their grounds, the rotters. Obviously I would have pretended not to have read the instructions and taken him anyway, but it seemed like a very sad thing, since there is absolutely no point in a walk without a dog to rush after squirrels, or hobble after squirrels in his case, and his ancient incontinence was far better than any alarm clock. There is no noise more guaranteed to produce instant wakefulness than the sound of a dog being sick.
I would not take Roger and Rosie even if dogs were still allowed. They are unspeakable idiots even on a good day and certainly would not know how to behave inside the hallowed precincts of the University. In any case Rosie has become a disobedient clown since she came into season, I have told Mark that he needs to leave the back gate open whilst I am away in the hope that she meets somebody nice, she has become very maternal and is longingly washing anything small and wriggly that she can find. Mostly this is everybody’s feet now that Lucy and the kittens have gone, she needs some fat babies to love.
I have packed absolutely everything I can remotely think I might need, so I hope my room turns out to be downstairs because my suitcase is absolutely colossal. I am on the taxi rank now, but keep recalling things that I have forgotten, so I am going to have to dash home at the end of the night to try and find corners into which books or bottles of ink might be squeezed.
I think I will be very excited when I stop flapping.
It is really tomorrow and I am really going.
Better still, I have had a real letter from a real academic icon.
