Still no word from Cambridge about the teachers’ strike.
If I am not at Cambridge we will be able to travel up to Scotland in a relaxed and happy way on Thursday daytime instead of in a hideous exhausted scramble in the middle of the night. I am sorry to say that I am guiltily hoping that they will decide to strike, and then I can have the twin pleasures of being outraged and also not needing to hurry up as we embark on our international journey.
Apart from the tiresome anxious necessity of needing to check my emails for non-existent updates every five minutes, otherwise the day has passed in a rather tranquil manner, because Mark has been at work. He very nearly wasn’t, because I forgot that he was working today and neglected to set the alarm, although fortunately we woke up in time and hardly had to dash about at all. It wasn’t even a very difficult start to the day, we sat by the fire for coffee instead of in bed, which was a Different Thing, but on the whole we coped, and I did all of the usual morning jobs after Mark had gone off to work, so that was all right.
I can practically hear your relief.
I am working tonight, and Mark is going to carry on with the Camper Van Project. He has been painting the new bits for it, to deceive the MOT inspector into believing that we are the sort of thoughtful and responsible people who take good care of our vehicles, which is unlikely to be convincing since they have been doing our MOT inspections for the last fifteen years. Nevertheless, if all of the rust has been scrubbed off them and they are painted in a bright new silvery colour it will take them a few weeks longer to rust again, and like chemotherapy patients, every week of the camper van is a bonus. I have been worrying about upgrading its weight, because if we re-register it as five tonnes then we will not be able to drive it on our licences when we are seventy, but Mark says that if it is still going when we are seventy it will be almost sixty itself, and even with his determination not to be defeated it is still unlikely to still be motoring.
I can’t imagine being seventy, which is thirteen years off, but then when I was ten I couldn’t imagine being thirty, so all these things are relative.
I don’t even want to imagine being without the camper van.
Anyway, I am not seventy yet, and we still have a camper van, most of which is carefully distributed all over the conservatory whilst the paint dries. Mark has taken some of it over to the farm and is busily installing it even as I write.
Some more updates.
The council rang me today to say that yesterday’s paperwork that I had carted all the way into Kendal would not do, because my birth certificate, which I was required to produce, was not in my married name. I explained that I was not married when I was born, which I thought accounted for that rather neatly, but it made no difference, and I had to dash out to the post office with a copy of our marriage certificate, just to make sure they understood the timescale on these things.
The senior tutor has been back in touch with me explaining that he is not allowed to ask his colleagues if they will be on strike or not next week, although he thinks that they probably will be. I am astounded at the unnecessary stupidity of this rule, presumably designed to maximise any possible inconvenience that will be caused by this already tiresomely thoughtless action.
I do not in the least mind people going on strike, as long as they are quite clear with themselves and all the rest of us that their motives for doing so are exactly the same as those of their employers for refusing to increase their pay. Both sides are motivated by a wish for personal financial gain. We will not call it greed because these pages are charitable, and of course universities, and university lecturers, are already noted for their poverty. Students, on the other hand, can pay for their courses and not be taught whilst lecturers are on strike because nobody cares what they think anyway.
I have written to the Vice Chancellor of Cambridge University to make sure that he knows what I think even if he does not care. If nothing else it will give him some food for thought over his cornflakes.
If I do not hear from him I will be writing again tomorrow.
That will jolly well get him thinking.
