Any day that starts with an email from the Vice Chancellor of Cambridge University is going to be a good one.
Obviously I mean a friendly sort of email, not the sort that starts Dear Student It Is My Regrettable Duty To Tell You…
Indeed, I bounced around in elation for much of the morning.
He answered all of my queries, solved all of my difficulties, and congratulated me on doing well in the Master’s’s’ degree so far. I would like to pretend that he has been following my progress, but of course he hasn’t. I wrote to him and told him about it. I am sure he was captivated.
He is my new hero, along with Mark, CS Lewis, JK Rowling, and the chap who invented dungarees.
You can infer from the last comment that my weight-loss project is still stalling.
I have eaten so much caramel shortbread whilst I have been writing my story that I am going to have to make some more before I go off on Sunday.
I am going to Cambridge on Sunday!
That is so very exciting.
Obviously I have now worked myself into the most terrific panicking flap about it all. I kept thinking about it instead of going to sleep last night, and I am now in the most shockingly anxious tizz.
Hence I have started packing the camper van. I have put all of my nicest dungarees in it, and a pair of trousers in case I become thin when I am there, and I made the bed up whilst Mark sat on the pavement next to it installing some brake calipers. I stood in it for a few minutes and breathed in its reassuring camper-van smell, and thought that it at least I would be in the camper van, which would be encouraging. Life is never so bad if we have got the camper van there, and if things get too exciting in classes, I can always dash off back out and make myself a cup of tea and eat caramel shortbread, assuming I get round to making some before I go.
Life is so full of all of these worries.
It is only nine o’clock but I am not at work. I have given up on the idea because there is nobody here and because at long last I have had a haircut.
It is a horrible cheap haircut, because today my tickly-hair miseries got the better of me.
Some time around two o’clock this afternoon I knew that I could not bear having hair dangling around my ears and tickling the back of my neck for a single minute longer.
I rang my usual expensively sophisticated hairdresser, but some work experience girl loftily told me that he was busy practically for the next six months, at the very least he had no appointments before I went to Cambridge.
I had no money anyway, so secretly I thought that probably it was just as well. I emptied my taxi cash box and went to the very much cheaper local hairdresser, about whom I shall not be impolite, because she was very nice, and has hacked my hair off splendidly.
It is short. It is very short. Mark laughed when he saw it, and said, loyally, that it was lovely. It isn’t lovely, but it is short, and since I do not have to look at me, I do not care at all.
Mark said that maybe next time he should just get the dog clippers out.
The consequence, however, was that by the middle of the evening I was in such an agony of prickly-hair sticking under my collar and lurking in my underwear that I came rushing home. I tore all my clothes off and leaped in the shower.
The relief was absolutely glorious.
I have got short hair and I am not itchy any more.
I have had a nice email from the Vice Chancellor, I got my washing dry in the garden, and I have written a bit more of my story.
It is a truly magnificent day.
PS. I know you won’t be reading this until tomorrow when it is too late, but happy birthday anyway, Mum xx
