Stranger than Non-Fiction.

I am at the Hallowed Seat of Learning.

I am learning how to write Non Fiction.

We went for a Nature Walk this morning, in order to learn how to write about nature, in case we hadn’t noticed it before arriving at Cambridge as post-graduate students. The chap who was explaining the Natural World to us writes a column in the Guardian about it. He was kindly and keen and enthusiastic, and knew about birds and trees, I thought excitedly about halfway round that even though I do not consider myself an expert on the natural world, but I might write to some newspapers and offer my services, because clearly the bar is not impossibly high.

He began by giving us all a dandelion leaf and telling everybody to eat it. I declined, firstly because there are several dogs visiting the hall at the moment, and secondly because I had no desire to spend the rest of the afternoon in the Ladies. In any case I have now reached the stage of wealth in my life where I no longer need to eat dandelion leaves, and I am jolly well going to stay there.

Everybody else ate theirs, obediently, and we trotted round after him whilst he filled us in about the Natural World in the gardens of the Hall.

He wanted us to touch some moss in order that we would awaken touch as a part of our interaction with the Natural World. We have got loads of moss in the arches in our conservatory at home, so I didn’t bother with that either, or with the goose grass, which is that awful stuff that sticks to everything and is hell to get off the dogs later. I was certainly not going to stick it to my respectable coat for fun. He thought it was wonderful, and stuck it to everybody. When I talked to him later it turned out that he doesn’t have a dog, so that made sense.

In any case, given that the gardens were built a couple of hundred years ago by Capability Brown, there was not much natural world in there, and what little remained had been thoroughly sprayed off by the gardeners ready for the wedding season which is fast approaching.

Ah well, it’s nice to get out.

I am now writing to you whilst I am actually in a lecture. Please do not worry, I am not wasting my hard-earned time secretly writing to you at the back of the class, in the way I once used to read Jackie whilst Miss Carter was warbling tediously along at the front. Those days are gone. I used to occupy one lesson writing messages on the desk to a boy in another class, who used to write back. I never found out who he was. He called himself Reckless Rat. We were in agreement about the dullness of poor Miss Carter’s laboriously prepared lessons, and indeed not only can I not recall a single one now, I can’t even remember what she taught. It never occurred to my thirteen-year-old self that she might one day read the desk. After it became completely covered with our generally uncharitable communications, Miss Carter moved it, crossly, and after that we were made to sit in different places every week. This did not make her lessons any more exciting.

We have been told to write a small piece of non-fiction on the topic of Our Memories, and as far as I can see the preceding words have filled that requirement wonderfully. We have just finished a lecture given by a lady whose speciality turned out to be flat landscapes in twentieth-century literature. She had a PhD in the subject.

I do not imagine I can match that subject as a potential source for gripping breathless prose. I will just have to stick with the misadventures of a recalcitrant taxi driver.

I won’t get a PhD but heigh ho.

I am not at all sure what I think about this part of the course so far, it has a marked similarity to the sort of things I wrote in primary school. I am fully expecting that tomorrow’s piece will be entitled What I Did In My Holidays.

Dinner was brilliant, though, and I am having a very enjoyable time indeed.

Bedtime. More tomorrow.

Maybe.