We are at glorious Madingley Hall.
It feels very peculiar indeed not to have a bag stuffed with books and work sheets and timetable and rush-to-lecture panic. I am here with almost no objectives whatsoever other than not to be late for dinner, to drink plenty, and obviously to make a speech on Sunday morning.
Did I tell you I was making a speech at Cambridge on Sunday? Well, I am. Regrettably it starts at nine o’clock, so it will be the sort of speech you make before breakfast, which is not quite as middle class as the sort of speech that is made after dinner in halls of gently quaffing rotund gentlemen, with rosy noses and jovial bonhomie, but it is what I have got and I am jolly well going to make the most of it.
As long as I remember not to trip over the stairs and say a rude word with the microphone on it will be fine. It is Cambridge so everybody will be unfailingly polite no matter what I say.
Almost no matter what I say.
You will not be surprised to hear that we did not get set off until about eleven last night, but it was the most satisfactory feeling when we did. We had a perfectly black and shiny stove and a scrubbed-clean chimney, waiting for our return. Better still, everywhere had been swept and mopped and hoovered, and was tidy and ordered, ready for the arrival of the dark nights. We did the last bit of it with no clothes on, so it was a good thing nobody was looking through the windows, because before we left we needed to shove our clothes into the washing machine and get them out again so that they would dry during our absence.
It had to be a hot wash because of sweeping the chimney. You have seen Mary Poppins. Mark looked rather like Dick Van Dyke.
This involved undressing in front of the washing machine and stuffing everything in until the door would barely shut.
Once we were showered and duly presentable we had a last-minute dash around the Library Gardens with the dogs in the rain. They lost their ball during a fight over its ownership, which turned into such a splendid fight that they completely forgot the ball, and after ten minutes grumpy searching through soaked leaves, eventually we gave up.
As predicted, we left at around eleven. This was as exciting and joyous as every first-night-of-holidays always is, and we bounced away in the greatest of excitement.
We got reached somewhere just north of Birmingham before we finally succumbed to weariness, and woke up this morning in a lay-by by the side of a road so noisy that we had no idea how we had managed to ignore the thundering juggernauts until half past ten.
We called in to see Lucy on the way passed*, and admired her neat little flat enthusiastically. She was cooking something which smelled so divine we could easily have abandoned Cambridge and invited ourselves to dinner, but of course we didn’t. We had a cup of coffee and drove on.
We are here now.
LATER NOTE:
This is a few late night words written by a very happy albeit very intoxicated person. I have had the most utterly amazing wonderful night and it is a jolly good job there is autocorrect on this because otherwise you would be wondering what on earth I am going on about. We have had the most fantastic amazing time.
We have had an academic middle class dinner with the cleverest most wonderful people. I can’t remember much about it except that I know we ate lamb because we brought everybody’s bones back for the dogs who are still crunching now, so even the dogs are happy.
It was one of the best nights ever, finishing off by creeping up the stairs to the drawing room and singing songs around the piano. One of the other students plays the piano. It was so lovely I cried big fat tears all over my smart clothes.
Somebody phoned up for a taxi halfway through.
I ignored them.
Life is utterly, magnificently perfect.
PS. Do not drink and write. It is not a good idea.
I am so happy.
* This should read Past. An observant reader has pointed this out.
I was very grateful for such editorial support.
