Doom

I am trying to write my speech.

I think I told you that when I go to collect my Diploma in a couple of weeks I will be making a speech, like they do at the Oscars. Ladies and Gentlemen, unaccustomed as I am, etc, etc.

I am fairly unaccustomed to public speaking, as it happens, certainly the sort that happens without any alcohol. The ceremony starts at nine in the morning, so a waft of single malt fumes on my breath will probably not be a good start to the day. We do have single malt for breakfast occasionally, but only at Christmas or similar moments of family high-jinks. I am not sure it would be a good idea to do it before a Cambridge awards ceremony, although I doubt I would be the first. When I worked in pantomimes, many years ago, Les Dawson used to drink his way through a bottle of single malt every night. This made him a superb Widow Twankey but he had to go home in a taxi.

Perhaps Widow Twankey is not the best role model for a speech at Cambridge, although frankly when I read back through what I have written she might as well have been.

Basically I just need to say thank you very much to all the nice people and resist the temptation to say Up Yours to the rotters. I have failed to resist this temptation so far, probably I had better cross some bits out.

Writing it is very hard. I am starting to wish I had something nice, perhaps a tax return, to do.

I have not been writing it all day. I have cleaned things and tidied things, and this afternoon I had a small, if scary, adventure.

A huge and prolific ivy climbs up the back of our house. It has been there for so long that neither we nor next door are quite sure in whose back yard it originates, but it covers the back of both our houses, and we like it. It keeps the wall dry.

The thing is that it has become so enthusiastic that it has climbed all over my office window. Not only has this excluded the daylight quite remarkably, but the window has been left open for weeks and weeks, during the damp Lake District summer, and when I came to close it the other day I discovered that I couldn’t. So much well-watered ivy had grown in through the frame that the window could not be pulled shut.

Obviously something had to be done, so today I took my clippers and started to do some pruning.

This was not as easy as it sounds. There was a lot of ivy, and it had grown very dense. I had forgotten that there was a windowsill on the outside, and it was completely buried under a six inch drift of leaves and stalks and deceased black fly. I hacked away at it, bravely balancing on the inside windowsill to reach the top bits, when something terrible happened.

An enormous spider, and I mean enormous, burst out of the ivy.

It ran across the windowsill, on the inside, and disappeared down the back of my desk.

Do remember that I was balancing precariously above a fatal-looking drop which would have sent me crashing through the conservatory roof to be splattered horribly on the tiles below.

They were clean tiles. I had mopped them this morning.

You will be pleased to hear that I did not fall out of the window, although it was a close run thing.

I did squeak, accidentally, and hovered, frozen, for a moment, before recovering my breath and climbing down to peer, cautiously, around the side of my desk.

The spider was nowhere to be seen.

I have not found it.

Readers, I know it is lurking somewhere in the shadows, building its strength and awaiting its dreadful moment. I will be sitting at my desk thoughtfully composing a masterwork of prose or gaily executing a perfectly composed painting. There will be a brief scuffling of terrible clawed feet, a leap, and then a ghastly silence.

I fear my doom may be upon me.

I suppose it saves me finishing the speech.