I have been organising my life.
I have done all sorts of organised and useful things and can look ahead to a bright future where everything is organised in advance, and I do not need to worry about anything because it is all so organised that it is like clockwork and properly organised.
This will last exactly until the taxi breaks down, or the plumbing decides to empty itself all over the carpet, or until the Gods notice what we are doing and decide to intervene with something drily comical at our expense. This is not unknown, and we are keeping our heads so far down they are practically underneath the table.
I have finalised all of the things for our trip to Cambridge next weekend.
This is going to be thrilling because we never, ever go away at weekends, because of work, but we have made a massive effort and we have paid all of our weekly bills in advance, so we will not now come back to find the bailiffs on the doorstep, which is never a good conclusion to a holiday.In any case there are not many tourists here at the moment because of the awful weather and all aficionados of Peter Rabbit being back at school.
We have booked ourselves into an hotel. We had planned to stay in the camper van, but you may not be astonished to hear that it is in need of some repair work at the moment. After that I wanted to stay at my college, actually any college would have done, but it is term time now and they are all stuffed full of students, so that was the end of that. The hotel being a costly sort of solution means that we can only manage two nights instead of the three that we had originally thought, but I am being noble and pretending it doesn’t matter.
We have not quite given up hope just in case we have a customer going to Essex or somewhere this weekend, and make an unexpected fortune, but I am not holding my breath. Occasional taxi bonanzas are not likely at this time of year, so perhaps we could purchase a lottery ticket.
I do not really mind. We will have a lovely time anyway. We have got the dinner on Friday night – this time next week – it is coming at high speed now – and I have booked out the Lucy Cavendish college punt on Saturday, because Mark likes the idea of having a go at punting. He says that it can’t be very difficult if students can do it, and he is probably right. I am allowed to do this because I don’t know if I mentioned it, but I am actually studying at Cambridge at the moment, and so I can. Indeed I will be allowed to book the Lucy Cavendish punt at any time for all of the rest of my life, which is brilliant.
It comes with lots of instructions warning me that at least one person on board has got to be sober, and adds that a punt is a rubbish getaway vehicle if we are caught doing anything rascally, all of which I have found cheering, it never occurred to me that I might one day be intoxicated and badly behaved in charge of a punt, how life is expanding in my old age.
Among the other organising-things has been the arrangement of suitable garments, and I have been unearthing my civilised Smart Clothes for the event. They have needed to be unearthed well in advance because they have been stored in the loft, and now have the distinctly un-middle-class odour of damp and mothballs.
I have brought them downstairs and covered them with washing soda crystals, which are supposed to absorb bad smells. After that I will hang them up in front of the stove so that they can absorb the usual house smells of wet dog and woodsmoke, which will not be much better but at least I will be able to pretend that I live at Balmoral.
I am not sending them to the dry cleaner again in case they shrink. They are already quite sufficiently clinging for anybody’s taste, and if they were to become any smaller I would not be able to eat the college dinner.
I thought that I might remedy that by trying to become thinner before next weekend, and hence have not brought any chocolate buttons to work tonight. This is making me feel very grumpy with the world, and I don’t think it is working at all yet.
I am not sure I can sustain it for much longer. I hope it works quickly.
