Lucy has buzzed off and the house is very quiet.
It is not as if Lucy is a raucous occupant anyway, but still there is an unusual silence emanating from the darkly empty space upstairs. Also all the dogs and cats are back under my feet again instead of hovering around her bedroom, where they know that they are not going to be unceremoniously hoofed off the bed by somebody bellowing Just Look What You’ve Done You Wicked Dog.
I do not think she will be coming home very much for a while, because by this time next week we are all hoping that she will be in her new house, and probably she will like it so very much that she will just want to stay there, warming her toes by her own little fire and cooking her own little favourite dinners in her own little kitchen.
Mark is going to go down and help her move in. I would like to but I will be leading a life of rascally student irresponsibility in Cambridge until next Friday, and so will be out of the picture.
I have flapped about with my packing today. Despite being something of a packing expert by now, having packed for Christmas, and previous outings to Cambridge, and all of Mark’s travelling kit whilst he has been away for the last couple of weeks, of course I have become confused. I have spent much of the day wandering aimlessly up and down the stairs in a vaguely elderly way, trying to remember what it was that I had just started to look for. I got myself into such a state of absent forgetfulness that by this afternoon it was actually a relief to volunteer to sit down and clean Lucy’s shoes. I polished and brushed whilst composing mental lists that said things like Handkerchiefs and Ink and Spare Socks and Toothbrush, and then stood on the stairs afterwards wishing I had thought to write them down.
Mark has been fixing my bicycle whilst I have been thus occupied, because I am going to Cambridge and bicycles are compulsory. It is not the bicycle that I have had up until now, but one which he found in his uncle’s scrapyard, or somewhere equally middle-class, and which he believed, probably correctly, would work so much better than mine that it would be worth an exchange. He did not exchange it, however, and now there are three bicycles in our tiny back yard.
I had compelled him to throw away all bicycles thus collected, because there were quite a few. He was sad about this. I would have liked to be less ruthless but we really do not have sufficient storage space anywhere for half a dozen decrepit bicycles, and the National Park objected that they were spoiling the rural glory of the Lake District landscape when he left them in his field. I am sorry to say that they were correct about this.
I tried it out this afternoon, and it trundled up and down the back alley rather splendidly, so I suppose he must have been right. I have never quite managed to work out how bicycle gears are supposed to function, so it is a good thing that Cambridge is fairly flat. Certainly it is lighter than the old one, although no less rusty, and I can assure the cautious amongst you that there is absolutely no danger whatsoever of it being stolen, even if I added a notice that said Please Take Me Home. Somebody has painted it blue, including all of the lights, half of the seat and the wheels, but its rust patches are beginning to show through nicely. I do not mind this in the least. Mark keeps looking at it and sighing, but my opinions about bicycles exactly mirror my opinions about cars, ie, that it does not matter a hoot what it looks like as long as it will get you from A to B without an unexpected clanking halt at A and a half. Nothing else is at all interesting. Also the heater needs to work but obviously this is less important on a bicycle.
I have got all sorts of good intentions for the week to come. I have only got a couple of tutorials to attend, and so the rest of the time will be my own. In my head I am going to write my dissertation and its critical analysis, complete some writing assignments set to us, do some research in the library, and not think about anything other than work from morning until night.
That is absolutely what I am going to do. It really is.
Of course.
