Goodness, it is warm in Cambridge.
I don’t know if I mentioned it but I am doing a Master’s’s’ degree here, and I have come down for a week in order to be intellectual in the appropriate environment.
I brought a coat, but I have not needed it, and frankly I am astounded to see so many people trudging around in jackets and hats. No wonder all southerners believe in Global Warming. It is absolutely splendid down here.
It was raining when I left the Lake District. It was raining a very lot. Poor Mark had buzzed off to do some rural broadband installation, and when I called him this evening he said that every last inch of him had been soaked, right through to his skin. His clothes had just filled up with water, and he had got so utterly cold and sodden that when he finally got home he undressed straight away and had to warm up in the shower.
I sympathised because I had got wet just going to the post office, and I had an umbrella.
It is not raining here.
I set off for Cambridge not long after Mark had gone to work, but it was a long, long, long drive. There was an accident on the motorway, just a few cars in front of me, and of course everybody stopped. I might have tried to carry on through anyway, because there would just about have been room. but it would probably have been rude even if I had been able to get past everybody else. When somebody has a misfortune like that it is not very polite just to shunt your way through, ignoring the debris and the shattered human remains all over the place.
There were not any human remains really, although the cars were the most hideous mess. Mostly it seemed to be people looking a bit upset and anxious. A tow truck and some ambulances and the police all arrived, and we all sat and waited for two hours until everything was cleared up.
There was a further delay when some tiresome climate activist in an electric car had a spontaneous bonfire at the side of the motorway. I am very glad I am too broke ever to consider such woke extravagances. I have had many motoring misfortunes in my time, but so far none of my vehicles have ever burst into flames. Well, the wiring does it under the dashboard in the camper van occasionally, but we are used to that.
It took almost seven hours to get to Cambridge, but I am here now.
I am not at Madingley Hall. I have got a room in my college for the week. It is called Lucy Cavendish College and it is very nice. Indeed, it is rather magnificently nice, student accommodation has improved since my youth. My room has its own bathroom, a little fridge, toaster and kettle, a desk which would be utterly divine if only I was about a foot taller, two little armchairs and a large window overlooking the road. I had to open the window when I got in here. There is a heatwave outside, but they have got all of the central heating on as if it were January, and I had to peel my thermal vest and woollen socks off pretty quickly, I can tell you.
You will be pleased to hear that I have started my week of uninterrupted hard work by cycling over to Wolfson College to meet my friend Amanda and then going to the pub. This was all right really, because we talked and talked and talked about properly intellectual philosophical things just the way you are supposed to do when you are in Cambridge, and I swerved joyously back on my bicycle feeling very happy indeed with the world. It is almost as good as working, talking about ideas and thinking really hard, so I do not feel in the least guilty. In any case there is no better way of spending an evening, I can promise you, and one day I will be dead, so I am going to enjoy it whilst I can. If you can’t be pretentious and full of intellectual self-importance when you are in Cambridge then you never can, although I can probably manage it in lots of other places as well really.
I had to cycle back in a bit of a hurry because the light on my bike was starting to go flat.
I had not bothered to take my coat and I did not miss it in the least.
I am having a very brilliant time.
