Right, I have not got much time because once again this is the middle of the night and I have had such a day of intellectual exercise that I can hardly contemplate even such a minimally literary project as these pages.
Also I have had three glasses of wine and a colossal dinner followed by indigestion. I have brought the latter to bed, which is where I am at this very minute.
The circumstances could not be less like yesterday.
I have had the loveliest of lovely days. Cambridge is a magnificent place, and I am ambling around in a state of bucolic contentment, spoiled only by the shortness of the visit. Tomorrow is our very last day of classes, and then it will be over.
It won’t all be over. There are still classes online and supervision meetings with my tutor, but the everybody-together lectures will be finished, which is a very sad moment.
I can hardly tell you how lovely it is to be in the same place as so many very clever people. I have spent all evening drinking and gassing with one of the other students, a chap whose intellectual achievements, creativity and moral viewpoint I admire very much indeed, and who politely pretended not to notice that I was getting increasingly intoxicated and half-witted as the evening wore on. By the end of the evening I could manage nothing more sensible than vague wittering and trying not to dribble, but he nodded politely all the same, and said Really? as though he was interested. Classes are full of astute observations, intellectual inspirations and thought-provoking discussion.
I do not want to leave.
We have had a talk today about our careers. I am not going to have a career, having had a perfectly good one as a taxi driver, which sounds to have paid rather better than the University Lecturer career option, but it was suggested that we might all do PhDs next. I demurred a little, and explained that I thought I was probably too thick, and rather to my surprise, the lecturer said that I was not.
He spoiled it a bit by adding that probably nobody was too thick really, and that you don’t need much in the way of brains to do a doctorate, which made me think that he has never driven a taxi. I have plenty of customers who are too thick to be able to work out that if the fare is £5.30 it is not going to be popular to hand over a tenner and say benevolently: Just give me a fiver change, you can keep the rest.
If you are going to do a PhD you have got to choose the right university to do it, and go to one which offers the right balance of analytical work and imaginative work for your own talents.
I am pondering the matter, thoughtfully.
It is still possible that I might be too thick.
Still, it has been a splendid day, fuelled by piles of Cambridge chocolate cake, biscuits and general catering delightfulness. If I was here on a permanent basis I would eventually need to avail myself of a winch to reach the upper floors.
I am going to leave you and try and sleep off my intoxication before tomorrow morning’s classes. It is the happiest of happy times, and I will be sorry when it is all over.
That day is not today. I am going to enjoy tomorrow with all my heart and soul, and probably be too drunk again tomorrow night.
I shall see you then.
Goodnight.
