There are several respects in which this diary entirely could be indistinguishable from yesterday’s.
The first is that I am once again in a very comfortable hotel room bed.
The second is that I have eaten a very, very lot. So much that I am practically bursting out of my skin, never mind my trousers.
It has been lovely, and I can always go back to porridge and apples next week.
There was the cooked breakfast, and then a hot chocolate later, and then some wine, and some more wine, and then a massive dinner with more wine, and then hot chocolate again afterwards.
Dearie me.
It has been the most magnificent day. The skies are blue and clear, and it is very cold. There was frost on the grass this morning when we looked out of the windows, and when we ventured out of the hotel we could see our breath hanging in white misty clouds in front of us.
We ambled off around the shops then, which really meant around the second-hand book shops. I almost bought a collection of John Betjeman’s poetry, but didn’t, quite, although I might go back for it tomorrow. The university is sniffy about John Betjeman, preferring poems that don’t rhyme and which feature the author going on about their general state of hopeless gloom, but I don’t see the point in those. If I am going to read poetry I like something which bounces along cheerfully with a jolly good rhythm, and if it is amusingly rude about people then so much the better. I once had a lecturer say to me that I would find it easier to write poetry if I didn’t insist on making it rhyme and scan, which was certainly true but then in my opinion it wouldn’t be poetry. It would just be a story, and not a very good one in most cases.
We looked at some nice dresses as well, and one of them fitted me, at least it did this morning, although possibly won’t by tomorrow if I carry on eating at this rate. We didn’t buy that either but maybe tomorrow if I am still a size fourteen after tonight’s dinner.
After that Number One Son-In-Law and Ritalin Boy arrived, and we all went off down the river on a punt. Of course Mark has done punting lots of times by now, and made it look easy, and then Ritalin Boy and Number One Son-In-Law both had a go.
I don’t think I have laughed so much for a very long time, because I discovered something that I had not known when Mark has been in charge of boat operation, which is that punting is very difficult indeed. It is not at all easy to make the punt go in the direction that you want it to, and not crashing into distinguished college grounds or into boats full of panicking foreign tourists. We could hear the real punt operators passing us every now and again and enlivening their tours with Cambridge stories of dubious authenticity, and so made up some of our own so as not to be left out.
When we got back, Mark and Number One Son-In-Law had to go back to the bedrooms to dry off, and my aunt had arrived, so we congregated around the fire for another drink before dinner.
We are all here now. Number One Daughter could not make it until this evening because of a very fit person competition, but dashed into the restaurant at the very last minute and just in time for dinner, and so we were all together, and ate most heartily. It was a restaurant called The Ivy, which served excellent food and the most unspeakably splendid pudding. I had something called a chocolate bomb, which was ice cream in a chocolate shell surrounded by some kind of fluffy mousse. The waiter poured hot caramel sauce over the lot, and it all melted into something that you probably get for your breakfast in Heaven if you have been especially good during your lifetime and also if God likes you. It was divine.
Tomorrow is The Day.
Tomorrow I will be accepted into the distinguished ranks of the University Senate, unless somebody objects, which they are allowed to do like at weddings.
I hope I have not upset anybody, or rather, I hope none of the people I have upset turn up.
It is very nerve wracking.
I will tell you about it on Sunday.
