Well, we are thoroughly back to work.
We got up at seven this morning to dispatch Mark off to his rural installations, and he is not home yet.
I am on the taxi rank. I have been here since the middle of the afternoon, but the great British Public is resisting the impulse to travel north to enjoy the Great British Summertime in all of its sodden glory, and so far I have made six quid.
This is all right because I have got a good book. It is about the French Revolution, and frankly, it is putting me off the idea of having a revolution, no matter how rubbish our beloved leaders have become. Tumbrils in the streets would be a jolly sight worse.
All the same, it is a brilliant book, although not exactly easy to follow. LaFayette is in it. He was in Hamilton as well, when we saw it in London a few years ago, although he was black then, and he doesn’t do any singing in the book.
Hamilton is coming to Manchester at Christmas. I keep thinking about booking tickets, although so far I haven’t, for obvious pecuniary reasons. We have got tickets to the pantomime, and the idea of blowing another small fortune on theatre tickets the night before is making me quail just a little. Most especially I am hesitating because I am considering our projected trip to Cambridge in September for the weekend of the Diploma ceremony.
I have been investigating this today.
If I am scrupulously honest with you, which of course I always am, actually we need to arrive on Saturday night. Then on Sunday morning I need to smile politely at the bored chap in mortar board and gown and nod my thanks for my Diploma, after which really we could slope off at lunchtime.
I do not in the least want to do this.
I have been talking this afternoon to my friend who is also going, and what I would really like to do is not bother to go to work on Friday and drive down to Cambridge. Then we could dump the dogs with Lucy, who will not yet have abandoned her post in Kettering, and book ourselves into an hotel.
We could spend the next few days alternately drinking too much with my raffish studenty friends and wandering around the second hand bookshops. Cambridge market stalls have better second hand books than any other market anywhere in the world, and I am longing to return to them.
We were going to stay either at the college or at Madingley Hall which would have been cheaper, but basically they only have single rooms available, and I am not fifteen any more.
We have also considered the camper van. I have tried to think of a functional reason to explain to myself why this is not a good idea, but can’t. It is by far and away the most sensible and reasonably priced option, except I don’t want to do it.
We will have had a long and wearisome summer by then and I will want to be on holiday. Actually I would quite like to be on holiday already. I have enjoyed our days off very much. Hence I wasted half an hour this afternoon when I was supposed to be hoovering, staring longingly at a divinely superior establishment on the mighty Internet, and wondering how reckless I could be before I would have to start explaining myself to a bankruptcy court.
I am still considering it. They even do a discount for Cambridge students. That’s me, by the way, I don’t know if I mentioned it.
I would ask Mark but he would say yes without even starting to do sums. This is because he really is truly, hopelessly reckless.
I will keep you posted. Please do not send me recommendations for inferior Cambridge hostelry establishments. That would be missing the point, which is the swimming pool, the ambiance and the afternoon cocktails.
I can feel the recklessness creeping up on me even as I think about it.
