I am only just starting to write this and already it is after ten o’clock at night. This is not because anything exciting has been happening but because I forgot.
I am on the taxi rank listening to the rain splashing all around me. It is pattering on the windscreen and the roof of the taxi as if it were a frantically improvising percussionist after an upsetting day.
I am mostly dry in here, not quite dry because I have just had to pop home to visit the bathroom, but drier than all my customers, which is not difficult, they are sodden.
We have spent the entire weekend in taxis. This is because we are going away next weekend and have been busily squirrelling away money in preparation. We have got to make sure there is still enough cash to pay all of the bills as well as the fuel to Cambridge and the massive hotel bill.
I do not care. It will be lovely just to hear somebody politely declaiming my eternal favourite sentence, which you might remember goes: Would Madam like red wine with that?
There are fewer happier utterances in the English language, except perhaps: You have just won the Lottery, which is not one I am likely to hear in the near future in any case.
In between taxis I have been contemplating other travelling considerations, starting with what on earth I am going to wear.
I have been in the loft, and unearthed my respectable clothes. Rather to my surprise, since at least one of them was purchased before Oliver was born, they still fit. That is to say, they fit in a rather sheath-like way. They can be fastened, and I can still move about, but I cannot ignore that they cling to my rolls of middle-aged fat in a rather unappealing manner.
They may always have done this, of course, except that seventeen years ago it was more youthful fat and therefore probably prettier.
I inspected this with some concern. It is a problem that could easily be resolved by putting a cardigan over the top, but Cambridge is always ten degrees warmer than the Lake District and last time I went there I had the uncomfortable sensation of being slowly poached inside my dungarees, like the sort of fish that you wrap in wet newspaper and put into the oven until it collapses, limply, into baked pink dollops.
In the end I had the inspired recollection that I am not the only middle-aged person with this difficulty, and went off to investigate the mighty Internet.
In a very few minutes I had discovered that somebody thoughtful has invented a garment called Shapewear. I looked at this with interest. Basically it seemed to be a body suit made out of an enormous rubber band, the sort that the postman puts round your letters, except larger and worn underneath a dress. It promises to smooth your curves into differently shaped and sleekly smooth curves, transforming you into an icon of elegant beauty.
I have not got curves so much as sags, which were not mentioned, but I thought it would probably work all right even so, and I liked the idea of becoming an icon of elegant beauty.
I saved it in the Amazon basket and went to ask Mark. Obviously I had to ask Mark because it was fifty quid. Beauty does not come cheap, I can tell you, but this is a special occasion and it is not every day I am going to give a speech at Cambridge.
Mark listened and said it was probably all right if I really wanted it, and then spoiled it all by pointing out that I could get a month’s gym membership for fifty quid.
He added that I could just do some sit-ups for absolutely nothing, if I was going to try and become sleek and smooth.
I listened sadly and then went back upstairs and took the Shapewear out of the Amazon shopping basket.
I took the dogs for a brisk walk up to the top of the fells, but when I got back and checked I had not become sleek or smooth, so I will have to try again tomorrow.
Maybe I will just wear a cardigan after all.
