Undisserted

I have not only purchased a clothes rail on the mighty Internet, I have also splashed out and purchased a very fine hat box on eBay.

I don’t think it will be big enough for my hat so I will have to buy another. However Mark has a collection of hats, all of which are collecting dust, irritatingly, on the top of the wardrobe, and whilst perusing hat boxes I suddenly thought, joyfully, how much less tiresome the dusting would be if I did not need to dust his hats.

In consequence of this revelation, we are going to have some hat boxes. I do not care if this has cost me £22.99. I am not fond of dusting, and all of Mark’s hats have to be taken down and the dust shaken off them, after which they must be wiped, every single week. I am going to put some effort into properly civilised storage and then the boxes can collect dust in the loft for ever for all I care.

When I looked at the splendid leather hat boxes I suddenly wished that I wore hats more often. Obviously I do wear hats in the winter. I have got a collection of woollen ones and a large leather one with a wide brim, more along the lines of a small portable roof than a hat, although it would be considerably improved by the addition of a gutter. I do not mean these. I mean properly upmarket hats, with stuffed birds and roses. They are very beautiful even if it is difficult to watch the birds from underneath them.

I am very pleased with all of this internet shopping, and have resolved to go out to work early in mitigation. I am not actually at work now. Right now I am writing my dissertation.

Obviously I am not writing my dissertation, I am writing to you, but I have become bored trying to think of long words. We were given a sample dissertation to read last time I was in Cambridge, and it had so many long words that I really didn’t have the first idea what it was talking about, and said so. The lecturer raised an eyebrow but declined to explain and so I suspect he didn’t actually know either. Anyway, he made it plain that you need to demonstrate in your dissertation that you do at least know some long words, even if you have to make a list of them next to your computer, and just keep shoving them in randomly. If anybody knows any really good long words, do send them in the comments, and I will endeavour to squeeze them in. Bonus points for any that I have got to look up in a dictionary because I haven’t heard them before.

After that I occupied a pleasing half an hour of dissertation time investigating accommodation for Oliver’s overnight stop in Korea on his way back from Japan. I favour an establishment called Incheon Airport Hotel Terminal One for a hundred quid, whilst Oliver, who is paying, prefers a spot encouragingly named Mr. Kim’s Guest House, Airport Transfers Provided, which is twenty five quid including breakfast.

This is the problem with sending your children to Gordonstoun, they seem to be of the opinion that a bit of adventure adds flavour to a holiday. Having never got more adventurous than The Disneyland Hotel All Meals Inclusive, I am mildly concerned about this, but since I am not going I don’t suppose it is really any of my business.

I have also written to his housemaster and told him that I do not at all mind their planned end-of-term road trip. Oliver and his friends are planning a last Gordonstoun jaunt in Oliver’s car, going to Edinburgh and having a final celebration before they are all parted for ever at the end of term. They have finished their exams, and so school has sighed and agreed, and so they are off, in the celebratory manner of newly-freed young people.

I have still got loads of dissertation yet to write, nearly another thousand words, but I really need to hoover the stairs.

I might just go and do that.