A lady who lunches (and wines and dines and breakfasts)

Recently I was back at Cambridge for another excuse to eat, drink and be merry. Despite not being an over-achiever academically (although I am an over-achiever in the understatement department), I’ve always felt at home at College, rubbing shoulders and kissy-kissing with the higher achievers and more monied. This particular occasion tested my comfort zone in other ways but it remained unbreached, dear friends (with apologies to William and Harry – that’s Shakespeare and The Fifth).

I drove to College, avoiding the mega-flood on the dual carriageway around Bedford, crawling along the old single carriageway through poor little villages that looked rather shellshocked at all the vehicles that were, in their own way, also shellshocked.

Quick (facetious) aside. Am I allowed to say ‘shellshocked’ or is that disrespectful to / belittling WWI soldiers who suffered what we now know to be severe PTSD? Is my use of the term ‘shellshocked’ for my personal whimsical context a form of cultural appropriation? Or doesn’t it matter if I’m culturally appropriating a white British phenomenon? What is cultural appropriation anyway? Answer: it’s another excuse to stifle freedom of expression for we white-privileged colonial oppressors, and it’s possibly a hate crime under Starmergeddon.

Back to the trip to Cambridge. I arrive. Get to the room. Hang up my dress while I hear three texts arrive on the trot. It’s Hubby in the car park. He’d set off my car alarm trying to open the boot to deposit his bike. Yes. He’d cycled over. Why? I have no idea. Ask him yourself. He’s a basket case. I return to the car park, which is at the diagonally opposite end of College, glowered at Hubby, sorted out my car, and returned to the room to change into a Jaeger dress. I make-up. I fix my hair. I grab my Mulberry clutch bag (I have standards), ready to go to the alumni society AGM. Something catches my eye. A thread. I pull it. Big mistake. Huge. Whopping. The hem on my dress comes down. Being a college room, clean, comfortable but basic, there’s no sewing kit. I have no safety pins or sellotape or anything. I have to go to the AGM, drinks then dinner with my hem down. Aggggghhhhhhhhh!

D'ya know what? After the initial Agh, it didn’t bother me. I knew that either College people wouldn’t notice. Or they’d notice but be too nice to say anything. Or if they did notice, I could make a joke about it. As it happens, if anyone did notice, I got too drunk too quickly to care.

The AGM was, well, AGM-like. After that, the pre-dinner drinks were plentiful and as delightful as the company. For dinner … I sat next to Hubby, which to be honest was a disappointment. I mean, I can talk to / at him whenever I like. At these dinners I prefer seating arrangements that have me with people I don’t normally talk to. As it happened, the chap on my other side I’d never met before, and he was lovely. He goes to Henley Royal Regatta every year, as do we, so I said I’d look out for him next July. The chap opposite me I’d known for years, don’t see very often, and he’s always a pleasure to talk to, but he’s very quietly spoken and I had to resort to lipreading, and responding with generic catch-alls.

The next morning, I played safe to avoid wardrobe malfunctions and wore my posh jeans, saw off Hubby on his bike and sauntered over to Chapel. I was a bit early and first there. I was chuffed to bits when the Chaplain recognised me, but then regretted my punctuality when he asked if I’d like to do a reading. I asked, half-jokingly, if I could read from the Authorised Version, and was very impressed when he didn’t seem to object to my objection to dumbing down God, and whipped a copy from the bookshelf. Mum and Dad were both fans of the Authorised Version and Book of Common Prayer, so reading what they would have wanted to hear was very therapeutic.

The reading went well, the hymns I knew backwards, and the sermon was fascinating in that it was a huge coincidence. It was all about being able to disagree on issues and still be cordial. Given that I’m always disagreeing with most people, and recently bought a book entitled How to Disagree, I was wondering if God had been looking over my shoulder. Creepy.

During the Peace, I shook hands with lots of people and hugged a couple I’ve known for ages. Big mistake. Huge. Whopping. Because, one of them tested positive for Covid the day after. Fast forward a few days and I’m at a funeral, warning people before I hug them that I’ve been exposed to Covid. Some were more relaxed than others. Let’s leave it there. The funeral was for a philanthropic, witty, warm, wonderful gentleman. The last time we saw him was at a fundraising social last year, where for some reason or other he revealed his Remainer preference. Of course I had to just had to set forth. During his funeral, the vicar said something about him being a doer, a go-getter, a risk-taker. Were the vicar to have confused his services and then asked if anyone had anything to say or forever hold their peace, I’d have said He Wasn’t A Go-Getter Or He Would Have Voted Brexit.

The deceased, God rest his soul, was photographed on the order of service wearing a certain Cambridge College boat club blazer. Hubby said, and I quote, “I rowed in our College crew that beat them at Henley in 1981.” I responded along the lines of, that’s nice dear please STFU.

The wake was pleasant, the widow remarkable, and the hem on my black jacket remained intact.

So what else have I been up to this last week: breakfast in a pub with two lovely people; lunch in a pub with lovely neighbour H (and her dog); gossiped on the phone with a blog fan; gratefully accepted an idea for a future blog from another fan; had a new alarm system installed that is chock full of the latest technology. The nice little man began to explain how all the bells and whistles worked. I stopped him after 5 words and asked how do I arm the system. He showed me. I then asked him how I disarmed the system. He showed me. And I showed him out. Can't be doing with apps or remote dongles, whatever they are.

Couple of days later, I had a new dishwasher installed. While going through the control panel, he said, “This is the on-off button. This is the quick program. The eco program. The hygiene program. If you download the app …” Washing up by hand was never so appealing. I also need a new hairdryer, breadmaker and coffee machine – I'll buy the ones that don’t need an app or a remote dongle. Whatever they are.

I’m also still struggling with my PhD. But I think I might have turned the corner, thanks to three people totally clueless about my PhD topic. The first was one of my breakfast companions, who suggested that the report I’m writing just needs to show X, Y and Z, well X & Y really, and wasn’t the life’s work I thought it should be. The second was the vicar at the funeral who very cleverly likened the Henley racecourse to a river of life and beyond, through a landscape that is our life. Honestly: that really helped convince me to stick with my instincts and not be persuaded to follow someone else’s philosophy. I’ll devote a blog to it if I can work out how to make it not boring. And then H, who told me in her pragmatic, no-nonsense way to get a flipchart and large post-it notes. Just think what greater greatness Einstein might have achieved had he access to a flipchart and post-its.

And that was my week. How was yours?