On Sunday night Jean invited me over for a dinner with two of his old friends from South Africa. They told hilarious stories about our host in his youth while the young man in question protested that it was all exaggeration.
I believe his friends!
One of the best parts of living in Cambridge is the fact that people speak in enormous unravelling paragraphs featuring words like tonsorial. In my misbegotten childhood the possession of a huge vocabulary was never considered an asset; I always had to hide the fact that I was a walking, talking dictionary.
It was great fun to hang out and engage in endless chatter with Paul, a new and extremely decadent friend who took notes about the wine. I excused myself to take a call from Rachel, who arrives in the UK soon. We have already started scheming!
That call lasted for about twenty minutes, which would normally be a record for me, except (and this is dramatic news) the other day I talked on the cursed device for two and a half hours.
My reputation has been ruined.
I’m resting between rounds of late nights with guests and my days feature a lazy walk across Coe Fen and the Sheep’s Green along a creek where I stop and hang out with polliwogs before venturing further to conservation land bordered by what I suspect is rapeseed:
This town is so sleepy the taggers at the train bridge don’t even turn in alarm when they hear someone approach, a fact I find hilarious. Next to the tracks I usually see rabbits hopping through bushes about to bloom, and I stop and look at the flowers growing up through gravel:
When I’ve gone as far as my injured leg allows I turn back and sit under the willow tree next to the Mill, reading novels and writing in my journal:
Yesterday evening I watched the sunset on the Backs, then sat on the fountain in the deserted market square, listening to church bells ring.
Later as I walked down Trinity a lorry came barreling down the ancient street, popped the curb, and came within two inches of smearing me into a bloody pulp on the cobbles.
I didn’t even flinch; I just kept walking.