On Sunday Jean was supposed to accompany me to a picnic on the Grantchester Meadows but he was still sleeping off the debauchery of a final night with Rachel – weakling!
The weather was in fact too brutal for your humble narrator to survive an hour-long walk and still be sociable, so I resorted to that most decadent of local conveniences: a taxi ride. I wonder if my working-class brain will ever rest easy with this particular mode of transport? It certainly has not been less problematic over time – I could probably provide a fairly comprehensive list of every ride I have ever paid for, and I have been riding for a decade now.
Steve had staked out a spot next to a swimming hole, and Sally joined bearing homemade strawberry tarts. The group swelled with families from France, Scotland, Israel – an eclectic group of archivists, anthropologists, artists.
One woman flatly refused to answer the question (posed by another, not me) So what do you do? and I clapped my hands in an ecstatic fashion.
My kid wandered off with a pack of boys, and I propped my umbrella on a trolley to cast a little bit of shade in the eighty-plus degree day. We talked, laughed, enjoyed yummy food and the delightful company for hours. Sally and Steve are away soon to perform at festivals (though I do not know what the current show is, they have in the past been puppeteers) and it was lovely to have such an idyllic afternoon with them.
Just as we were all packing to leave the sun passed behind an ominous dark cloud and we found ourselves in the middle of a driving rainstorm. We all dashed from tree to tree laughing maniacally until we finally struggled out of the meadows – by then so flooded the water was in places ankle deep – and reconvened in a thatched roof cottage to watch as the street became a river.
Everyone agreed the spectacle was remarkable, unheard of, then we settled down to play rounds of Chase the Ace and Cheat. I didn’t really follow the rules, but both were quite fun! Later the youngsters built a maze out of blocks and took bets on which resident hamster would win the course.
I bet that neither would make it to the end. The bookies were reluctant to issue odds, but in the end – I won.
