Did I tell you about when Mr. Waffle and I went to Cambridge to visit herself earlier in the year? I did not. Well now, here’s something for you to look forward to. It was in March but look, we’re scraping the bottom of the barrel here content wise (I can hear my father spinning in his grave at this terrible construction but here we are).
Friday, 14 March 2025
There was rugby in Rome the weekend we were travelling. At the airport Mr. Waffle and I ran into not one, not two, but three people we knew: one off to the rugby; one going to a party in Cornwall; and one, like us, going to London. This last was the son of my mother’s friend from college and he was always a bit charming and feckless. This may have been why he and his wife were on stand by for the flight they were taking with their two teenagers. It all worked out in the end. It always does for the charming but feckless in my experience.
Mr. Waffle and I traveled with laptops and had to do a bit of work when we arrived. Were we pleased? We were not.
There was a formal dinner arranged in the Princess’s college for Patrick’s day and I was filled with pride when she got up at the drinks at start of the evening and read – in Irish – the poem that begins “Anois Teacht an Earraigh”; it’s a poem I love and her grandmother loved it too. She explained to the audience about wandering bards and how this poem would have been recited all over Ireland and now, she said, it’s come to Cambridge. My mother would have been delighted.
Herself had become great buddies with a guy from Cork and on chatting to him I discovered that he had gone to the primary school where my cousin had been headmaster for many years. Rather charmingly when we established this link, he said in awe struck tones “You know Mr. K?”. He obviously felt unable, even at that distance, to bandy around Mr. K’s first name as I had been doing so recklessly.
Look at me filled with delight dining with my firstborn (I am wearing my sail – our hotel offered bikes for guests and they were handy but I did worry slightly that I might take flight on my way to dinner).
Saturday 15, March 2025
We went on a punt. It was shockingly expensive and the young woman powering the punt, though very strong given her willowy frame, was distressingly ignorant about the sights. We were able to get the gist from other guides on nearby punts but not as good somehow.
We went to Fitzbillies, a popular Cambridge tea room. Fine but nothing to write home about in my view. There is a really lovely cafe where I always went for breakfast with herself on my visits and we definitely graced that with our presence at some point but, sadly, if you were thinking of visiting yourself, I cannot now summon its name to mind.*
Herself knowing my love of a good cemetery took us to a lovely one.
One of the Edgeworths is buried there (a sister of the better known Maria). A long way from home.
We checked out the Princess’s room. She did a great job of decorating it notwithstanding some challenges, the most serious of which was the quantity of furniture (particularly tables) which the university authorities provided with the room and which could not be removed for complex and doubtless administratively understandable reasons.
Sunday 16 March, 2025
Herself took us to Mass. It was very long and enthusiastic. There was an excellent sermon on a papal encyclical sent to America in which, to quote from Wikipedia “the pope addressed a heresy that he called Americanism and expressed his concern that the Catholic Church in the United States should guard against American values of liberalism and pluralism undermining the doctrine of the Church”. I mean, some of us felt that the topic choice was a bit tactless given that next up was some innocent young American woman telling us about the church’s charity work but ok.
After lunch we walked to Grantchester. My mother-in-law used to enjoy quoting the last couplet from Rupert Brooke’s The Old Vicarage, Grantchester “Stands the Church clock at ten to three?/And is there honey still for tea?” When we got there the clock did indeed stand at ten to three which was very gratifying.
I only took a picture after our cup of tea and the clock stands at five past four and I seem to have included some large bins in shot. Somehow, life never is as romantic as poetry. I mean, look, apparently Jeffrey Archer lives in the old vicarage now. Incidentally, whoever wrote the Wikipedia entry on Jeffrey Archer really hates him.
We all had dinner together on Sunday night and then Mr. Waffle and I headed home on Monday morning. A good time had by all etc.
Tomorrow is November 30. Are we all heaving a sigh of relief?
*Updated to add: Mr Waffle made it his mission to find out the cafe’s name. He did. It was Cafe Foy apparently.
I know Oxford better than Cambridge (on my way to Oxford now as it happens)
They are lovely places but the number of ‘otherworldly’academics is rather high. (And I wouldn’t go to Grantchester largely because of Jeffrey Archer, but that’s just my age, I think – Mrs Thatcher, gaol, fraud etc)
The weather looked good, and a dinner in a college is always interesting.
Harsh on Grantchester! It’s a nice walk and although the risk of meeting Jeffrey Archer remains it must surely be diminishing at his age.
On the route we drive towards Cambridge, the south and Dover, very close to Cambridge, are road signs for The Alconburys and The Stukeleys. (All real places, I believe)
We always feel we should be pulling off the road for a drinks party – one year the Alconburys and next year the Stukeleys.
English place names are odd (my actual personal favourite in Mavis Enderby, the name of a village in Lincolnshire)
One of the not inconsiderable joys of watching UK based property shows is the names of the places where people are renovating their houses.