Lots of text, but light on photos today.
Gentle reader, when we left our intrepid hero… anyway, I was on the train back to see my grandparents. My parents introduced me to Lily and Alfie the dogs, who are boisterous, and Molly the kitten, who occasionally attempts to attack them until they notice. Andrew, who was home from Durham, fed me some of his new rhubarb ice-cream.
My father drove me a fair way to get to my grandparents’ house; they were, well, six years older than last time, no more, at least to the appearance: I’d expected them to seem very, very old somehow, from all they’d been saying. We talked about random things and they gave us tea and biscuits. My grandmother does make the best tea ever. After all this driving around, I arrived back in Cambridge at midnight-oh-one, and Colin was there to take me home, which was excellent of him.
Not much happened on Thursday daytime, but later there was a pubmeet at the Carlton Arms, which is a much friendlier place than I remember it being. (There were actually two pubmeets; I was invited to the other one as well, on that day by people from work, but didn’t find out about it until afterwards because I hadn’t looked at IRC.) I would describe it to you, but imagine nargery lasting several hours, plus beer, and you have a pubmeet. (When I walked in, the bar staff were saying to one another, “Look, that‘s a shove-ha’penny board, if anyone asks for one.”)
Friday was a beautiful day, not just in the weather but for the memories. Katie turned up around noon and we went to lunch with some of my workmates. During the meal, a pint glass standing calmly on the table decided to split explosively right down the middle for no clear reason. When everyone was done, Katie and I went for a long walk around Cambridge and ended up cuddling under a tree until the sun went down, talking about life and politics and humanity, and looking at the sky and the branches. It was very happy, and the afternoon seemed to last a few months. We ended up going to eat some pizza, and then she had to go home. (She has the photos, so if it’s okay I’ll put some of them up here later.)
Later I went to Relativity where they were having a meal, and lots of people were there (oh, let’s see, Colin and Kirsten, and Rachel and Jacob, and Jon and Benedict, and Aldabra, and Ian Jackson, and some amazing Scottish woman who speaks a bunch of Celtic languages plus Quechua, whose name I forget, who discussed philology with me, and probably more people. It was quite a crowd). Everyone toasted my return to England and many people demanded a return together with Fin and Rio. During the evening Benedict thought up the line which is the title of this post.
In our next instalment, Commemoration happens.
