Term Begins

What a difference a seriously blue sky can make even in the fridge like conditions current. All around me a few days ago were the various creaking and cracking sounds of peoples shoulders un-hunching and jaws unclenching as they looked up in in wonder at what is known as sunlight.

It didn’t last of course. On Monday Grace and I woke to several centimetres of icy sludge masquerading as snow and by the time we got to Bath for our creative writing class it was pouring with the kind of rain that always manages sneaking icily down the back of your neck no matter how many scarfs you stuff down your coller. ('Grace in Snow' (c) T. Bush)

It is wonderful to be back in class at last. I get my entire week packed into one very very long day; a three hour seminar in the morning followed by another in the afternoon and usually a two hour lecture event in the evening. By the time I get back to Cambridge on the Wednesday evening I am weaving and woolly eyed with weariness.

('Class' (c) T.Bush)

But mostly happy...so very happy!! Me..the kid who hated classrooms!

Well that is apart from last week and the incident at Edgware Road.. A signal failure at rush hour left Grace and I squeezed onto a train that sat sulking with its doors open, refusing to move.

Eveyone groaned and sunk into their books and newspapers but then, from the other side of the packed carriage, a voice shouts out;

'Look look at the doggie. I wanna hug the doggie!!'

I peer into the blur. This is not the voice of a toddler. This is at first glance an average middle aged woman wearing a duffel coat (couldn't tell you which colour anymore) and huge glasses. I see her eyes. They are gleaming with excitement. She has someone accompanying her - a sofa of an Afro Caribbean minder taking up two of the seats next to her.

'Shhh,' says the minder. 'The dog is working.'

'WHY?' shouts the woman

'The dog is the lady’s eyes.' hisses the fat sofa lady tugging the other one down back into her seat.

'What’s wrong with your eyes?' shouts duffel coat lady at me. 'Are you blind? Can you see anything? Can you? CAN YOU??? I WANNA STROKE THE DOGGIE!!'

Her minder obviously inured to this woman's huge and exhausting presence yawns and starts talking on her cell phone. At no point does she actually make eye contact with me....she just lets the woman rant in the crammed and edgy carriage. I try and make calm, quiet responses but this just seems to excite the woman further.

'Can I STROKE your DOGGIE??'

Gawd! After five minutes of this I am tempted to start shouting across at the duffel coat ‘You have a minder? Can I stoke your minder?? Are you a crazy lady?? Half crazy?? How crazy ARE you? I WANNA HUG YOUR MINDER!!! '

I look around for a hero, some lean jawed type to gently pluck Grace and I up and carry us far, far away ... but there is only the spotty young man next to me who is cringing so much with English embarrassment he nearly cricks his neck.

(Sigh.) (image from internet)

In other news my sister has moved into her new vicarage in Radstock and it is rather lovely. Its where Grace and I will set up base when doing our weekly commute to Bath.

And next week my Dad finishes his first grisly round of chemo and flies to Pretoria for tests. We are all on tenterhooks (what on earth is a tenterhook??) as these test will be the very ones that decide his next round of treatment. Remission? Stem cell therapy? More horrible chemo?

But worrying doesn't help. Just gives me mouth ulcers and a clicking jaw. Sexy eh? Seems the only superhero coming to my rescue is 'Blistex and Rennie' Man.

Will keep calm. Will keep you posted.
(Buddha in the Vicarage' (c) T.Bush)

Turning on the Bath tap....

This is my poor mutt at home after our first week at BathSpa University for induction and introductory seminars. I think she is a bit…..err…weary. If I had been a nicer person I would have stolen a baby buggy at Kings Cross, softly popped her in it and pushed her home instead of making her guide me..

Induction..what can I say? A marvellous literal (for me) and literary blur with a requisite tally of confident, young men in glasses and small, glowing, pretty young women in short skirts and biker boots. Others older, cautious, smiling from behind wine glasses, shifting from foot to foot as we orbit slowly around the various beaming lecturers as they hold forth on the course.

There are some lovely people in this crew and obviously some brilliant and talented. They may not be the same people. Life’s like that but I can’t wait to read all of their work!

I did make a couple of serious miscalculations that might well have had me in hospital and it is probably about time I sat myself down and gave myself a good talking to. ‘Tanvir, you are MORE then half blind in daylight and you are COMPLETELY night blind….and I don’t mean cutesy ‘things are a bit washed out’ night blind. I mean ‘bugger if that wasn’t a hippo I just prodded with my cane on the way to the bog’ kind of night blind. ‘ (There are witness to this very comment, that very hippo and the self same bog.)

‘You have to be more careful. You have to think ahead and plan torches and sighted help. Damn your ridiculous pride and recklessness!’

Of course one thinks..ahh..but she has a guide dog. But problem is a guide dog cannot guide in a totally new area without help. She is a dog not a sat nav and neither does she have the light-engulfing pupils of the cat. Plus she is also only 18 months old and fresh out of school but she huffed and puffed and pulled my arm off and still managed to guide me to and from the right seminar rooms after only being shown them once!

We are staying in a remarkably beautiful cottage in a village called Newton St Loe, owned by the Duchy of Cornwall.

The view from my boudoir dontchaknow!

We are being hosted by the writer and fellow student JA who has been showing us the maze of campus, taking us out to local pubs and generally spoiling us rotten. She has been essential in our reconnaissance and for that we thank her wholeheartedly!

So now we are home for a couple of days with several tonnes of homework (sodding forgot about the homework...hmm) and a bag and half of washing. Wonder what Grace is dreaming about...? I bet it isn't literary criticism....