Cambridge Itself...

... was grand. Except for the stupid studenty types EVERYWHERE. Just posing and looking fashionable and generally alarming. And a lady who rode her bike directly at my face.

Hence the first words I uttered in this fascinating city were 'Woah. For fucks sake!'

I know, Wordsworth would have been thrilled.

Just a flying visit, really. I scooted into the city centre, searching for a tourist office where I could pay £1.50 for a map. Luckily there was one and I paid £1.50 for a map, but not before I'd sloped through Market Place, pretended to be interested in some jewellery and leather belts, and laid down some cold hard cash on fudge. In a range of flavours, and all home-made. Thanks lady.

After the tourist office excitement I walked out, trying not to knock stuff over, and dragged my heels down the cobbled streets, following a sign for 'The River and Backs'. At this point I'd not quite got round to looking at the maps, but I didn't need to yet. It was England for Christ's sake. I had a little wander round, did some jokes in my head about punts and did a nice circle past post-exam picnickers and punting punts and weeping willows, trying to remember if this is where E.M. Forster set part of Maurice, and was I getting that mixed up with Brideshead Revisited, and only now realising their shared an author, so probably.

Anyway, I had a little sit down, caned off some fudge, watched an entire herd of cows use the footpath and then looked at the map, which helpfully had laid out a simple walk.

The brilliantly-named Trumpington Street showcased some lovely buildings, as well as a fish restaurant where apparently, kids eat free. Yeah, because kids aren't stupid enough to eat fish, generally, unless it's wrapped in two tons of breadcrumb and flavoured like chicken. Peterhouse, the oldest college, was yet another closed to the indignant viewing public, so I had to check it out very carefully, so they didn't realise I was interested and feel like winners. Not that anyone was watching. Except maybe a smarter counterpart of myself, tucked away in the corner of one of those little windows somewhere.

Anyway, The Fitzwilliam Museum (The Fitz, if you like to give museums trendy short names, like we're in New York or something) WAS open. I had a triumphant little potter up those steps, past the impressive white columns, pausing to check out - yes, as expected - an elaborate and highly understated ceiling in the entrance portice.

Inside, a little security man told me my rucksack would have to go in the cloakroom. This annoyed me as it contained my tampons, but not enough for me to take them out and wave them in his face. So instead I was just disdainful to him and extremely nice to his colleague, who I checked it in with. The annoying one thrust a special exhibition leaflet at me and said I MUST see it. But I didn't look at the leaflet. I just went to check out the mummies and the Ancient Egyptian stuff, then I went to the loo, which was by the Romans. I guess they don't like the Romans.

What can I tell you about the Egyptians? Well, a lot of creepy afterlife stuff, now, but let's not. I'm going to highlight the exciting facts that a) we COULD have just respectfully left those sarcophagi alone, b) sometimes when they unwrapped the little animal mummies there was nothing there and c) sand is really good for drying and preserving. Oh, and that Egypt is part of Africa. But I think you already knew that.

After that creepy little wander downstairs, I headed up the grand staircase to first floor, where they had a truly fab selection of paintings.

Now I'm no gallery-goer and have the attention span of a gnat most-days, so my approach is generally to scoot through and spend a bit of time checking out the stuff that really catches your eye. In that way you're going to instinctively get the most out of your brief visit, right? So they had a lovely bit of Constable and Pisarro and a great room for French Impressionism. There was a Monet, but also some Renoir and... nope, forgotten their names already... Degas I think, and  Seurat. Just fantastic landscapes that are completely arresting, but only when you're not looking directly at them. Like stars. You can see a cluster much more clearly if you're just looking from the corner of your eye. I just think it's great how those artists had the vision to make thousands of meaningless tiny blobs or swipes or brush strokes, and just somehow KNOW that when they all were in the right place, you'd get a fab picture. Like some sort of magic eye. I dunno. That's about as far as I go with art. Another room was devoted completely to flower paintings. My favourite two showed random objects - bugs, brooches, pins, scattered as little incidental but telling details around the base of the vases. Great. Enjoyed that.

Anyway, when the time was up attention-wise I sacked off the Fitz and  walked down Free School Lane, pretending I was in another age, because you can do that there, and the museum had put me in a rather wistful sort of mood. Then of course I had to check out the breathtaking Kings College and Senate House, outside which a man was playing "The Times They Are A-Changing" on guitar, from inside a bin. Evidently his friend had popped him in there. I listened to the whole song and gave him 50p, hoping that would compensate for not asking why he was doing playing Bob Dylan in a bin. Although I REALLY wanted to, there were just loads of Japanese and American tourists I didn't want to get mixed up in them.

Down Trinity street there was yet another market peddling handmade things. It would have been so easy to spend some money and regret it there, such is the appeal of Vases That Look A Bit Like One My Mother Has Had Many Years And Thus Remind Me Of Innocent Childhood Frolicks.

My main interest in Cambridge, for no particular reason, was the Bridge of Sighs, which I nearly didn't see because a man wanted to charge me £4 to go into St John's College to look at it. Reasoning that there are many things I have regretted spending £4 on in my time (that's you, Ryman whiteboard languishing under my desk at work) this would not be one of them. The courtyard would have been eerily close-sounding if it wasn't so full of tourists and people Dressed Rather Smartly for some sort of drinks thing in the hall. The bridge was beautiful. No idea why bridges are so appealing, but they. just. are.

Plenty of Punts full of punters made their punting way along the Cam beneath it, and the adjacent bridge from where I stood. The church-like windows and elegant roof make it quite a spectacle. I just did a little reading about it and have discovered, disappointingly that it was named after the sighs of pre-exam students and build in only 1831. Bloody students again. I thought it would at least have some sort of mediaeval love story attached. Wish I'd just made up my own ruddy facts.

Anyway, after a little scoot around the grounds, a thorough, geriatric perusal of the flowerbeds and a careful evasion of someone's wedding photos, I walked across the bridge, stood for a moment at it's apex, hoping something  special would happen, and then left, telling myself that magic had been set in motion. This was not the case, however, as we now know the bridge was only built in 1831 and named 'sighs' after some bloody, morose students.

Well, the highlight of my trip being thus over and the sun being out, I did a little more wandering, through  Christ's Pieces where I saw a drunk lady roll over backwards in a flowerbed and begin to sob like a toddler, then across Parker's Piece where a jaunty cricket match was taking place. All very English and quaint, I think you'll agree.

Why are these parks called Pieces? OK, as if I haven't learned a lesson in disappointment, I shall look this one up. Apart from being a Scottish name for a sandwich 'piece' means, part of a larger whole. Fascinating what you can find on the internet. I guess Parkers and Christ must've just tossed a coin / piece and divvied it all up. This is all I can find on Wiktionary. But who gives a crap eh?

PIECE: Middle English pece, from Anglo-Norman peece, peice et al. and Old French pece, piece et al., apparently from Late Latin *pettia, *pettium. 

Anyway, I rounded off my day, like any good day, with a detour through the student domain surrounding the station, and a trip to M&S food for a bottle of flavoured water and their teatime selection (This, accompanied by the FINEST fish and chips was the making of my Saturday night)

Why did I write all this down?

Saturday in Cambridge.... Part 1 (The Incredible Journey)

We begin with a journey...

A 49 minute train ride should be doable. One hazy Saturday lunchtime, no sunshine, no rain. Everyone seemed pretty upbeat (myself included, having just spent the entire tube journey snivelling tragically to Sinead O'Connor and making tourists feel chipper). We departed Kings Cross, everyone installed semi-comfortably with their giant cardboard cups of hot milk.

Yet crammed onto a packed train I quickly realised I'd chosen the wrong seat. At this point I suppose I should acknowledge that everybody thinks this, every time they sit on a seat, which happens to be on a train. Huddled amongst their silenct, captive audience, two twenty-threeish, self-satisfied londoners reclined. The boy, a modern Adonis, was adorned sweetly in a purple cotton jumper (sleeves rolled-up), expensively casual jeans and carefully tended stubble. He propped an elbow up with one hand, leaving the other free to expostulate and fan around one's chin with each loudly intoned opinion.

'I don't think… maybe I'm naive… i, i. i. i. think if the Sudanese, if the Sudanese, if the Sudanese….'

He boomed right over his 'ya like ya ra ra like ya', art-batchelor counterpart. It had all started with a  racy account of her art-school days, where you just, like, got over it so quickly, in the first year, drawing each other naked. Nice little story about posing naked in red paint. Titillating for him, naturally still a little early for me. Like.

'Will you let me finish my sentence?', yelled another voice from behind. Some sort of events-man music manager was leaning forward and belting sweet nothings into my ear. And one of those mobile walkie talkies. He was appalled by the young outfit featuring in the discussion. 

'Who was originally responsible for that compilation? They don't dance, they don't perform… Bruce Springsteen this or that. Give it another try. Nope, still shit.Speaking of Americans, NAME, what do we think about NAME. Do you know who she is? I'd have thought you would know who she is...  Three videos. Bit of a triptych really...'

I was fascinated. Caught between these two odd and very public conversations. I looked around, trying to catch another passengers eye. I smiled at a girl but she was trying to eat something. The couple swam up into the pause.

 'most people have some sense of justice… selfishness and how we talk about it....' 

Back onto the Sudanese. Hot topic. He seemed to have read about that one. Possibly that morning whilst she was in the shower, or doing that elaborate top-knot thing with the scarf? Not in the Mail though, because they'd just royally slagged it off, then smoothed things over for equanimity by commenting, profoundly, that it was pot luck they were born on this island and it's what the greatest majority of people read anyway. 

'In an evolutionary context it's probably better to work together…' 

...then they were onto Philosophy with a capital 'P'. He was pretty fast to jump in on that one, so much so that he raised his voice just a little too much, even for him. Now the next carriage could listen too.

'…did a shit on the bed… '

continued Mr music man behind me.

'What? All the joy is gone now. As a record collector it's all gone a bit commercial. I used to enjoy reading people's blogs… nasty, brutal fileshare sites, nasty, commercial, people sharing. It felt like a secondhand CD shop, if that makes sense yeah? The flaming lips really HAVEN'T apologised. Really not.'

I looked around again, to see what everyone else was thinking. They looked pretty quiet and humble. Texting on their little phones, dozing, flicking through a magazine, or just pretending not to be there at all.

It definitely entertained me, to transcribe and read back these little bits of nonsense and share them, although when I thought about it I realised it really was a bit of an arsey thing to do. Just because although those twits were the ones loudly and publicly opining, immodesty was their greatest crime. At least they believed the tripe they appeared to be spouting.

In my case, however, I didn't believe a word of it. What a party popper. In fact I feigned modesty to pop these words down and felt just a little smug about it. On an Apple mac computer. Which I pulled out of my rucksack just for the task. Who's the real douchebag here?!

A Right Royal Tramventure

Greetings from Cafe Nero, just along from East Croydon station... or TRAM STOP, should I say! And why should I say, you ask? Because I've just taken my first South East London Tramventure, Tramversing suburbia and all things green and grim to arrive here, the mighty interchange on my way to IKEA.

Now, this is just one way in which I'm already making the most of my staycation, along with eating enough raw icing sugar to fulfil any woman's daily calorie intake and leave me with a hurty tummy, whilst focusing with heavy and skewed intent upon how this will impact my future chance of marriage.

What an adventure this has been. It was simple enough, Oystering myself on and finding a seat. Just looked like any other train, but then we took off, and i realised you could see the tracks in front of the driver, tracks I'd run around in my training, as we scooted through a chain of disparate, quiet stops. Starting in Beckenham, of course, there weren't too many of us about, but this quickly changed, and I was given the unique opportunity to study a certain type of human being. A tram person is a person who takes the tram to work or school or to the shops or the benefits office or wherever they spend their time. Most of them looked normal. You might have seen them on the bus, casually dressed chaps heading somewhere with a crumpled copy of The Mail, perspiring mothers with pushchairs and school kids on half term, heading over to somebody's for a video night, or as they call it these days, drinking white lightning and happy slapping strangers. Although even that might be a little 2006, I think.

I was enjoying one chap's pretty strange face - really long, it was, when I was distracted by somebody's mobile phone going off by mistake. Politely I looked over to discover the pudgy, Sports Direct styled young chap in the corner had pushed his lips into a sort of kissing shape, and was moving his head, almost rhythmically, back and forth, as if hypnotised by his own mobile telephone device. I caught his eye, just about the same moment I burst out laughing, and had to pretend it was sheer hip hop enjoyment that tickled me so. Predictably, he was intelligent enough to buy this, and no sooner had I calmed my tram-based hysteria than another fine young melody was struck up in the next carriage section.

Nobody batted an eyelid. This is the tram! Where a man can be a man and nobody can stop him expressing himself and his utter coolness! I was beside myself when we arrived in Croydon. This is my new favoured form of transport!

Meanwhile, a small reflection on the 4-day Jubilee holiday that has inspired this extended weekday sojourn. I can't say I write to lament at anything I see, and if any journalist does, it's probably because they either just split up with their girlfriend, had a bad curry, or genuinely do exist in a bad part of the world.

Middle England... and my little section of South East London, however, is not one of those parts of the world, so although I may mock, I write to celebrate with affection the glorious stupidity of my daily environment. And what a celebration we have seen! Proud parades of plopping horses and handsome uniforms, one great British music concert broadcast live to the nation, fireworks that frankly looked just a little too much like someone had razed Buckingham Palace, a flotilla that lit up the grey Thames like Walt Disney himself had just stuck a paint brush on the scene, and a nation, an entire nation of merry, jubilant, face-painted, flag-waving, flushed, shiny faces, all bopping along in a symphony of national pride and utter tastelessness, enjoying picnics, horrific calorie counts, food poisoning, fancy dress and organised fun - the lot, the usual - all decked out in bunting.

Touching as it all is, and whether you engaged in the festivities much or not, the finest moment for me was the small gasp of emotion even our steely-faced monarch allowed herself at her son's touching tribute on stage at the concert. Now perhaps it was just a little gas from one's cucumber sandwiches, but I like to think that all that national love might have just, for a moment threatened to get the better of her cool demeanour. It touched me in the way it does to see my mother moved by something - which I like to think she was too at that moment, sitting on the sofa just next to me, having enjoyed a good bit of Macca and a little Stevie Wonder.

Furthermore, the quintessentially lovely part of it all, has to be this tempered outpouring of national pride. For a nation exporting mainly biscuit recipes and stiff-lipped repression, I am proud that even in my most gushy, indulgent moments, I have the common sense to hold it all in - just a little bit, so as not to cause disgrace. Now that might not be the case for our rotund hip-hop friend on the tram, or indeed the ridiculous young couples that have landed beside me here in Cafe Nero and are now creating a toilet queue as long as the Nile whilst they change their soiled progeny, but some things about this country and these people ARE worth celebrating. And it's Great British modesty and decorum.

Not mine, I add. Pass the icing sugar.

This is half the tale, of my first love.... and maybe yours?

A typical story now, to set things straight, about how you take special people on a journey with you, even if you think you're setting them free.

Two years ago we broke up and it was the hardest decision I've ever had to make, for in doing so I decided to change the course of both our lives as we had pictured them.

We had tried to make it work, but the truth I had to confront was simply that I felt too young, too unsure of myself and the future to settle. It came to feel like my guilty secret, an infidelity to our mutual trust and bond, so that in the end it permeated all intimacy and made us strangers, where before we had been closest. I cannot tell you how that guilt weighed on me, or how I struggled to ignore that doubt. Talking to you only terrified me further, for I knew there was one way out of it and you said in no uncertain terms that my leaving you would break your heart.

But I did anyway, and it felt as much as that. But I had to act on it to stop the pain and stop dishonouring what we had before. I couldn't pretend I would come back soon, and I couldn't keep you my prisoner, waiting sadly, on the off chance that I would grow up and feel ready and sure. I didn't know I would. I didn't know anything, but it seemed like the right thing.

Although it broke my heart more than you could imagine, I felt in a way that I had freed you when we split. It was out in the open, and although you were hurting and struggled to understand my reasons, I knew it would be better for us both, and I think you must have done too, somewhere.

You said 'that's it for me now, I'm done' And in many ways my heart believed it, but common sense - my saviour all this time(!) - said that one so strong and sincere of emotion could not remain immune to loving another for long. To live is to love, we cannot help it!

Meanwhile, I spent two years doing exactly what I had to do. I worked hard, got a couple of promotions, travelled a little bit, made new friends. I kissed three guys and saw one of them a few times. Nothing special. I was drunk on every occasion!

When you would get in touch with me it would reassure me that you were still there, waiting and angry, and it gave me the strength to keep my resolve and see through whatever process was taking place. I didn't know where it was going but I knew it needed time, corny as that sounds, it is just the truth. Often I would listen to you on the radio, just to hear your voice. I'd tell myself you sounded happy. That didn't quite make me feel happy, because it was without me in your life, but it helped in a way, I guess.

I am not quite sure how else, save for the goodness I saw in those around me, I kept my resolve for so many things. To resist contacting you, unblinking. I ran and ran and ran and I starved myself a bit, as you do, and I worked so hard and flung myself at everything creative and frightening and new, just hurtling forwards, gaining speed, uncalculated but instinctive! Then at the end of last year I moved into a place on my own and that is when the pace changed. It all began to fall back into place, my health recovered, I made a home I felt happy in, and I am happy now.

You must have thought I was happy without you all this time! But no, not until now. I am happy in myself and know who I am and what I want and what I like and what I don't. I enjoy my own thoughts, my own company. If I feel lonely enough, I call up my friends. But I don't often feel lonely. I just call up a friend because I want to see them. That's the thing.

I count my blessings and I don't take them for granted. The world changed a while back and you can either hang there, paralysed, or get on with things and build your new reality. I don't take things for granted. I work hard, meet people, try new things and try to stay creative. It feels like the future is here now and this is what I want from it.

There are two people in a relationship, but can you see that all this is a journey I had to do alone. Had I dragged you through it, we might still be unresolved. And yes, you might argue that having the choice to take that journey (got to stop staying that now) is a luxury not many have, and many survive without, it would have happened anyway, and messed us up anyway.

You too, who always seemed so steady and sure to me, have changed too, in ways you wouldn't predict. Had we stayed together would you have bought your first flat?! You might still be running that dear, rattling Ford Ka up and down the motorway every weekend. You wouldn't have applied for a job that you got, that takes you all over the country to new and exciting ambitions. And you wouldn't have fallen for the new woman. The one you're in love with.

If you are happy now and you both love each other in equal measures, I wish you the happiness you deserve and a full and easy life together. Then it would be my turn to face the prospect of a future without my other, that I forced you to do.

I shall always love you, with or without you, as I know you will love me. We can't erase the past, and we can't call it wasted time. It was our time and it made us and it will always endure and change us, as every love shapes the next.

But if she mucks it up and you find yourself alone. I'd like to be the next woman you get to know. I'd like to fall in love with you again.

Just maybe, darling.