College Mascot

Not Mine.

In an awesome act of boho chic, one of my University friends SAM (Surprisingly A Mother) has produced a Sprog. This was slightly surprising. Even more amazing (to me only) is that I'm not his GODPARENT. I've got so much to offer surely? Training in punctuality, advice on aggressive entertaining and, most useful of all, a mild fear of children. A couple of our friends did make the cut: their triumphal cufflink-shining as they prepare for the big Christening bash in December grates daily.

In an unrelated event, my University English group learned that our Director of Studies - the gentleman that interviewed us and then nurtured us through the shock of it all - is retiring.

At our college, an arcane law requiring fellows to leave in the year of their 67th birthday means that one of the best teachers I came across at Cambridge will be arbitrarily ousted months from now. True, the statute did prove a convenient way of getting rid of that insane Nazi bloke who used to pose naked in the windows of his rooms when male freshers walked past. But in Mr Goodling's case, it seems a total waste.

Anyway, the connection between these two facts is this. Sam and I decided to make a day trip to Cambridge to see Mr G and lament that he's leaving. Ever portable, Sprog came too.

Ambling into your university town months after leaving with your friend and her baby prompts a certain crisis of nostalgia. You know that it's not your town any more - Sam's baby proves we're not about to pop into a supervision - but it doesn't stop you spending half an hour at the Porter's Lodge making the Porters agree that the college isn't as much fun these days. Something they ultimately do, only because you've distracted them with a tiny baby.

Happily Sam had explained to Mr G about the new addition to our English group before we arrived. He had apparently asked so sternly on the phone 'And what is your news?' that she'd blurted out 'I've had a baby!' before hanging up, barely waiting for a response.

I felt fairly limited when my response to the same 'What is your news?' question ended with me gabbling nonsensically about Kate in the Countryside and my fledgling writing ambitions. I was back in first year again, hoping not to let him down.

 

I exaggerate.



Elegant as ever, he knew all the right baby questions to ask and pretended not to notice as Sprog mewled and puked with increasing regularity throughout the afternoon. And he enquired so delicately about our careers that I almost told him what I do for a job, despite how out-of-place it felt in the oak-panelled book-lined haven.

And as we caught the train back to London, clutching gifts of books (including The Lustful Turk - which Mr G owned in duplicate), soothed Sprog fell asleep straight away. I could see Sam thinking the same thing as I was: is it too late to ask Mr Goodling to be Godfather?

Good Timing

If preparing to have small groups round for supper proved mentally draining, imagine the  confusion that ensued when BOF decided he wanted a polite drinks for his birthday.

While I have become more Mother-Dearest than is comfortable about Pad entertaining, BOF, for his part, is making a study of punctuality. For this, he models himself on the esteemed Daddy BOF (D-Bof if you will). Though, as a military man, D-Bof has some excuse for his enthusiasm for regimental timing.

Gone are the days when BOF would complain to me at the end of term that D-Bof had planned to be up at Cambridge for half seven in the morning to pick him up. Such timing is necessary, D-Bof would say, so that one can pack up the room, return home and be out for a morning jog by 9.30 - having purchased and assimilated the papers somewhere between London and Cambridge.

Will resist urge to go down
rabbit-pun route

The BOF of today would be pacing his room by 7.15, wondering what could be keeping D-Bof, having eaten breakfast, been for his pre-jog run and composed eloquent missives of thanks to the college cleaning ladies.

This does not sit well with Kate in the Countryside, and combines painfully with my MD-style worst-case-scenario attitude to entertaining. This means I formulate plans that demand we move all of the Pad's furniture into a single room to prevent breakages. Or fretfully tack all of our 643 fairy lights to the ceiling so that no one breaks a bulb and gouges herself to death on the broken glass [you know who you are]. All sensible policies.

However, BOF's time-love means that I now team obsessive list-making and furniture-moving with a crippling fear of being ready late and spoiling BOF's whole evening. Though since merely anticipating my probable (inevitable?) lateness is agony for the poor chap, nervousness feels like the only reasonable response.

Suspecting the other day that my flexible attitude to time might not be the best way to approach catching trains, visiting parents etc, I allowed BOF to advise me on the time buffer required when travelling from the Pad to King's Cross (by my reckoning, a twenty minute journey).

It was as follows: 'Right, you need to allow half an hour for getting there, then fifteen minutes to buy a ticket and five minutes to find a platform. And don't forget time for walking to the station. An hour!' Beaming at his usefulness and the thought of my impending once-in-a-lifetime on-time journey, he consulted his watch. 'Oh dear. (Crestfallen) Too late already.'

And though when BOF's birthday drinks started I was decidedly in the shower, he was   easily sedated with fizz and a homemade cocktail involving sloe gin. Something to bear in mind for the future I think.

A good day for Kates

While it is eternally perplexing to me that millions might not watch my wedding online or livetweet the action seconds at a time, it would churlish for Kate in the Countryside to ignore the Big Sloane Bash, so here it is - the view from Pimlico:

First, in Hello mood, here's some detail on my personal affinity with the BSB. My initials are KM, my first name is Kate and well, my walk to work traces the wedding route from the Palace which shows how particularly well-placed I am to comment. I'm practically Kate Middleton. If she had a job. Obviously. 

On my way to work on Thursday (Royal Wedding Eve) I amused myself by rootling around within the depths of my bag near Buckingham Palace and watching as police officers wiped sweat from their brows fearing terrorist threat. Gone are the days when a bearded half-Iranian friend and I would scurry past police officers and plot fictional plots in loud whispers yet evade arrest. These chaps looked so troubled that not even my unthreatening pink jacket could reassure them.

Regal.

Happily I continued unarrested, pausing only to admire the battalion of portaloos stationed along the Mall. Everywhere you looked were photographers in search of corners to capture. One in particular had taken up residence in my cheeky work shortcut. Believe me, dear reader, the internal vitriol I silently aimed at the hapless chap cannot have been good for my soul. 

The day itself brought out a fairly surprising level of bright-eyed enthusiasm from even some of my more cynical chums. When one started a Facebook group announcing his intention of camping on the Mall for Wedding Eve, I (wrongly) assumed it was a spoof. But when others started finding nice things to say about Beatrice and Eugenie's universally-derided-dresses, I knew that wedding fever was in fact a damaging social condition.  

BOF and I live on the cusp of the action, but our boho-Pad is so on trend that we have no TV with which to actually view it. BOF was at work, livetweeting from the office (the perfect place to assimilate the atmosphere…), so I ducked into a pub to see the Dress and munch regal brekkers. 

Inside, in the only room without a monster TV playing out the action, were a family of four with two young children. The father was steadfastly involved in his paper. His daughter, by contrast, kept hopping down from the table to scuttle into the TV bar. Each time, she returned brimming with excitement: 'I saw a princess Daddy!' 'Very good,' said her father, not looking up from his Guardian. 'Sit down and eat your toast please. Much more interesting.' Fighting an uphill Republican battle there I fear.

Later that day I celebrated the understated nuptials with some citrus ale in a microbrewery in Leyton, followed by garage music in the trendy east. Just as Kate would have wanted.

Bugs' Life

Back in The Countryside, it is quarter past 12 at night when I discover the cockroach scuttling towards my toilet.



Who needs carpets anyway?

It's my first night in the non-Childhood Home back in Oundle. It would be difficult to imagine anything less likely to make me a fan of the New Place Down The Road (NPDTR). The place is quite short on carpets. And curtains. Also kitchen comforts, food, floorboards and doors. One thing we do have is - to MD's delight - one of those 'futuristic' [MD] ice-and-water dispensing fridges. 

But something else we seem to have acquired  is a pet cockroach. The house is dark and sinister. I retreat from the loo, feigning casual indifference lest it senses my fear. Dogface is in bed and, in any case, would be no use in the face of such a monster. The room is pretty short of useful bug-trapping accoutrements, crammed instead with boxes of childhood tat.

Eventually, tin in hand, I face the nonchalant bug. Cramming it inside, I lop off a couple of legs in haste. I assure you, dear Kate in the Countryside reader, the beast could hardly fit, so large was he. 

The following morning, leaving the bug beneath its box (with an additional bowl over that, for reinforcement), I tell MD: 'There's a cockroach in my bathroom MD.' 'No there isn't,' she says.

The good end. Fact.

Our former neighbours are visiting the NPDTR (see how friendly it was that end of Oundle...). 'There's a cockroach in my bathroom,' I repeat. 'Is it dead?' asks Lovely Neighbour 1 (LN1). MD shoots angry looks behind his back Mrs Bennet-like - don't mention the cockroach -which become frantic when LN1 offers to rescue the beast. 

Moments later, beetle unveiled, we all laugh at my bug-illiteracy: 'That's not a cockroach!' MD - who had been transfixed from fear at thought that The Countryside would know of her cockroach concerns - is nearly crying with relief. LN1 liberates the nonchalant bug onto some rubble, while Dogface skips about awkwardly, uncertain where he fits in the bug hierarchy. I can't concentrate: the rubble is a bit near my room for my liking.

Nearby Dogface is now worrying a wasp - my beetle is too tough. Stoically trying to munch the stingy beast, he gets whimpery and irate each time it fights back. Finally, the frustration is too much. He uses his last and most potent weapon. As MD squawks horrified, Dogface confidently pees on the wasp. In the middle of the new kitchen floor. He smiles his success.

Put outside, he barks at MD's new car. I know how he feels. We neither of us like change. A NPDTR neighbour pops his head around the corner, ostensibly to say hi, but with a virulent glare at noisy Dogface. Meanwhile, a duststorm arises from the building site chaos and I'm instructed to re-move removal boxes.

That night - Easter - the reincarnated beetle finds my room for the second time. A homing cockroach. Frankly, the new place needs to try harder if it's going to ever win me over.

Next episode: Back in the Gym Agane.

MD, Nigella and me

Worth it?

Back at the Pad, our entertaining ambitions have peaked with the acquisition of a Nigella Cookery Book. Laters to Jamie, at the Pad we're all about aspirational nightlights and tablecloths and cake. While BOF wows all with a selection of healthy and nutritious main courses, I generally stick to the non-compulsory element of the evening (cake). And, er, Nigella lipstick.

Dinner party pitfalls are many and varied. But both MD and Bofles (BOF's younger brother) were in London this weekend, so we knew we had to up our game: this was to be the uber-dinner party, where we gathered together all we had learned from the previous few.

As BOF and I readied ourselves for the MD-Day Sups, we stilled our nerves with the thought that we were entertaining veterans by now, and previous dinner parties had passed off OK. True, it would have been better if I hadn't cut my hand on a blunt knife last week while washing up and bled all the way through pudding. But BOF, belligerently optimistic as ever, reinterpreted the grotesque spectacle as symptom of our devotion to dinner, and our guests were duly grateful.

More blood injuries were sustained another day, when an enthusiastic chum almost sliced a finger off with cavalier cocktail-making and retreated to the bathroom whimpering. But a monkey plaster and a caipirinha later, he was only emboldened by his injury. Though perhaps I shouldn't have chased him and others out of the door with a steak knife when they admitted that they weren't keen for clubbing actually, and they didn't want a coffee from the coffee machine either.

And, yes, when we accidentally set fire to our (Mother BOF-loaned) tablecloth the week before there was some confusion: (BOF) 'Ah. What's the consensus on what we should do at this point?'. But from the brink of calamity Precociously Media-Savvy friend (PMS) saved us all. Just as the napkins burst into flames, she threw her glass of water in the the blaze with sniper-like accuracy. Soaked salad, wax and oil combined deliciously to form the main course.

But these small misunderstandings and incompetences just paved the way for the presence of Bofles and MD at our table. And on the scale of incompetence? Well. I ran out of time to make a cake, and then was so worried about my only dish not being on the menu I had to be restrained from compulsive baking at 7.45 that night. And MD managed to peep over the disproportionately high table despite her Thumbelina proportions (we gave her the only proper chair). But otherwise… people left on time, no one shouted, no blood was spilled or fires started. Pagan it was not.

Frankly, it was rather a disappointment. We'll have to have the team back again. Perhaps with the addition of the Fight Clubbers from down the road. That should do it.

Women's Institute

Even putting a glass of wine in front 
doesn't make it look good.

When I was smaller, MD would frequent the Women's Institute Cake Sale down the road from my now-deceased Childhood Home. [The coffee cake was best by miles, but there was definitely some sort of cake quota at work. Why else would there have been as many summer puddings as coffee cakes? Who wants a scraggy mound with fruit in instead of succulent cakey goodness?]


These cake sales were terrifying. Half an hour before they opened, hordes of kindly-looking old ladies thronged the village hall doors chatting contentedly. Once inside, however, these old dears would think nothing of trampling each other into the ground over a medium-sized carrot cake. 


As the smallest, I was employed by MD to sneak through the mob and grab the best-looking cake, before retreating to the CH.


It was at orchestra last week that I was reminded of the terror I'd felt around the countryside's mobster grannies. Here, instead of cake, it was artistic recognition for which they fought.

So, hours before the concert, my friend and I realised we couldn't find our usual seats. We'd been ejected from our mildly prominent stand to seats at the back, out of sight, behind a pillar. The sweetly-smiling violinist ladies had manoeuvred themselves forwards with dastardly cunning.

Mabel

You'd think this would be enough Machiavellian activity for one evening of classical music, but no. Next to us (behind the pillar), sat Mabel.


Mabel can no longer hear very well, but continues to play with atonal confidence. Beside her sits Lin-May. She's in fact rather good, but she can't speak much English, and Mabel finds the language barrier a useful excuse to offer Lin-May advice on her playing. Shouting over the quiet solemn passages and whispering in the loud, Mabel confuses and embarrasses Lin-May equally, but communicates little.


At the interval, Mabel shuffled about onstage, moving people's music (to conform to her own mysterious system), and causing chaos.

As the start of the second half approaches Lin-May and Mabel are nowhere to be seen. Privately, I fear Mabel's locked her friend in a cupboard, though it might be somewhere more sinister. Mabel appears - tutting and fretting and shouting over the tuning, 'Where's the silly girl got to now?' in best beleaguered schoolteacher fashion.


At last, Lin-May appears with moments to spare and in complete disarray:

'Where did you get to this time?' Mabel demands, delighted.

'I can't find my glasses! They're my only pair!' 

'You can't have lost them again? For goodness' sake!' 

'I can't play now,' mumbles Lin-May, close to tears.

'Are they these?' Mabel enquires innocently, plucking Lin-May's distinctive glasses from her bag with a flourish. 'You'd better put them on then - they might come in useful helping you find the notes. Or maybe not...' And, with an air of great generosity, looking as though she'd just beaten her to the last coffee cake, she handed the glasses to Lin-May.

Goodbye Childhood Home (the conclusion)

Well, bye then.

This weekend was the last spent in my Childhood Home, whose impending decline was where Kate in the Countryside started last year.

When I was last at home, Dogface was doing his best to be as disconcertingly unfriendly and yappy as possible towards the couple who have bought the house, the Childhood Home Usurpers. This culminated in a notable incident where he tactically crapped in their path and fled. How things have changed. Now, when the CHU turn up (enthusiastic dog-owners themselves), treacherous Dogface starts gambolling about with enthusiasm and delight. They've even been taking him for walks apparently....

At least Childhood Home itself is not so fickle. Strapped for storage space, the CHU asked if they could keep some of their stuff in our - now empty - garage. MD agreed. Clearly unenthused, the garage retaliated in triumphant style when its roof collapsed on the boxes, moments after the CHU had moved in their things.

'Well that's never happened before,' I observed nonchalantly, brushing dust off them.

And packing is dull. The Cupboard of Terror on the top floor of the house in particular took an astonishing amount of time. I was told to extract the things I wanted from within the cavernous pit. Sifting through my childhood hoardings elicited many treasures, including: a small novelty tennis racquet wrapped in a golden cape, seven fake witches nails, half a Polly Pocket (blue), a locked briefcase with an unopenable combination and - bafflingly - three standard pound coins, stuck together to form a small tower.

Even as I boxed these items on a sunny Sunday (in the box marked 'Very Special Things': don't worry - they've been saved) with MD next door to protect me, the Cupboard of Terror seemed as terrible as ever.

Even the door I'd been sure to prop firmly open left me with no certainty that I was safe. Might it not spring shut and lock me in - as it had on that day sixteen years ago when three pals and I had thought it the perfect hiding spot? Sadly the adults (from whom we hid) didn't realise the game. They were not even looking for us and, once locked, the CoT was unopenable from within. That the four of us are still here today is a miracle of initiative and DIY.

Elsewhere, mouldy accessories from the hotel I once started in my bedroom (I was the Manager. Hapless friends were deemed 'Bellboy' or, if they were very lucky, 'Waitress'), fell stickily down from various crannies. Dogface munched the small soaps and flannels as snacks.

Later, we had an impromptu drinks party to say goodbye to the place, where MD's friends asked me whether I was sad to be leaving until I was. Then Dogface and I ran about in the garden one last time and MD drove me back to the station. 

Every memory I have from home seems to have happened in lovely sunlight or snow. To me, the mental image I have of CH looks like a Cambridge University Prospectus drawn by the Wizard of Oz.

If you remember anything from Lorne House that you want to leave at the bottom here that would be tremendous. Thanks chaps.

Next episode: The Women's Institute