[Forgot to do this at the time, so relying on the itinerary and my faulty memory]
Free Day in Cambridge, which can mean only one thing: punting! Jeff went off to meet his cousins, so it was just me and the Belcher twins. We wandered around the bridge getting offers from the different companies, but settled on the one that, for the price of the punting tour, threw in an hour of punt rental for free. All the punt tour guides give about the same spiel, a fact we noticed when we heard guides from another company telling the same lame joke our guide had told us on the way up. After the tour, neither of the girls wanted to try their hand at punting, which suited me fine, because then I got to do the whole hour. 🙂 It took a few tries before I realized that the easiest way to guide the punt was to let the pole trail in the water a bit and use it as a rudder before pulling it out. Had a couple of close calls, but never lost my pole in the muck, and even helped rescue one lost by one of the ‘professionals’. 😉 Lunched at a chain pub called ‘The Slug and Lettuce’, then, giving up on the idea of renting bikes in the afternoon, spent a while wandering around the shops until Brian Jordan’s (the music store) opened, where I bought their entire stock of old G&S scores, and we got several copies of the Chester Book of English Motets, with an eye to doing some busking in London. Went to evensong at Clare College and heard Tim Brown leading the Eton Choral Workshop people, then hooked up with Norma and we grabbed some sandwiches and wine and went to Dowling College for an open air production of ‘Much Ado About Nothing’. It was really well done, with an excellent cast, and very attractive: I was lusting after the leading ladies, and the girls were all lusting after the leading men. Afterwards hooked up with some more of the group and played with the Young’uns while waiting for the bus. When we realized that we had missed the bus we wanted, and that the next one wasn’t for an hour, I got us a couple of cabs and we headed back to the hotel.