Instructed and improved

I hear that education is not fulfilling our aspirations regarding social mobility.

I resolve to sort that out.

I haul my little Grits from the unicorn swamp they have dug for themselves in the back garden, and I drive them over to Cambridge where I dump them in Downing College. My beady eye has spied that there is a fine Early Music concert taking place here this very afternoon with the celebrated Jakob Lindberg.

Behold two of my little Grits, moments after they have received an inspiring Mummy Grit lecture about how unicorn swamp maths and a decent pair of shoes could help any ambitious young lady access Oxbridge. You can tell they are already educationally instructed and much socially improved.

The other little Grit isn't in the photo. She says she is not aspiring to Oxbridge, because they don't study enough fish. She says she is aspiring to Southampton. (I hope unicorn swamp maths can help there too.)

Well, we haven't any tickets to actually get into the Early Music concert, of course.

No matter. It is an opportunity for me to instruct the little Grits in the social skill that is called Buttering up the lovely lady at the door so she holds tickets for you and feels sorry for you because you tell her how you cry if she mentions Pay Pal.

So we're in! See? Educational instruction and social improvement, and it's not even tea-time.

But then I make everyone visit the toilet before the concert begins.

At this point, I'd like to instruct you about this, so you avoid my social errors.

Downing College offers delightful squirty hand-creme containers in the ladies. When I naively squirt mine, the hand creme goes in a huge oily blob all down my light brown silk skirt and slides down my right leg. I have to scrape it off. It does not look good, I can tell you that.

But I always look on the positive! I tell my little Grits that at this point I may not be socially improved but I am instructed. Always cover the squirty nozzle of the hand creme container completely with your hand! Otherwise the kindest interpretation you can give on emerging from the ladies is that you have wet yourself.

But then! A lovely concert of Jacobean lute music! With the lovely Jakob Lindberg and his very lovely lute!

You can listen along with me here if you want.

Thus, after nearly two hours of lute education in Downing College, I am much instructed and very much improved.

Shark agreed. She said, after the event was over, that despite my suspiciously oily leg, she thought a music education like that really did confer a sort of social improvement. Because at no point this time after clapping eyes on Jakob Lindberg did I throw my panties on the stage.