"Would it really have made such a difference to the course of your life?", says my sensibly rational uber-qualified 5-degreed research scientist husband. "Well, I'd have had different friends, for starters. Which would have been bad, come to think of it. And it's prettier", I say, waving my arm at King's College Chapel. "You've seen York campus. Hideous compared to all ... this". "Prettier", he says, adjusting his knapsack*. "Is that a reason to choose an academic institution?". "Yes", I say. "I like pretty things."
My best friends from school went to Cambridge. I didn't work hard enough and only** got 2 As and 2 Bs in my A-levels, so I probably wouldn't have got in even if I'd tried. I didn't get into Durham which, to this day, remains a vast and often forgotten blessing ("Do you play hockey?" "No". "Are you happy with the idea of being in a womens' college?" "No". "Are you quoting the notes from the Arden edition?" "No"), so I ended up at York and was stupidly happy for three years. I still remember very clearly, aged 18, picking up the phone to call home and thinking: I am miles away from everything, and everything can start again. It did and it didn't, but I made friends I still have and I do not regret a second of it and even though (yet again) I didn't work hard enough, I remember writing something about Astrophel and Stella and chewing a pen until it exploded on my chin and thinking: Oh. My brain works, how nice.
It didn't last, of course. These days, I earn money (when I am working) doing advertising and marketing type things which, despite the protestations of all the young people doing degrees in Communications Media Jizz and Celebrity PR at the University of the West of Arsebiscuit are not (I repeat not) 'academic' subjects. Still, it is amusing, and it affords me enough time to lie on the floor wondering if it is too late to do an MA in Biscuit Theory at McGill. (So saying I dislike the opinionated young, so it is probably better if I stay away.)
Anyway, Cambridge. Pretty. Very. You have seen it all before a million times. King's College Chapel quite extraordinary and very secular; more Tudor than God. Quite small, though, is Cambridge, with a very high scarf-per-inhabitant ratio.
You may not have seen Kettle's Yard, though. It is lovely, lovely, lovely and worth the trip to Cambridge to see. Smallish gallery, but much more interesting (to me anyway) was the house of the chap who set it up, Jim Ede, who was a curator at the Tate in the 50s. I can't begin to describe it but do look at the site and the link; suffice to say (assume Estuarine twang) that I will never think of pebbles in the same way again.
After Cambridge, we went to Bedford to see our friends and their children, our godchildren. Puppy cake was eaten and there were not enough candles to say 'Happy Birthday', so the cake said "Yipy" instead. Much better.
The next day: to London. I drove my husband to the airport and spent a couple of days in London up to no good, making ham sandwiches in Battersea and eating preposterously nice food and watching The Inbetweeners (finally) and sleeping. It was nice.
Then Friday came, and with it an oddly pointless Premium Economy seat behind two ghastly children who shouted and played with the lights whilst their stupid parents sat, slack-mouthed and headphoned, in front of "Sex and the City 2", oblivious to the tuts and furious stares of the successful small-to-medium-sized entrepreneurial businessmen around them.
Anyroad up, that is it. I am back in Canada and my travels are over (for the time being). But before I go, let me ask you: have you ever noticed that people in Business Class often wear jackets a bit like this? And have strange hair? And also: do you want to cry hot tears of rage when you see a CHILD in business class? I know I do.
Pip "Yipy" Pip
NWM
*It had cognac and faine waine in it
** It was 1987 and I went to THAT sort of school.
7 comments:
I was born in a house belonging to Cambridge University, cos of my parents being Cambridge academic types. I still have relatives there and ate delicious food in Kettle's Yard recently (I think. Do they have cake? If not, I was somewhere else). I was brought up, though, in York, and spent half my childhood on York campus, wot with my dad ending up a York academic type. Personally I prefer York, but I guess I would. It's less... overwhelming.
I had an interview at Oxford Uni (they didn't do the course I wanted at Cambridge) and it was HORRIBLE. I was really rather relieved when they rejected me. I went to Manchester Uni instead, which was much more fun. And less snobby. And echoey. And stoney. And intimidating. Giant stone buildings are indeed pretty to look at, but they're not at all comfortable to live in.
I went to university in north Wales because it was sunny on the open day and the train station in Bangor reminded me of Thomas the Tank Engine. Possibly the worst way to decide. Oh well.
Children should not be allowed in business class unless they can show Proof of Employment.
vw - wamousn- what you should be allowed to do to parents who shirk their parental duties and allow their children to run amok in airplanes
I went to Cambridge, and agree with everything that everyone has said - pretty, stone buildings not comfortable to live in etc. Scarf-per-inhabitant ratio is also high because I have NEVER lived anywhere so cold in my life. I went to visit friends living in a student house, and one of them came into the living room in thick coat, scarf, gloves, hat. "Been out somewhere nice?" I asked. "Upstairs," he said.
I went to Cambridge because my father had and because I went to the sort of school where if you went to a University that wasn't Oxbridge it meant you were a thicko - although the real thickos went to the Royal Agricultural College Cirencester to learn how to run their estates or to Sandhurst to learn how to kill people before running their estates. In a pretty minimal gesture of rebellion I went to King's rather than Trinity, and I can tell you that the ugly modern bits are rather more uncomfortable than the old stone bits. I'm not sure how different things would have been at a different university: certainly the students at my other university, Wroclaw, weren't notably different to those at Cambridge (except that they were Polish, of course).
I went to hideous, horrible local state university on account of working far, FAR less hard than even non-working monkeys claim to have done. Which, apart from my on-going disgust with having spent 3 years in one of the ugliest campuses ever invented (but with, I must admit, a v low scarf-to-inmate ratio), was not really such a bad thing as I got my degree in Utterly Useless Academic Subject that Sounded Good Fun at the Time. Also I was able to leave school with a light at grateful heart to be shot of the damn place.
To compensate, I intend to spend many hours touring Oxbridge, pointing at various buildings and calling them quaint while snapping my chewing gum.
The terrible problem I am dealing with right here at this moment is that the people who went to Cambridge (that went?), despite their protestations, sound INTERESTING and like I would like to have a cup of tea with them. Sam, hello and welcome. You look attractive and full of hope. How is that?
Megan, was it English? Mine was.
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