1st Days at Uni

My impossibly handsome brother drove me and my fourteen red and white checked laundry bags up to Oxford at the start of term. I was so proud of his charming persona and mysterious smile especially when compared to other peoples grumpy old dads and neurotic looking mothers.

The preparations for this new phase in my life had been many and various. The weeks leading up to the day itself had sped by in a flurry of plimsoll whitener and pencil sharpenings. I highlighted my hiar to within an inch of its life and speed read Dryden. I also packed all my clothes in lilac coloured tissue paper that I tied with cream ribbons. Mymother had supplied me with gleaming stainless steel russell Hobbs kettle and my sister had packed me a selection of teas and coffees in a lovely tin caddy. I lost a stone. I spent more than one eveniong in the run up to my departure picturing myself through other people's eyes as a sort of ardent, unexplored librarian with a passionate nature and a vast potential.

When I arrived i was struck by how low key everything seemed. i knew I had applied to a modern college with boxy rooms and built in shelf beds, but somehow I hadnti known that down the road there were fourteenth century buildings made of pinky gold stone where most rooms has their own turrets. Before I learned to apreciate that the modern architecture was actually ratehr beautiful I remember feeling a little disappointed at how drab things were.

I had fretted endlessly about what to wear to make my entreance finally opting for navy trousers and a sharp whitw linen shirt that I hoped gave me a look of Katherine Hepburn playing a wise-cracking journalist with a heart of gold . But at my college everyone wore waterproof clothing regardless of the weather, and black cotton leggings seemed the garment of choice. A few days later when I had brushed my hair and put on tights someone actually asked me if I was going to London!

An element of colour was supplied by the university staff who were an eccentric bunch, some were world weary seeming social butterflies, glamorous but a little jaded, whilst others possessed the kind of benign gentleness I had previously associated with shepherds. A number seemed proud to fluant their odd habits and stretch the boundaries of the pupil-teacher relationship. One highyly strung boy, just eighteen, shakily recounted how one of the dons had come to his room at ten o clock the previous night, taken off his shoes and socks and offered him a bowl of melting brown bread ice cream. Wild rumours abounded about the strange, predatory habits of some of the staff. But it seemed it was only the male students who had to beon their guard.

On my third day I met and rather fell for a handsome nervy youth from bristol called Kevin. He explained to me how each of his hyperactive maiden aunts had knitted him a special 'gpong away'cardigan in a contrasting vibrant shade of green. He told been torn over which garment to wear as the two women stood and waved him off from the house they inhabited next to Kevin's mum and dad, their hands moving faster and harder to prove thier love. Hehad ended up sporting both. In his room we feasted on the huge lemon drizzle cake they ahd baked him listening to Cole Porter singing the Cole porter song book and a band kevin loved called the Blue Aeroplanes.

Soon after this i was befirended by a very high powered elegant girl from Cambridge and we immediately fell into an unforgiving work routine, involving, daily, four two hour stints of study puinctuated by breaks for pint mugs of tea. This was in our first week! We worked in a huge medieval library that was round and had twenty foot tables illuminated by table lamps that spilled pools of delicate golden light into the gloom. Often we were the first to arrive, chatting on the steps until the doors were unlocked and we were allowed inside. I loved this structure, feeling a funny kind of cheerful heroism as we waited on the library steps, discussing our reading and dodging the rain. I imagined our hard work and dedication coupled with the highly flattering lamp-light might somehow auger romance.

On the first Friday there was some kind of 'mixer' for all the poeple on my course. One second year boy managed to snog three of the girls in my group, a blonde, a redhead and a brunette. I remember gazing at these three similar but distinct couples as they writhed and sucked away at eachother at hal;f hourly intervals, and what I felt was a measure of disapproval tempered by deep admiration at my fellow students' zest for life.