After visiting the Cherwell Boathouse, I might spare Oxford from burning

It is now two decades since I lived in Oxford. I was then a drunk and lonely puddle of a person, with only a gift for screaming; but no matter how low I sank, to paraphrase Alcoholics Anonymous literature, I never sank quite as low as to consider eating at the ’bab van (kebab van) outside Univ (University College) on the High (High Street); I preferred to dine in Hall (a hall). Oxford, you see, has its own native dialect, a sort of pidgin posh best worn with a depressed carnation and a giant inedible chip made of class terror. Perhaps the roots of my eventual redemption were in that tiny grunt of gastronomic self-esteem; who knows? Or was it just another thing I dreamt and actually I ate ’babs constantly? Maybe I really was a ’bab? I wasn’t a horrible teenage alcoholic, after all — just a ’bab. (Forgive me.