I was in the attic killing some Taleban on Medal of Honor when Girl interrupted and said: ‘Dad, what’s this?’ What it was was a pile of memorabilia which I’d stuffed into a plastic shopping bag on leaving university and which I’d barely looked at since.
We picked through the contents rapt with wonder. To me it seems like yesterday but this was a window to a world that no longer exists — an Oxford at least as remote from current experience as my Oxford was from the version attended 30 years earlier by all those clever grammar-school boys with their pipes and tweed suits, fresh from doing their National Service. ‘Wow!’ I thought. ‘I’m living history.’
Probably the biggest change has been in communications. In my day, everything happened not via texts, phone or email — which effectively didn’t exist — but through your pigeonhole in the porter’s lodge: summons from your tutor, plaintive letters from your mum hoping you’d soon get in touch, and, most important, party invitations.
There were lots of these in my bag: from the Sunday Club to a Drunk and Disorderly Party at Oriel Square; the Hedonist Club to a Lacustrine Sunset on the Sainsbury Terrace, Worcester College; the Narcoleptics in Christ Church Cathedral Garden; the Keepers of the Plunger, ibid; the Editors of Tributary in the Fellows’ Garden, Magdalen; something ad hoc and scrappy from the legendary performance poet Micalef; etc.
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