My time at University was an academic success (I got a first class honours degree where I came fourth in the year), though rather less so in terms of accommodation chosen or relationship-wise. With the latter I was a fool and should have tried harder. Caroline, sorry for being an idiot - I really didn't have the words.
It's funny what else you do remember, though. In Cripps Hall we had a tuck shop (a place you could buy snack foods), and there was one guy called Paul Jackson who was obsessed with a type of chocolate bar, called Cabana, which was chewy and cherry flavoured. He was a chemist, too. We must be a strange lot. Gerry Pattenden's Tomato Lecturs was proof of that. And Lynne Frost hiding stark naked in her boyfriend's bed when the cleaner came in. Then there were the old sticks of sodium that went boom in the campus lake - the same place they used to hold the Raft Race.
Each Hall in the Fresher's Week built a raft out of what they could find and though there was much sinking and cheating there was one genuine (and stunning) victory by Willoughby Hall who romped away from the field like they were professionals.
These were also the days of Fortran 77 and an early computer game (on mainframe only) called Dungeon (a derivative of Dungeons and Dragons, I guess) where many a student and postgraduate with access to a terminal wasted a great deal of time. Then there was Sargon II, a very crude (and extremely bad) chess programme. I can tell you Sargon II was a better ruler of the Kingdom of Akkadia than a chess player.
Which brings me to the chess adventures I'll go into next time.
Jack Orchison,
March 23, 2014
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