Clocking Off

20th Nov 2009

LAST week­end I vis­ited a friend at one of those exclu­sive insti­tu­tions Britain calls ‘Oxbridge.’ I have been before, and have many pos­i­tive words for this place.

It is beau­ti­ful, cer­tainly. Walk­ing around centuries-old stone court­yards and pas­sage­ways, the his­tory of each col­lege hangs almost vis­i­ble in the atmos­phere. Vast expanses of immac­u­late, dew-touched lawns and grand, impos­ing chapels are inter­wo­ven with cob­bled streets and tiny houses with doors I barely fit through. Bicy­cles are every­where; they are like a sec­ond species that has sprung out of the stone to live along­side the human race.

I trav­elled on Fri­day to attend ‘for­mal hall’, a special-occasion din­ner at my friend’s col­lege. Unfor­tu­nately, I arrived late. Luck­ily, how­ever, my friend had man­aged to charm the porter into let­ting me in, but a more intim­i­dat­ing entrance would have been hard to pro­vide. It was like walk­ing into the Great Hall in Harry Pot­ter – but late. Three long tables and one high table stretched the length of a grand, cav­ernous hall, lit by can­de­labra from the dec­o­ra­tive ceil­ing and melt­ing can­dles on the table. Every­one was wear­ing black over-gowns (except me) and drink­ing good red wine.

The illu­sion was bro­ken slightly as I sat down and a coin was chucked into my drink. As I was informed of the rules of ‘pen­ny­ing,’ I felt strangely back on famil­iar ground. Drink­ing games I could relate to; I shrugged and downed the glass in one. At least it was bet­ter than Frosty Jacks.

The evening got bet­ter and bet­ter. The com­pany was charm­ing, the food deli­cious, and the whole cus­tom of a for­mal din­ner was, to my unashamedly roman­tic mind, delight­ful. When the High Table stood up to leave at the end of the meal, the rest of the hall stood too. ‘Watch the last guy to leave,’ some­one whis­pered to me. All eyes towards them, the older dons filed through a door at the back of the room. When only one was left, he turned and gave the stu­dents a grandiose bow, and the whole room burst into rau­cous cheers and applause. ‘Col­lege tra­di­tion,’ I was told, as we sat down again. ‘If he didn’t do that he’d prob­a­bly have plates chucked at him.’

After­wards, we went on to another col­lege bar, which was also a sort of under­ground club. A con­verted cel­lar with a low brick ceil­ing, it was a fan­tas­tic venue, if extremely hot. We had a fair few drinks, danced to some great music, and got very sweaty – just how I like my evenings.

Although it fin­ished pretty early, at mid­night, we went on mer­rily to another party. The ban­ter con­tin­ued in the taxi and we tum­bled out nois­ily, and stood sway­ing and gig­gling wait­ing for the door to open, antic­i­pat­ing a great ad-hoc rave await­ing us inside.

What hit us instead was a room of grey fog and slumped bod­ies. Blank, washed-out faces passed round numer­ous spliffs with stu­pidly slow move­ments. Plas­tic bags of green stuff and white stuff were opened and put away with intri­cate, eerily lov­ing care. Lines were being cut with expen­sive credit cards, by grubby hands attached to designer-clad bod­ies and blocks of makeup. It was like smash­ing into a brick wall at high speed.

We left after five min­utes. Out­side, I exploded to my friend, who felt the same way, about the waste that was occur­ring in that room. It was unjust, I said, that places at one of the world’s top edu­ca­tional estab­lish­ments were given to stu­dents, who were tak­ing for granted an oppor­tu­nity that peo­ple across the world could only dream of. This sit­u­a­tion applies, I know, to uni­ver­si­ties nation­wide, but the tragedy of it all seemed height­ened when found amongst sup­pos­edly the bright­est and most tal­ented young peo­ple in the country.

They are prob­a­bly amongst the rich­est, too. Blackly funny, to me, was see­ing the lines of coke being cut on brand new copies of Pen­guin Mod­ern Clas­sics. I order mine second-hand from Ama­zon, but I know which uni­ver­sity I’d rather be at.