Bulgaria with Noodles

Perrott Hill School, in all its glory   “ I expect you’ll be becoming a schoolmaster, sir. That’s what most of the gentlemen does, sir, that gets sent down for indecent behaviour.” – Evelyn Waugh,  Decline and Fall , 1928 Well, I was not sent down for indecent behaviour, but I did become a schoolmaster. The main staircase at P.H.S., with the portraits of the Grundys   One of the grimmest buildings in Oxford, apart from the Examinations Schools, is the Appointments Committee, more commonly known as the Disappointments Committee. As I came to the end of my fourth and final year, it gradually dawned on me that I would be needing a job or, if I was really lucky, maybe even a career. I did not know what to do. I had worked for Barclays during one or two holidays and during my “gap” year, but I did not have much enthusiasm for banking. The Army? No, I did not like the idea of getting shot or blown up. After leaving Oxford, I was working temporarily in a Barclays in Winc...

Hooray! It has finally, finally arrived. Yes, my old friend Peter sent this parcel from the UK. Twice. The charming and delightful Bulgarian postal service sent it back to the UK the first time, so he sent it again. Another lot of postage and another wait. Twice I went down to the post office in Palitsi, only to be told, “Nyama kolet!” Then my dear wife found an official-looking piece of paper stuck onto our letterbox, so it was a case of third time lucky. So how much did it all cost? Too blooming much. Two lots of Royal Mail postage at £16 a time and then the P.O. in Palitsi charged me an extra 29 euros. We are off to Samothraki next week and that is going to involve a lot of lying on the beach. Irena loves flopping beside the sea, so I must have something substantial to read. Yes, of course I shall be ploughing through The Wind in the Willows for the ninth time, but it is also a good idea to have something a bit more highbrow and intellectually challenging. Napoleon the Great f...

The Wind in the Willows is one of my all-time favourite books. I think that I must have read it eight or nine times. At the beginning of the story, Mole gets fed up with the spring cleaning and so he goes up, up, up into the warmth and the sunlight. Pop! He comes out of his little tunnel and wanders off into the countryside. Then Mole encounters the river and the Water Rat. The amiable Ratty takes him for a little expedition (and rather good lunch) in his rowing boat. It is a magical part of Grahame’s story. Punting at Oxford brings back memories of lazy afternoons, willow trees by the Cherwell, sunlight, pretty girls in floppy hats and the green backdrop of the university parks.  Punting is a blend of balance, strength, timing and maybe a little skill. It is the perfect way to enjoy some peace, the silence and the watery sounds of the river as you leave the Cherwell (pronounced "Charwell") boathouse behind and take your punt over the rollers to Mesopotamia, the land betwe...

Tim Hinton was not a very close friend of mine when we were fellow-sufferers at LWC, aka the London Water Closet, but I did my best to show him some of Oxford. He wanted to take lots of photos around a central theme and "Oxford" seemed to fit the bill.   I think Tim's pictures are brilliant, as he has the splendid images of the magnificent old university buildings and he also has some rather ordinary, everyday life pictures of people getting on with their normal lives.   One of the first places I took Tim was up the spire of the university church, St Mary the Virgin. I wanted to give him an aerial view of the centre of Oxford, so that he would get some idea of where everything was.   Unfortunately, Tim also took quite a few photos of me! Did I really look so innocent, so fresh and naive? What would this young man say about the 67-year-old writing these words? What pearls of wisdom would I have given to him? And would he - or would I - have listened?   For my first tw...

The Reverend Graham Shaw, the chaplain of Exeter College, once claimed in a sermon that most Oxford colleges had their dining hall on the opposite side of the quad to the college chapel. This, he asserted, was a tacit admission that spiritual food was just as important and of equal value as physical food.   Well, yes, maybe. On the other hand, the chapel and the dining hall are two large buildings and it makes sense, from an architectural point of view, to put them facing each other, on opposite sides of the quad. The dining hall (or just "hall", as it was frequently called) was in its own way just as impressive and idiosyncratic as the Victorian knock-off of some French church. The stained glass windows, wood panelling, silver on high table and the innumerable portraits made up for the rather average food. The denizens of high table ate some rather superior food, I would imagine. At the end of the meal they would disappear into the senior common room, through a doorway in th...

  Well, you be very pleased to learn that I have decided to give the London Water Closet a rest for the time being. But maybe you are wondering what happened after I left LWC. Well, you are about to find out.    It is imprinted on my mind, the amazing sight of the fat envelope, lying on the doormat of our house in Alma Road. Even before I opened that fateful piece of stationery, I knew that I must have been given a place at Oxford. Yes, why would they send a fat envelope if it just contained a brief rejection letter?   I have almost no photos at all for most of my four years at university, but in the summer term of my second year Tim Hinton contacted me. He was doing a degree in Photography, so could he come up to Oxford and take some photos? Could I put him up for a day or two? I am deeply indebted to Tim for these photographs, as they are almost the only records I have of my time at Oxford.   Who is this young man, smoking the clay pipe and carefully pou...