Bulgaria with Noodles

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...

I promise that this is definitely going to be the last of my LWC reminiscences for the time being, but I really have to write a bit more about Mr. R.T. Davies, my Latin teacher. Yes, you may have already read my eulogy for R.T.D., the one that I never got round to giving at the memorial service. The Rather Tubby Dinosaur was also supposed to be in charge of the College Press, the printing shop that became my sanctuary from the compulsory games that I hated. Well, here is Peter Booth’s “write-up” for the R.T.D.’s memorial service that appeared in The Sower .                                 YOU’LL NEVER WALK ALONE                                    Memorial Service for R.T.D. Roger Davies certainly got the send-off he deserved. The affection in which he was held and the impact he made o...

“Sticks and stones May break my bones, But words will ever hurt me.” Yes, that is a playground rhyme, but I wonder whether it is really a playground crime. Words do hurt and often we will remember them long after a bruise or even a broken bone has healed and been forgotten. I would like to tell you that there was no bullying, verbal or physical, at the London Water Closet during the 1970s, when I had the misfortune to be there. It would be great if I could mention that I never took part in any bullying of other boys. I would also be happy to inform you that absolutely no bullying went on at LWC after I left. Unfortunately, none of these statements are true.   Part of the reason for the bullying in the 1970s was the laziness and general indolence of most of the teaching staff. Yes, they taught their lessons and took games, but that was about it. When a master was “on duty”, he would usually just stay in his flat, watching TV, cooking a meal or doing some other activity. The ...

Why do we give nicknames to people and to things? Is it because we have affection for them, we love them, or is it because we do not like them and maybe we are even afraid of them? Is a nickname a way to make something smaller, less frightening? During the Second World War, Londoners called the V1s “buzz bombs”, while Americans have “Old Sparky”, aka the electric chair. At the London Water Closet, we had “Mash”.    Why was the headmaster, C.A.N. Henderson, nicknamed “Mash”? I never found out during my seven-years-and-a-term at LWC. Something to do with potatoes? Or an American TV comedy series about an Army medical unit? Or silly pop song about Dracula and various monsters?  As I have mentioned before, schoolboys have a cruel sense of humour. A colleague once told me that one of his teachers had been called "Notch", as he had been involved in a tragic accident. A pram had come speeding down a hill, right in front of his car, so his students joked that he had carved a no...

  One of the best things to do with your garden is to sit and admire it. The thought of getting up and doing some work in the garden is somehow not so pleasant and enjoyable. Well, I suppose it is time for me to interrupt my Tristram Shandy- like recollections of the London Water Closet and so I might as well write a bit about our garden.     Yes, the old cartwheels are looking pretty good. They blooming well ought to, as I spent long enough painting them. We have had a lot of rain recently, so I cannot use the tractor mower to cut the grass. Our lawns are just too soft and soggy at the moment.     My dear wife's roses really are looking lovely this year. The white rose bush has produced a lot of beautiful flowers for the first time and the old red bush by the "secret garden" is still doing well.   We continue to have some excellent scoffing from the asparagus bed and, for the first time, the fig bushes look as though we are going to have a good crop of yum...

It is time for some more LWC reminiscences. It was a cold morning in December and I was walking around the Cambridge colleges with Karen, the daughter of my mother’s friend. (Yes, I did have a big crush on Karen, just in case you were wondering.) Just on the off chance that he might be at home, we called at Mark Whittow’s home. Mark was one of my heroes at the London Water Closet (and I did not have many). Even though I was three years younger than he was, h e kindly tolerated my presence,  probably because he knew that I was also a fan of W.L.F. and all things historical. (In particular, I remember Mark patiently correcting my understanding of the caracole , a cavalry tactic in the Thirty Years War.) Not only was he a brilliant actor (his performance as Doctor Stockmann in An Enemy of the People  was superb), Mark was also a school character and an all-round eccentric. He treated the teachers at LWC with a mixture of casual indifference and flippancy. On the morning in ques...