Bulgaria with Noodles

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...