Sentimentally last summer 2

My visit to England last year was pure nostalgia, covering several different periods in my life. Its principal purpose was to wish my Dean, Leslie Mitchell, on his 80^th birthday. He it was who, several years ago, wrote the superscription to this piece, which struck me as so appropriate for his life and mine, when I was putting together extracts from his letters as a celebration on this occasion.

That collection, The Wit and Whimsy of Leslie Mitchell, is not likely to be of interest to anyone except members of Univ, and of them too to just a few. But some of his perceptions like the above are well worth noting. And this year it was particularly apt as I went to several places that brought back the joys of my student days, and more too.

I began as I now always do in Oxford, though not at University College for they were full up. But my second College, Corpus Christi, which has always been generous to me, gave me another of their grand guestrooms for my first two nights. And as I arrived I went to the Fellows Garden, beyond the Fellows Building in which I had lived for a year from September 1976, including in the splendid summer of 1977 when I had spent much time in that garden. By then I was free of exams, having got through my BPhil that term, with only lots and lots of pleasurable reading, and of course the writing up, to get my doctorate.  

After the picture of the book I produced for Leslie, the next two pictures are of that garden, looking back on the Fellows Building first, and then one of me against a corner where the creepers festoon the wall. That brief glimpse did not suffice, and I was back there when I left, two days later, to walk along the wall where King Charles was supposed to have met his wife during the Civil War, when he stayed at Christ Church and she at Merton, the Colleges on either side of Corpus. The last picture is I think of trees in the garden framed against the Fellows Building, with a glimpse of the balustrade on top behind which was my room.

The fourth picture is of the tower of Merton College, of which I had a splendid view from the room in which I stayed, from a window seat where I would have my coffee early morning. There was no breakfast available, so I survived for those two mornings on the coconut cake which Lohan had made for me. The fifth picture shows me of a morning, against the opulent setting of that room.

I slept early for, having taken a flight at 3 am, I had had little sleep the previous night. But before I slept I had sent emails to several friends, for the Corpus guestroom had a telephone, and this seemed a great opportunity to talk to those I would not see. Several it seems rang that very night, but I slept solidly, and was only woken up by two people, one of whom I saw on my last day.