A Cambridge Rout and How To Cheer Up Afterwards

One of the last great amateur sporting events is the Oxford & Cambridge Boat Race held each year in April. I recently watched the 160th running of the race; and it became everything one hopes will never come to pass in a sporting event. It so happens that four members of this year's Cambridge boat call St. Edmund's College — my present and former bolt-hole — home. This struck...

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Ticking Boxes

The other night I attended a Formal Hall. In truth the evening took a turn for the worse. But before I describe my path to calamity I should probably first tell you that formal dining at Oxford and Cambridge (Oxbridge) is a highly ritualized activity amongst the various colleges that make up the two universities. It's a ritual that's been going on in some version or another for...

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Lotus Eating

I've so far said very little about the physical shock of removing myself from the clutches of a hard, grinding USDA Zone 5 winter in Clinton Corners, NY to a moist and mossy, mid-forties USDA Zone 8 'winter' in Cambridge, England. For someone as interested in horticulture as I this has meant one moment of astonishment and exclamation after another.  I arrived in mid-January...

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Getting To Grips

Finding my feet in Cambridge has proved a far more faltering and unsure course than I predicted. Somehow I expected I'd arrive and hit the ground running but this hasn't been the case at all. So bear with me. The centuries-old open-air market in the center of Cambridge runs 7 days a week.  I thought I'd remember every nook and cranny of this town only to...

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Me & the Royal Family

I first arrived in Cambridge in October of 1983 and quickly made friends with a screamingly funny divinity student named Joe Marshall. Joe was interested not only in God but in amateur dramatics. It so happened that Prince Edward, Queen Elizabeth's youngest son, also arrived in Cambridge in 1983 — a dewy, apple-cheeked nineteen-year-old. He too was interested in 'amdram' and within...

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