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 find that — despite much of it being ancient and thus unchanging — it's hugely changed. More prosperous-looking now, its hugger-mugger shops are upmarket and shiny and clearly cater to a more sophisticated clientele than when I was first here.

Trinity Street, across from Trinity College. Lots of
charming little one-off shops.

Yes, I see many more chain-store premises (frankly now a pretty ubiquitous first-world problem);

This mall....err...arcade wasn't here 30 years ago
 and is full of chain stores.

but there are also plenty of much more interesting stand-alones.

And in thirty years there's been a tech boom running alongside the business of the university which has changed the face of the area. Collectively this cluster of start-up companies concentrating on biotechnology, software and electronics is called the Silicon Fen and its businesses operate in a number of purpose-built 'science parks' sprinkled in and around. Very like Silicon Valley, the success of the Silicon Fen has affected the housing market and sent prices through the roof. There's still plenty of new luxury building going on around town — with the really prosperous boffins commuting from fancy piles in the surrounding countryside. And with all this new focus, getting back and forth to London has become a dream — a 50-or-so-minute dash versus the bad old days of slow, stopping trains that could take two hours. But the result of all this development is that London aside, I read that Cambridge is now the most expensive place in the UK in which to live. I find the price of everything here shocking; but then I'm trying to slide along on a modest budget. 

During a recent cab-ride my driver was eager to talk to me about the interesting work in which these Cambridge technology companies were engaged. "My brother-in-law was explaining it to me," he said; "They're working on drones the size of flies over there. Can you believe it? Drones the size of flies!" I must tell you I've really been mulling that one and intend to make enquiries.


By the way, still no sign of Prince William.

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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 a term was cast, with my friend Joe, in a production of Arthur Miller's The Crucible.

From the Crucible, Cambridge 1983. Edward is in the gray waistcoat; my friend Joe Marshall is on the left.

Thus it was that as rehearsals progressed, I was Joe's guest at one such, observing the proceedings closely. It was astonishing to find myself in an intimate rehearsal room with the Queen of England's boy; the owner of a face (indeed, at 19 a very beautiful face) I had seen only on newsprint and in the reverential coffee-table books favored by grannies.

Prince Edward at Cambridge, 1983.

We all went out for drinks after the rehearsal. Somehow Edward and I were standing at the bar together ordering for some of the others; and then it seemed that Edward realized he didn't have any money to pay for the drinks (I overheard a cast-mate grumbling in a loud, amused voice, "He never has any bloody money"); and then it seemed he hit up one of his cast-members for a fiver; and as we stood there waiting our turn, it suddenly whacked me between the eyes that this guy — in the most casual and unselfconscious way — was holding a bank note upon which his mother's face was etched. That gave me pause.

Several years later, when I had graduated from Cambridge and was living and working in London, I went as often as I could to watch the polo on Smith's Lawn in Windsor Great Park. I had at that time become quite intoxicated by the game. The Queen too, of course, took an interest and most Sundays that I was there, she was too.................housed in a sweet little wooden royal box that had been constructed at the side of the field. I could easily see her and her guests sitting up on the second floor balcony of this bijou lodge, on mismatched chairs with exhausted-looking cushions. Sometimes I could hear ice clinking. These were casual times. Often the Queen would drive herself over (she lived just across the field after all), a faded royal standard rising in jerks up the little flagpole soon after.

And at the end of each match a couple of security men would appear with a rope and move to semi-encircle Her Majesty as she left the box — a rather half-hearted cordon sanitaire to keep the hand-full of us at bay — while she handed over a trophy and shook hands with the sweaty victors. These rope half-circles that we stood behind were actually very close indeed to the royal personage. So close, in fact, that after several months of this I confess I had begun to feel almost casual about the sovereign's presence.

But me and the royal family were all a very long time ago. Save for a few months here and there, I've not properly lived in England since 1990. I assumed that the constant path-crossing had ceased. I don't even think I would have considered them blog-fare either. Until, you may imagine my surprise when I learned yesterday that the Duke of Cambridge — aka Prince William — has just joined me for his own Cambridge University sojourn, here to study agriculture.

St. John's College. It may be Prince William's new base of operation; but for me it's the short-cut to town.

And he's going to be studying agriculture at St. John's College which, it so happens, I've always used as a short-cut conduit from my own college to get into town. Does this mean William and I are also destined to cross paths? Is there something to all this? I wish I had a swami to consult.

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