I took an unaccustomed walk just now, down University Avenue, under a canopy of leaves that surely didn't exist when I first used to do the same promenade. To a Union that no longer exists, from a building then new, now over 30 years old...past frontages that are very changed, with strange statuary in front of them; ending up in front of a Jammie Hall that is - changeless. And nearly stepping in a strange little water feature that seems to exist to collect leaves, but that is by the by. Looking up at Jammie, and then down at almost-out-of-his-chair-on-sighting-a-virgin Cecil JR, one could believe that more than a third of a century had not passed; that one might still see a poster advertising the movie "And Now For Something Completely Different", again; that students with longer male hair and bell bottoms would soon hove into view.
I wasn't going out for nostalgia; in fact, I was looking for a cup of decent coffee to keep me awake while I grimly plough through the crap on my computer that keeps me from actually working on anything publicationally subsidisable (OK, yes, sorry, we have generator power...B-). But there I went, and here we are: nostalgising. All too soon, however, you realise the past is a different country, and sometimes the visit's not worth it.
Anyone else ever smoke other-than-tobacco-cigarettes in the bushes behind Jammie? No bushes there now...but I remember vividly skulking back there, waiting for a Dollar Brand concert to start back in 1975 so we could slip in the side door. The man's still playing, but not like in the Dollar days, and not with Basil Coetzee. Probably a lot riskier to smoke herbs, too.
Go hunting guinea fowl in the field opposite Belsen with a baseball bat? No field there now, and anyway, Belsen's Kopano...despite the fact that former residents voted clearly in favour of retaining Driekoppen. One wonders why anyone bothered to ask. I suppose you could use your car, now, given at least the guinea fowl are still around on Ring Road, but the thrill has gone (we never actually caught one, BTW).
Listen to the "Voice of Aquarius"? Live, in all (3?) Unions - with your 10-cent coffee and 80-cent spaghetti bolognese? Watching the serious bridge players (yes, Hugh, once you as well)? Not that I dislike the new dispersed catering model; having a choice of three different vendors right outside our building is heaven, compared to the old dash through the rain to queue in the Union. And life's too short for bad coffee, and there are a number of good places to indulge these days. My office for one - it's amazing what research funds can buy...B-)
Watch mad folk on shower boards ride down Jammie steps, shedding kneecaps and fingers as they flew? Banned these many years, but hold! Was that a mountain bike I saw, slaloming down from the hall towards Cecil? Yes, it was: mad bugger. Hope the Group 4 security catch him.
Be all as it may, it gets increasingly hard to relate how things were to the way things are: there are three times as many people on campus these days compared to 1974; our village has become a town - with all of the crass commercialisation and homogenisation that entails.
Not that I think we are now serving up plastic degrees, and you want a diploma with that? Heavens and other locations forbid! I just think we may be doing it with plastic utensils, without looking the customers in the eye.
Ah, me. So it's back to looking at the ugly building across the road - 27 years, and it's still there, blocking the view - pondering fresh and interesting ways to serve up what increasingly feels like the same-old, same-old. Mind you, my gloomy long-time colleague and current HoD muttered darkly not two hours ago, that "we'll all have to go back to chalk-and-talk at this rate, until 2013!". So the past has not gone: the village comes back to the town; once again we shall sit again under the shade of trees, and dispense knowledge in the open.
FTFAGOS* - I shall stick resolutely with my painstakingly-over-years digitised teaching material, refer the students to the Web and to texts, and pitch up like an Oxford or Cambridge don to hold tutorials. A dream come true! I may yet enjoy this year...B-)
* = forget that for a game of soldiers.
