The post on Christmas Eve 1968 brought the letter telling me I had a place at Queens’ Cambridge. I’d opted to stay for a third year in the sixth form to do the Cambridge Entrance Exam, so I spent the rest of the year doing very little at school, instead fiddling with my organ, as it were, and singing and playing at Carlisle Cathedral, which I’d been increasingly doing since 1963.

On my last night in Langwathby in October 1969 Hitchcock’s Psycho was on TV. I was not allowed to watch it. Off to Cambridge the next day, over Stainmore and down the Great North Road with its roundabouts and cross roads, and bottlenecks. Six hours and more.

First year students at Queens’ didn’t have rooms in College but were in lodgings. I was billeted on Mill Road, number 81 I think, on the town side of the railway bridge in a semi where post-war dark greens and browns predominated. Mrs K L Gentle was one of the long-serving College landladies, and Kitty, as we didn’t dare call her, knew what she wanted and how we should behave. And we did.

There were two of us. David from Buxton was the other, also a medic. I was glad to discover that he didn’t play rugby. He later became my ‘best man’ and is now a pillar of society and indeed of The Victorian Society. We had to get our own breakfasts—I still open my boiled egg like David did—and we were allowed one bath a fortnight.

Despite wanting to get away from Langwathby, I was quite lonely for about a month. Homesickness is not the right word, for it wasn’t home that I was sick for. It was nest-warmth—for the Cathedral community in which I felt authentic, valued and safe. I suppose that search became a lifelong quest. It’s illusory, of course.

Ye Gods, Cambridge in winter is cold. Winds whistle west from the Urals. I exchanged cold, damp Cumberland for freezing, foggy Fens, the Fens fog that gets right into your bones. A foggy start to a new life. So much for its being warmer down south.

The next upheaval came in 1972 when I moved to London. I’ve written about this before, but memory today takes me to finding accommodation. I arrived a couple of weeks early and slept on the floor of a college friend, already at work at the Bank of England, in Orlando Road, Clapham. There were invertebrates slithering slowly along the bathroom walls. I did the rounds of letting agents all over the place. Praed Street (Paddington) stands out—why in God’s name Praed Street I do not know: it was nowhere near the Medical School in Camberwell.

After a day or two, a few of us including David from Buxton joined forces. We found a basement flat in south Clapham, almost Balham really—the gateway to the south—on Cavendish Road, the South Circular. Living room, kitchen, part of which was partitioned off as the bathroom (yes, the bathroom in the kitchen), and one bedroom for three blokes. There was a tiny room under the stairs just big enough for a double mattress, and that was shared by Geoff and his girl.

It was to this nest that I invited Susan, then teaching in Manchester. It was on Clapham Common that I proposed. It was just outside The Windmill on The Common that she accepted.

Strange things happen on Clapham Common.

Queens’ rowers today

My rowing career was brief. In 1972 the medics at Queens’ got together to form a rowing eight. The college’s élite rowers were, naturally, the First Boat. We were the Sixth Boat. That in itself says something. (We later became the fifth boat because the original fifth boat couldn’t stay the course, but that’s another story and anyway I can’t remember it).

However inept we may have been, we took our ineptitude seriously, up at 6 for ‘training’ three days a week. This masochism enabled the second year medics to get to lectures at 9. By that time I was in the third year and was studying History of Art, Well, I say studying—what I suppose I mean is, attending three lectures a fortnight and striking a studious pose. I was not so pressed for time.

Rowing is what you might call a solitary team sport. Each individual oarsman is responsible for his (a men’s college in those days) own little compartment, but can’t do without the others. That’s the sort of teamwork that suits me just fine. None of these silly meetings to discuss tactics and marking opponents and watching what they’re doing. You just get in the boat and pull like hell.

We did well enough in the 1972 Bumps (‘a form of rowing race where competing boats start simultaneously but at fixed distances from each other. The aim is to bump the boat in front before being bumped by the boat behind. If neither happens, you are said to row over. A significantly dangerous pastime, and therefore an excellent spectator sport.’ See Cambridge University Jargon). We bumped on two of the three days and rowed over on the third.

All good things come to an end, but in this case they got better, for later that year in London I was fortunate to find that there were enough of us to make up a King’s College Hospital Medical School eight to row on the Thames. We hoofed off to a Putney boathouse on Saturday mornings, messed about on the river, and sampled Young’s ale afterwards.

Two highlights stand out particularly clearly in the memory.

The Star and Garter on Richmond Hill

The first was rowing all the way from Putney to Hampton Court to take part in the Kingston Regatta a few days later. Then of course, we had to row back. About 17 miles each way. Lovely weather, glorious views glimpsed between grunts and gasps through dripping sweat: Harrod’s Furniture Depository, Kew Gardens, The Star and Garter, Eel Pie Island, Ham House, Teddington Lock. I think it took us about 3 hours including a stop or two for a rest. A lovely, wonderful memory.

The other highlight was taking part in the 1974 (I think) Tideway Head, one of the great Thames rowing events. This was serious stuff, and before I tell the story, you need to understand that the convention in this race was that if a boat was about to be overtaken, it should do the decent thing by moving to the side to let the faster boat past. Got that?

Our most accomplished oarsman was a big fellow, academic high-flier, who had rowed at school and then Cambridge. He was quietly spoken and rarely said anything very much, but when he did speak it was considered, apposite and admirable. This man was respected by all for his discernment, ability and gentleness.

We were doing well, powering along the Oxbridge boat race course in reverse. We’d overtaken one or two boats, if memory serves me right, when we found ourselves almost upon the boat in front, a motley crew of ne’er-do-wells from Wapping or some such place where they eat jellied eels.

Our bow made contact with their stern (this is not good). Our oars clashed (this is terrible).

Would they pull into the side? Would they hell-as-like.

And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and a stentorian voice boomed forth from the midst of our boat announcing not peace on earth, goodwill to men—rather the opposite actually—but ‘get out of the way, you … wankers.’  It was the voice of the gentle giant, of such volume as had never before been heard issuing from his larynx, nor, in my experience, any larynx since.

Putney Bridge

He, it must be said, inserted an adjectival present participle between ‘you’ and ‘wankers’ that since I am a Rector I can not bring myself to type, but let’s just say that it begins with f, is very rude, and is not unrelated to the Latin expression futue te. This is not an unusual term of endearment, you understand, but it is one that on that occasion on that day stunned us all, not so much for the sentiment—it was after all in accord with the regulations, and stated in terms that would have been, and indeed were, understood by the intended audience—but more for the origin and force of its utterance.

Eventually our friends from Wapping admitted defeat, pulled over and allowed us to proceed to the finish at Putney Bridge, dazed, sweaty, ecstatic, but deeply, deeply conscious that we had heard a voice from the belly of a whale.

Laois Traincare Depot, Portlaoise
(copyright Peter Wilkins)

Last month I had a guided tour of Laois Traincare Depot. I was like a pig in pig stuff. For whatever reason, trains have always been important to me. Playtime at Langwathby school in the 1950s was always more exciting when Glasgow and Edinburgh expresses sped past, spitting steam and sparks. And in the 1960s I gazed longingly from home as the Thames-Clyde went by: ‘take me away, anywhere’ I pleaded! And now that I am away, the railways over Shap and Mallerstang are still dear to my heart.

In my travels on Irish Rail, including the time I missed my stop in soporific stupor, I’m impressed by the rolling stock, the punctuality and the cleanliness. Well done, Irish Rail! Over the cold winter months, spare a thought for the staff. Let’s hope they don’t get too much of the wrong sort of snow—speaking of which, I saw how, because the hooter is mounted low on the chassis, it’s prone to being blocked with snow. I wonder, can you guess the way they deal with this problem?

No?

Well, girls and boys, the high-spec technological solution is to cover the hooter with pair of tights. Yes, that’s right, ladies’ nylon stockings. Hosiery. I saw it with my own eyes. I now dream about rail staff going shopping: ‘I’d like a pair of tights for my horn, please’.