A Tale of Two Cities (Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying And Learn to Love Writing Blog Posts on the Train)

I continue to be questioned about the exact nature of my blog. Yes, it lacks a coherent linking theme except in so far as it concerns the things that happen to me, but that’s sort of is what living is, and at least it provides for ever unpredictable content!

It’s been a busy few days. On Monday I went to Ely with Charlie, where we popped into the Cathedral, had a pub lunch and tried desperately to keep cool. I then had a series of Committee meetings, first with CUMTS (Cambridge University Musical Theatre Society), then CADS (Christ’s Amateur Dramatics Society), and then finally with the Seeley Society (which is Christ’s History Society). I am co-president of the latter next year with my partner-in-crime Anna-Marie, and we’ve been thinking about asking all sorts of prestigious and nearly-deceased historians to come and lecture. All I can say is that it’s gonna be *glorious* line-up. We also came up with some new and exciting event ideas for our prestigious and dignified history society, for instance:

-          Seeley Samba

-          Seeley Séance

-          Seeley Sock Wars

-          Seeley on Steroids

-          Sayonara Seeley (See-leaving party?)

And so on.

Pub Lunch in Ely (Nom)

The next two days stood in pretty stark contrast to one another. On Tuesday we had the annual Downing College May Ball which, for any non-Cambridge people who don’t know, is basically a hugely ostentatious party for all the Cambridge students to get over the horror of their exams. It is the very definition of ‘catharsis’; all constraints, financial, sartorial, gastronomical and more, disappear magically for a night. Last year’s May Ball at Christ’s was hands down the most I have ever in one night without feeling sick, and this year’s May Ball (I have only done one a year so far) has the honour of bearing witness to the most I have ever drunk without feeling sick, namely 10 vodka shots, 7 other vodka- or gin-based drinks, and a glass of champagne. I didn’t even feel especially drunk, and this is extraordinary, because I am well-known for being the lightest of all weights (in this specific area if not in a general sense). I am told this was because they water down the drinks, and because the huge amount of food intake lessened the impact of the alcohol, but c’mon!

So Downing’s theme was ‘Night at the Museum’, and there were various different Museum-like sections to the ball. We had ‘Natural History’, which included a dinosaur walking around, a fantastic cocktail bar, and a van with Kangaroo and Buffalo burgers; a space section with a planetarium; an ice age section with ice sculptures and fake snow, a kids section with an AMAZING ball pit, and an Egyptian section that would do Edward Said something the opposite of proud. It had dodgems, which were FANTASTIC, one of the big spinny things that I hate because height and speed terrify me, and the band Scouting for Girls, who unfortunately have only ever produced one memorable-because-repetitive song. But I did essentially spend most of the night hanging around the section where the restaurant Aromi was handing out pizza slices, in between spending some really fun time with all me pals from Christ’s!

We made it through what turned out to be the second-shortest night of the year, actually, such that at around 5:30 we all gathered for a ‘Survivor’s Photo’ near the front of the college. Everyone then staggered home in what at any other time of the year might have been considered a passable level of midday sunlight, and I then inexplicably sat and read until 7am, at which point I slept until the real midday. For any who cringed at the vodka count earlier, it is worth noting that I do not get hangovers (at least yet!), which makes me feel deeply victorious and gives me ample opportunity to poke the heads of my ill and miserable friends during the mornings.

Pictures from the May Ball

Wednesday was a rather different experience to Downing, because I finally got the chance to volunteer for the Fisher House Soup Run for the homeless with my friend Damian. This is something I’d wanted to do for a while, actually, because Cambridge’s relative affluence and its status as a tourist town means that the homeless community here is quite large, and its important to help in any way you can: if you think because you’re a student that you can’t give money, then you can nevertheless find a way of giving time. It was an interesting and humbling thing to do and I hope to do it again.

On the soup run we had tea, coffee, hot chocolate, various soups, and all the leftover sandwiches, salads and yoghurts from Pret at the end of the day. The most popular choice of drink was hot chocolate with LOTS of sugar, because if you’re sleeping rough you need that kind of drink strength just to get you through. Food-wise people went for sandwiches over soups (though I imagine it’s different in winter), but there can be denying that a lot of the sandwiches left in Pret at the end of the day aren’t the nicer ones, and are exceptionally mayo-heavy (yuck).

Everyone we met was lovely, polite and grateful, though the gratitude makes me uncomfortable in so many ways, because clearly stuff like this is not achieving enough. A fella we met in the multi-storey car park remarked to me that there were usually a few who were harder to deal with in the larger crowd of really lovely people, but I feel like that’s just the case with life and all humans! The homeless in the town are in a bit of a bind, really, because they have to choose between finding places to stay which are more comfortable and finding prominent places in the high street which are rough but at which they will get noticed both by change-givers and by people like us. There weren’t as many people as usual about, Damian said to me, probably because of the heat.

People were largely keen to talk: our first guy, Stephen, got an extra hot chocolate off of us for his girlfriend and chatted about keeping cool etc. Several of the people we met refused food because they felt they had what they needed; one particularly kind woman actually gave us some of her dog treats which we then were able to give away to another woman later in the night. The latter had once studied and worked as a teacher in Cambridge herself.

My knees were black with the dirt of the ground by the end and one of the men jokingly asked if I was a rugby player. At least I think he was joking. It is fair to say that I do not look like a rugby player.

So it was an odd two days to go through, and it reminded that Cambridge is (like much of the country) a city of contrasts. At one point we were passing soup to a shirtless, homeless, bearded bloke, and right next to us stood two lads in black tie and a girl in the most expensive-looking silver dress you could imagine: plus we’d been at the ball doing the same thing as them the previous night! And the paradox runs further: a pair of homeless men that we met in the market remarked to me how much they’d enjoyed the experience of being in the market and hearing the bands from both of the May Balls that had been going on the previous night. One of the men had actually worked at Downing several years before. ‘It’s a pretty amazing place, Cambridge!’ he said, without any cynicism at all, and I didn’t know what to make of that.

Which just goes to show that we are all very lucky indeed to be where we are, and it’s worth re-emphasising just how much of it is down to sheer and biting luck that others are not.

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Today I’ve been down to London once again, this time to see the musical Annie with Miranda Hart in the role of Miss Hannigan. The whole thing seemed like a really solid show, but the production itself had its issues – the CUMTS people who I was with felt that there was a lot missing from the company in general in terms of acting (especially, I felt, from the guy playing FDR), and the structure of the show was a little disjointed, reinforced frequently by choreography which was brilliant but which also mucked with the pace a lot. Most of the main leads were really good, and it was in general a fun show, but it was also the case that Miranda – who is FANTASTICALLY funny on her show – didn’t really have the acting chops in general and the accent in particular for Annie, which was a shame. I’m not averse to celebrity casting if the celebrities are pretty good, but I still haven’t seen a show (or film – here’s looking at you Mamma Mia) in which a celebrity has done the job better than a professional. I’m genuinely fascinated to see how this show that Freddie Flintoff has just been cast in goes down. I suppose I’m particularly nervous because if you’re the sort of person who specialises in lead or comic parts then that’s exactly the sort of role which gets eaten up by celebs!

We then hang out in the flat of the lovely Joe Beighton for a bit and I’m now on the train headed back to the Cambridge with the equally lovely Amy Carmichael, who’s just about to jet off to all sorts of interesting and exciting countries (including a hike to Machu Picchu!). So long readers!

RJLF