There was some quite nice light today
Agent Triple P was unexpectedly in Oxford today, which brought back a few memories (mainly of redheads, we have to admit!) Although details of the city have changed much of it, particularly the colleges, naturally, have changed little.
Triple P once had a very intimate escapade at the top of the church tower overlooking his college
Triple P popped into his old college but the quads were full of fenced off building materials while they completely rebuild the college kitchen. Food at Triple P's college, whose not too distinguished alumni include Michael Palin, the current Prime Minister, and...er..., well, a lot of judges, was pretty good by Oxford standards of the time. Some of the meals we had at other colleges were diabolical (Christ Church springs to mind). Merton always had the best food when we were at Oxford; the story being that a rich American was so appalled by the food his son had to eat when he visited there that he paid a top chef to take over the running of the kitchens. Our biggest problem at college dinner was the fact that you got a communal bowl of potatoes or rice between eight of you. This had to be shared and was fine unless the dish was rice and you were sitting next to Mr Chung, a mysterious graduate student from China who appeared to speak no English. Actually he didn't appear to speak at all. Mr Chung was quite capable of demolishing the entire bowl of rice on his own before you fot so much as a spoonful so it was very important that you never sat anywhere near him!
Boots seem to be de rigeur with the current crop of lady students
The female students we observed today were quite different from the ones that we had (so to speak) when we were there. Apart from the fact they were all glued to mobile phones and were carrying laptops (which would have seemed like complete science fiction to us in our day) all their clothes were much more figure hugging and their skirts, of course, were much shorter. We were there in the days of long, high collared Laura Ashley dresses and before the days when stockings made their comeback. That said, notable exceptions must be made for C, Triple P's principal girlfriend in his first year and MS a girl whose rather obvious charms tended to divide the men in the college's opinion in the same way that Marmite does with most people. We hate to be ungallant but the looks of the female students do not seem to have improved in the last three decades as much as the looks of girls from the general population of their age; which just goes to show that brains and beauty combined are a rare thing.
Triple P's rooms in the first year were on the top floor of the second building from the right. The left hand window was his living room and the right hand window was his bedroom. This was unheated and, as a result, Triple P developed a taste for intimate activities on the floor where you could be next to the gas fire and you could admire your young lady naked with out her freezing to death, particularly if you could toast crumpets for her on said fire. The bedroom, apart from containing a large hospital bed with an iron bedstead which also, at least in the summer, facilitated our first bondage sessions, had a wooden box containing a large knotted rope which was, it seems, the only provision for a fire escape. Best to keep a close eye on the crumpets (so to speak) therefore.
Triple P's college from ground level
All in all an enjoyable day but we must return soon as we were in something of a rush and would have liked to have visited a few more of our old haunts!
