My family lived in Cambridge from 1964 to 1973. I went to secondary school there and left the city to go to Warwick University, as much to get away from home as anything. But I enjoyed growing up in Cambridge, with its beautiful old colleges astride the River Cam, its plentiful green spaces, great choice of bookshops, lively student population and affordable eateries and pubs...and of course punting on the river on summer days.
Clare Bridge over the River Cam
Let me regale you first of all with an amusing and allegedly true story told me by one of my friends who did go to university in Cambridge. Note the series of stone bollards on Clare Bridge above (five on each side). The story goes than one year a group of enterprising students from Clare College managed to remove the central bollard on one side of the bridge. They replaced it with replica made of polystyrene which they had painted to look like the original. As a jolly student jape they would then gather on the bridge and pretend to push with all their might at the bollard when a punt full of tourists was about to pass under. When the 'bollard' was heaved over the parapet, the consternation of the people in the punt below was a sight to behold. The most successful execution was carried out on a punt full of Japanese tourists, who were so alarmed at the sight that they all jumped out of the punt and into the river... as the polystyrene 'bollard' floated gracefully down to the water. History doesn't record if the japing students were rusticated (look that one up).
Magdalen Bridge over the River Cherwell
Jumping off bridges was never really a thing with students at Cambridge, It's a different story at Oxford, whose students have long celebrated May Day with hymns and madrigals at sunrise followed by revelries, Morris dancing and such shenanigans. Some time in the 1960s the practice of jumping off Magdalen Bridge into the River Cherwell on May Morning was added to the traditional fun and games. Students jumped into the riven to the applause of large May Morning crowds for decades (and I'm sure members of the university's Dangerous Sports Club saw it as something of an audition) until 2005, when ten unlucky leapers were hospitalised and one person was left paralysed, for the river often runs shallow. The bridge was subsequently closed on May Morning from 2006 to 2009, which fortunately pretty much coincided with the years that my eldest daughter was a student there!
how to jump off a bridge with style
Of course that's not to say that students at Cambridge never jump off bridges, but it's not a custom and if they do, it is more in the nature of a carefully choreographed special performance event (see above).To end with a splosh, my latest imagined weird poem...ink still wet, subject to revision etc.
Jumping Off PointPlum dark and dog warm that eyrie,a too safe soft spot of enervating plushwith books piled round like sea defencesagainst any oncoming rush of reality,
three easy pleasing years of getting lostin the genius worlds others have spun,the only price to pay an occasional essay.Shame it can't go on for ever.... but your
day of reckoning beckons, frighteningto a degree. It signifies the end of thiscareless living as grant and courses both run out, those cushions pulled all away.
You're on the edge now wondering howyou and hound will manage the leapfrom sofa'd seclusion to a sleeping bagin some second-hand bookshop doorway.
Thanks for reading, S ;-) Email ThisBlogThis!Share to TwitterShare to Facebook
