Cambridge, UK-flavour

Cambridge, Cambridge, Cambridge. I just returned from a weekend in Cambridge, and oh my. It is just so excessively, ridiculously beautiful and ancient.

When you see Harvard for the first time after seeing other colleges, you may find yourself thinking "Oh, so that's what they're trying to do." And then you see Cambridge. And no, no - THAT's what they're trying to do. I think this may even be an appropriate situation to get a bit Platonic, vis a vis C.S. Lewis. Harvard is the Shadowlands of Cambridge. It's nice enough in its own right, but Cambridge is the real thing.

However, the first thing I did in Cambridge was to... see a lecture by one of my old Harvard professors. About Harvard. I was visiting my wonderful friend Con, who is a Harvard-Cambridge fellow, and he and the other fellows were attending a lecture by the Reverend Peter J. Gomes, Professor of Christian Morals and all around enjoyable fellow. It was the tenth anniversary of something or other (possibly the tenth anniversary of the 300th anniversary of something else?) and so Gomes was invited to speak.

The Harvard fellows and I were the only people at the lecture who were 1) not in academic gowns, and 2) not white old men. Gomes himself excepted on the latter, of course. His lecture was on the historical connection between Harvard and Emmanuel College, and though the topic was more interesting in Gomes's hands than it would have been in anyone else's, it still got a bit dull. I did perk up at an unexpected Radcliffe Choral Society shout-out, though! We performed at the tricentennial of something or other, apparently. Guess the Glee Club has somewhere more exciting to be for that one.

After the lecture, Con and I explored. Con hadn't explored most of the Cambridge colleges, and he takes very seriously the rules about not walking on the grass and not wandering past fences marked "private". I, however, remember fondly a very silly evening exploring Jesus College with Jenny and Kavita and a video camera, and additionally have a personal mission of helping my more rule-laden friends to unburden themselves of these issues, so explore we did. We even walked on the grass. A little.

In typical Con fashion, he got himself a concussion last week, so he couldn't drink and forgot the odd English word here and there. At dinner, he said something like "I'm glad I had food, my poor concussed brain needs the primary sources." I looked at him, puzzled. "Oh, wait, I mean... raw materials! Needs the raw materials." I found this a fascinating slip. I, and many people, would replace a forgotten phrase with something that sounds similar, or something of like context. Con's brain used a phrase that was conceptually equivalent in a completely different frame of reference. I have smart friends.

On Saturday, Con and I took a walk to what he'd called a magical discount shopping heaven, which turned out to be... T.K. Maxx. Like T.J. Maxx but, umm, with a K for some reason. Only difference seems to be that at the UK version, they sell Dalek voice-changer helmets at the checkout line. I am both pleased and disoriented to be in a land where my obscure, esoteric obsession is the stuff of discount center checkout queue doodads.

We spent rather a long time at the grocery, because we like groceries, and had a lunch of random items from teh deli counter, each of which turning out to be another unappetizing variation on greyish meat wrapped in dough. Oh, Britain! Then we went to a JCR-type thing back at Trinity and cooked... casado! Well, actually, gallo pinto. Rice and beans. (this is because the last time I saw Con was when I stayed with him during Costa Rica tour, after having spent the previous three weeks eating nothing but rice and beans). We had a lovely Valentine's dinner party for all the Cambridge Harvard lonely-hearts.

And then Sunday we were supposed to go punting, but the punt rental companies disagreed due to some bothersome rain. So we went with our plan B of walking over the meadows to Grandchester. Rain and snow meltage had turned the meadows to marsh and the path to mud, but we decided to sacrifice our shoes and sludge ahead. It felt very authentically British, slogging a half hour through mud on a grey day to reach a tea place. Sunshine would have been lovely but wrong. And anyway, Sylvia Plath used to do this walk regularly (along with a litany of other literary figures, as the brochure at the tea place was quick to note), and she never would have stood for sunshine. And it was still quite beautiful, if squishy. Over tea in Grandchester, we decided that the only person worthy/capable of sustaining a relationship with Peter Gomes would be Garrison Keilor. They could orate anecdotes at each other from across a very long breakfast table.

Then a sludge back to Cambridge, and a lovely choral evensong at Trinity Chapel, and more exploring and hanging out. Cambridge is a wonderful place, and it sounds like students there are held to amazingly higher standards than at Harvard, and actually receive, like, educations worthy of the institution's reputation (whoa, novel idea), and basically I am jealous and want to stay.

In other news, Jelly Babies are surprisingly good.