I went to Oxford today to film some footage of me looking round my old college for "The Other Boat Race".
I went to St Catherine's College which was built in the 1960s and thus has none of the dreaming spires or medieval chapels that people associate with the University. It looks like a comprehensive school. I don't particularly mind that: I suppose I partly chose to go there because I thought that as a state school student I had a better chance of getting in. I think I would have found one of the older colleges more intimidating as an applicant.
As it turned out I didn't have too good a time at Catz when I was a student and once I'd met people like Stew and Emma and got involved in drama and comedy I spent most of my time in other colleges. I got off on a bad footing with the sporty blokes who hung around in the bar (at least partly my own fault as at the time I liked to dress in stupid jackets and kipper ties and was a bit annoying and cocky generally) and they used to bully me a bit (only verbally - they never beat me up or tried to steal my lunch money). My memories of the college, therefore, are not particularly happy ones and though I eventually enjoyed myself at University I don't have much affection for my college.
So coming back left me with mixed emotions, leaving me slightly nauseous and giddy. We tried to seek out the room I had stayed in in the first year (I lived out of college for the other two years), but the building is very uniform and I wasn't entirely sure of which stair-case I was on. I narrowed it down to one of three and chose the middle door and then went upstairs to see if we could have a look at my (possible) old room.
What was immediately striking was the smell of the corridor was exactly the same as it had been seventeen years ago. It was only a faint odour and was not unpleasant, but it was a smell I hadn't encountered for all those years, yet it was still stored in whatever part of my brain (or nose) deals with smells. This is even more weird as I have very few actual memories of anything that occurred in this building (either I've blanked it out, or nothing particularly interesting occurred) and yet the smell of the corridors has remained with me.
There had been some building work done since I was there, so things were slightly different, but I found the room that would have been mine if I was on the right staircase and we knocked on the door and asked the fella who now lives in there if we could have a look around. His name was Samir and he didn't mind at all.
Apart from the fact that the room now had an ensuite toilet and shower and didn't have my posters in it anymore it was otherwise very similar.
I had forgotten how tiny the single bed was. It was certainly not conducive to cohabitation. I am sure that is why I never brought a girl back to this room in the whole year that I stayed in it. Definitely. Not because no-one was interested in me with my hunched up Quasimodo shoulders, but because I knew that there was no way we'd get any sleep on the tiny little ledge (and why else would a girl come back to my room if not to sleep?).
We later went over to see Emma's college, Teddy Hall and she was very excited to be back and had loads of happy memories (ironically so did I, as I had hung out here a lot more than in my own college. In fact it was within these walls that I lost my most prized possession, my virginity at the embarrassingly late age of 19 - I am not sure that this is a particularly happy, or substantial memory for either myself or the unfortunate woman who robbed me of my innocence). I felt a bit disappointed that my reaction to my own college had been one of unsettled discomfort rather than joy, but I think that probably says more about me than it does about the college.
