THE 50th ANNIVERSARY GAUDY AT ST HILDA'S COLLEGE, OXFORD by Adèle Geras

I was going to put up the following poem at the end of this piece but conscious of the fact that sometimes people don't read the whole post, I'm putting it right at the top because I want all visitors to this site today to see it. It's published here by kind permission of its author, Wendy Cope, and it is copyright to her, of course.

REUNION

Fifty years have passed since we first met,

And forty seven since we said goodbye,

Embarking on our adult lives – and yet

You are the same, it seems to me. Am I?

Five decades of life, of ups and downs,

Of love and marriage, work and motherhood

And here we are, back in the world of gowns

And college food and essays – and it’s good,

It’s very good, my lovely, clever friends,

To travel to the past and find you here,

To share just one more evening meal that ends

In someone’s room - before we disappear

Into a future, where I’m sad to know

It’s over. It was over long ago.

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On Friday, September 20th, 2013, I travelled by train with my old friend and contemporary, Wendy Cope, from Cambridge to Oxford. We were bound for the Gaudy Dinner, and I had been looking forward to this day for many months. I had filled in the place on the form where it asked us who we'd like to have on the same corridor, as it were, and I just listed all my friends. The result of this was: we were all next to one another which made things very pleasant and facilitated the drinking of cups of tea, gossiping, and generally made all of us feel as though were were quite at home. Anne had the best view and she called us along to look at it.

We had tea. We found out what people had been doing for the last 50 years. We remarked on how very little we'd changed in spite of looking completely different in so many ways. We changed into our glad rags and made our way from Milham Ford, where we were quartered, past South to the new Jacqueline du Pre building. 36 of us were there. Someone from the College took a photo and if I ever get hold of a copy of it, I will post it here on this blog. The Principal addressed us. I can remember being quite intimidated by the Principal in 1963 but now it struck me how young and glamorous she was. She told us about life at St Hilda's since the men had arrived. Their tally of Firsts had gone up and everyone seemed happy with the arrangement, but I rejoiced that the college had been single sex when I was there. Am I an old fogey? I suppose I am, but honestly, if there were men around in the early morning before I had my make up on, I'd have been very disconcerted.

Everyone sat with their old chums. We didn't make an effort to speak or interact with women whom we'd not known when were were young. Was that bad of us? Was it natural? I don't know. What I do know is: it was delightful to catch up with those people we did remember with fondness. Anne, Ann, Wendy, Sian, Liz, another Liz and Esme. We spoke of those friends who were no longer with us, and Wendy made a toast to 'absent friends.' Tamara couldn't be there and neither could Jenny but they'd sent apologies and it's quite possible that now we've all met up again, we might do so informally some other time.

Here's a picture of us during the dinner. It's not a very good shot but if you look carefully you might just see my mugshot staring down from the wall. We were invited to send in a photo on our application form and it was good fun to see everyone displayed like that. After dinner, back we went to Milham Ford. I can honestly say that the only time I was in this building during my time at Oxford was to do Laundry. All the washing machines etc were in there...I lived for all three of my years in a building called Hall, which I always thought of as the main building, but that was perhaps a bit solipsistic! On Saturday morning, I got up early and took a photo of one of the splendid St Hilda's trees

...and went and stood under the window of the very beautiful room I had in my first year, just so that I could photograph the view I had every morning.

And finally, the gates. I've taken two shots of the gates. The first, to set them in context and to show how high and imposing they were....

...and the second to draw attention to those wicked spikes and the general dauntingness of them as things to clamber over in the dark. But I did. I, famous for not being able to climb for toffee, as we used to say; well-known for never having got over a single piece of gym equipment in my entire school career, used to get over these gates. Climb right over them: up one side and down the other. I have no idea at all how I did it. I must have been young.

YESTERDAY....Part 1: THE INTERVIEW by Adèle Geras

YESTERDAY (first published by Walker Books in 1992) is a memoir I wrote of my days at Oxford between 1963 and 1966.

This year, a whole lot of 69 and 70-year-olds will congregate at St Hilda’s College to mark the 50th anniversary of our Matriculation and I reckon half a century ago counts as Proper History. Below is a section of our Freshers’ Photograph. The whole photo takes up too much space, so I cropped it about a third of the way along the rows. This brings tears to my eyes when I look at it and remember the way we used to be. We were young. I'm second from the left on the front row and on my right is the clever-looking Helen to whom I refer in the short piece below. I’m going to use this post and the ones for August and September to put up on the History Girls blog three extracts from the book which has been out of print for a long time.

The first piece is called: THE INTERVIEW
(The only thing you need to know is that ‘Michael’ refers to my then (not terribly serious on his part) boyfriend, who was at Cambridge.)
I was allowed an afternoon off from school to go to town and buy myself a suit for the interviews [at Oxford and Cambridge] My mother, who has wonderful taste, was far away in what had been renamed Tanzania, and left to my own devices, I ended up with a soberly-cut affair: straight skirt (straight skirts are slimming, aren't they?) and plainish jacket (didn't all magazines advocate simplicity, the classic, timeless elegance...blah-de-blah?) but in an eye-blistering emerald green with all the subtlety of plastic grass. Well, I thought, green suits me. Looking back, I can see that I must have seemed like an extra from a bad production of Finian's Rainbow, but at the time I sincerely thought I was knocking them for six with my stunning apparel.
I bought myself some cigarettes at the station on the way to each of my interviews. I felt grown-up. I read through my French and Spanish textbooks on the train, making sure the covers were visible to everyone. I wanted all the other passengers to know where I was off to, to realize what an exceptional person was travelling with them. No one even looked at me, of course. To them I was just a podgy schoolgirl in a pea-pod of a suit.
Of my Oxford interview, more than anything I remember the bells, ringing out from this tower and that all through the night. The room I stayed in was in a building called Hall, which looked out on to the river. I liked St Hilda’s immediately. There was a wonderful sweeping staircase in Hall, and the rooms were high-ceilinged and quiet, and everyone else at the interview seemed friendly. I met a girl called Helen, who was from London and looked clever. How do you look clever? Well, you are thin and intense, and having dark hair helps and the finishing touch is purple smudges under your eyes. It’s hard to appear a diamond-sharp intellectual with a chubby round face and rosy cheeks. Helen and I walked round Oxford, and I fell in love. Nothing had prepared me for the physical beauty of the town. I walked around with my mouth open and my neck twisted round, trying to take in everything at once. By the time we got back to College for supper, I’d decided. This was where I wanted to be, and so much so that I’d have been very upset if I’d had to go to Cambridge or RADA instead.
Michael was unflatteringly philosophical when I told him I wouldn’t be going to Cambridge after all…… I had been awarded a Scholarship, (and so had Helen) and was therefore entitled to wear the long, black Scholar's gown. I thought I would look dashing and striking.
I sent a telegram to my parents with the good news, and found it carefully folded into my father’s papers after his death ten years later. My mother told me it had remained stuck in the frame of his shaving mirror for months.