A friend recently put me in touch with an
alumna of the college from which we graduated, who was asking for reminiscences
of student life. Well, I still have four large hardbacked notebooks dating from
1 January 1972 to October 1973, so in
reaction to her prompt I’ve been sitting here plumbing the depths of late
adolescence.
I was still working out the dynamics of
living cheek by jowl with other people, and particularly with BOYS. The sexual
revolution of the 1960s may well have been fresh in everyone’s minds, but I’d
spent the previous 8 years at an all girls’ school and I really didn’t know how
to deal with flirtation, dating and all that jazz. Of course I learned rapidly…
but the diary reveals that there were a lot of inward cries of pain. I think
now that the diary’s cast of thousands probably spent a good deal of time
rolling their eyes and throwing their hands heavenward and muttering, “What is
this girl DOING?” At least one of them said frankly, “I have pity for you, but
no sympathy!”
I noted rumours in the diary about which of
the lecturers (or lecherers) were said to be having affairs with other
lecturers' wives, or with students. For some reason, although both female and
male friends mentioned lecturers making passes at them, I don’t recall any homophobia,
nor any scandal being publicised, or any disciplinary action being taken. Maybe if
it was taken, it was taken discreetly and the student body didn’t get to know
about it. There was far more fuss when the Students’ Guild proposed that there
should be a machine on campus to sell condoms. That didn’t go down
well with the authorities at all!
One of the delights of student life was
talking – unravelling the world and rebuilding it to our own preferences. Students,
including me, commonly used to drop in on lecturers in their studies or in
their lodgings on campus; on occasion I even
became a confidante, being told far too much by lecturers about their home
lives and extra-marital affairs. I remember one of these extra-marital lecturers
asserting that "all really passionate music is a series of climaxes" and
I blithely said, "Of course!" - not having a clue what he was on about.
Instead, my diary records the giggles as we
struggled to straighten an iron bed frame after seven people had been sitting
on it; or when we had been rehearsing dance moves on an upper floor of a male
student hostel, having to placate the people on the floor below whose lights
had been dancing along with us.
The nearest I got to scandal was this: “I
sat with the Opera Group secretary watching other principals and chorus rehearsing
act 1 of “The Sorcerer”, with Emlyn Roberts
playing the piano and Alan Bownas directing. In one of the pauses for stage
work Emlyn came over and looking very worried, touched my arm and said, “You
haven’t got a safety pin, have you? It’s not for me, it’s for a friend.” I
said, “I can go back to the hostel and get one if you’re desperate.” He put a
hand on his jacket above his trouser waistband and admitted, “Yes, I am!” So I got
him a pin, and saved, if not his life, at least his reputation.”
On far more occasions there were long
gossipy mini-rehearsals of dramatic productions, and appreciations of vintage recordings of same. I remember us sweeping line-abreast with linked arms down into
the city (and back) laughing and talking and singing and dancing to the dismay
of other pedestrians, but we really liked to have LP players and tape recorders
available, to play music, or performances by famous singers or actors, on which
to base our arguments.
Whether we met in hostel rooms or in
lecturers’ lodgings, the discussions of music, literature, history and philosophy
went on into the small hours. Yes, there was an official lock-up time at which
females were supposed to depart from male accommodation, and vice versa, but in
practice so long as you didn’t annoy the neighbours, and you let the
“offenders” out quietly, nobody really made any fuss. Those of us in off-campus
accommodation would have missed the last bus and faced a long walk “home”, and
my diary reminds me how my male friends gallantly offered to walk girls back to
their lodgings when these late nights broke up; it also records my
disappointment that the offers were all platonic.
I sat up late into the night with coffee and
sympathy when friends, male or female, were suffering from rejected love; I knew
that the girl in the next room had gone away quietly to have an abortion; I knew
that one of my mates was panicking because his girlfriend’s period was late. But none of it seemed to happen to me. Not till I started my summer job up here in the Lake District.
And that's a whole other story!