Mike's Flying

Last night the Principal and Fellows of my college “requested the pleasure of my company to dine at High Table”, which sounds an awful lot better than it really is to be honest.  The poor old principal and fellows work their way through the entire popluation of Newnham, subject by subject, every year. You all dress up in your gowns (which are voluminous and seemingly designed to make the dangling of sleeves in sauces inevitable), stand awkardly about in the Senior Common Room for half an hour trying to find something to talk about (Classicists get lumped together with other minority humanity subjects-theology, history of art and anglo-saxon, norse and celtic) and wondering whether maybe you should have some sherry just to give you something to do with your hands, and then you all troupe into Hall (and Clough Hall at Newnham is really lovely-google it), listen to the Principal gabble her way through a latin grace and then gratefully sink into your seats, having, hopefully secured a place next to someone interesting. The food is alright, nothing to get excited about usually, and they have a distressing tendency to try very hard to make it sound and look better than it really is by excessive aplication of french names and decorative pieces of salad. I myself got a very large and indigestible piece of something green and stringy along with my sea-bass last night.

After dinner, the inimitable Mary Beard, who is one of the few classicists that other people have heard of as well as being a Fellow at Newnham (check out her blog/column for the Times Literary Supplement), proposed a little wine reception accompanied by a short lecture on Roman jokes (to give the whole thing an air of intellectual legitimacy). She was, I think, a little disappointed at our inability to drink as much wine as she anticipated, however, it really made what would otherwise have been a rather awkward and mediocre evening.

We all go to great lengths to mock, in self-depricating tones, the silly rituals of college life, however, I suspect that that is really because we all secretly love it.