On being a ghost in one's own lifetime

Hardy's Wessex

I went back to my old college the other week. Just a quick visit, nothing planned, on the way through to visit a site in Hardy's Wessex. And a shock it was - both Old and New Quads devastated by massive building works as they refurbish the Hall among other things. How, I asked myself, will this year's Freshers play croquet? On which lawn will the Most Annoying Fresher be staked out with croquet hoops, to be eaten by the ferocious College Ants? Oh, I reflected, had I only known, that could have been Young Cameron and not the late RJP Stephens-Sonntag BA (Seriously Aegrotat). Even at the time there was only one vote in it.

Radcliffe Square

But it's an odd thing, to return to one's alma mater, if I may slip into the traditional lingua franca of the vetus locus. Obviously to have the lawns of the quads removed (apart from the lovely, ironically named Deer Park) is a temporary thing. And some of the pubs have changed names - the Temple Bar, the Queen's Arms, the Cape of Good Hope and the Albion, to name but four. Although I realise that, two of those pubs having been "townie" in my time, most of my generation of students won't even realise they've gone - or, indeed, where they were.

But it's more that - you wander across Radcliffe Square, remembering the day you cycled your bike down the stairs in Frewin Quad after Finals. And the people wandering around the place are the same old ones you always knew - except they aren't quite the same. The place is the same - but you've changed. You're just one of the punters that wander around the place. You may as well go the whole hog, and photograph some poor bunch of students as they wander, embarrassed, down the High to the Schools in sub fusc to sit some exam. After all, when you're facing the most stressful 3 hours of your life it's best to have some gorm sticking a camera in your face. It's character-forming, after all. And the college coffee shop is called "Gertie's" after a college servant of yore. But you - you were served tea at the hands of Gertie herself.

Old Quad, BNC

The stones that make up the colleges are themselves millions of years old, of course - limestone laid down in Jurassic seas under the Jurassic Sun. And the stones and the buildings and the sun are the same, in a relative way, but you're older. Shorter of breath, and a quarter-century closer to death. It's all stayed the same - give or take a bike lane - but you're the one that's not. You may have been Tennis Club captain, star hockey striker, Maths First or Queen of the JCR. But after all these years, you're just a ghost. You flit through, and nobody knows who you are.

It's a lovely place, though. And it's solid, and steady, and will last forever. It's just we that change.