The amazing quality of the catering in Heslington Hall canteen. Trout in almonds – Fillet steak – for Students?
The inebriating energy of everything. If you stood still for a moment in any Common Room you would find yourself recruited on the spot for any one of the dozens of student activities that had to be invented from scratch – in my case I found myself co-opted (with no dramatic experience or talent) into the casts successively of The Clouded Star, then The Devil’s Law Case, Mother Courage, and finally (much later of course) the flamboyant open-air Richard II. The first was, of course, part of the New Universities Festival at Keele, from which we all returned more than ever aware of our good fortune in being at York, rather than any of our sister institutions. (Ah, but I should recall also that it was at keel I learned to smoke, an evil addiction it took me two decades to escape!)
Playing my cello in a deserted room in one of the cottages in Heslington Village, and realising that I had an audience – a large rat in the opposite corner.
An Orange and Brown University scarf, democratically voted for by us all, but inexplicably now obsolete. Still got mine, though!
And speaking of democracy, a huge debate in the entrance hall of Heslington Hall, at which we voted (passionately) to have no truck with any Student Union at York – ‘60’s anarchism at its most naïve. And we got a Union anyway, of course – so no harm done.
Profesor Philip Brockbank sweeping his long, black hair from his eyes with one hand, while preparing to devastate your woolly thoughts – and the lovely Bernard Harris, gently restoring your confidence by finding substance in everything you said or wrote. Hard cop, soft cop – and it worked!
Hearing of Kennedy’s assassination while drinking in the Charles XII, and staying on incredulous into the evening as the story unfolded. And drinking far too much beer. And thinking how strange it was that the world that had only just begun that October should have come to an end already by November.
