Time Travel

I returned Sunday to Cambridge, England, for the first time in 26 years. In the summer of 1982 I was a naive 17-year-old who spent three weeks there with a group of high school classmates and an Anglophile history teacher chaperon. Our group was one of several that descended on this British Mecca of higher education every summer "to study" light subjects. Ours were Shakespeare, British geography and parliamentary debate, and I'm sure we were a constant pain to our teachers. On the whole, we were privileged American children with little world experience.

Our Shakespeare instructor was a young man trying to get us excited about Much Ado About Nothing and had the bad luck of teaching us first thing in the morning. "WILL YOU PLEEEEEEASE STOP YAWNING!" is the phrase I remember him uttering the most--much more than anything about the Bard. The geography teacher was a jolly Scotsman who preferred to talk more about golf than the origins of the River Thames. And the debate teacher a very colorful, degenerate Anglican priest who taught us the finer points of verbally tearing the opposition to shreds, with humor and sexual innuendo, if possible.

After my recent visit, I'm not sure what has changed more: the town or me. The ancient college buildings don't seem to have aged at all. But the signs that the university as a whole and the town had changed were everywhere. Cambridge has become modern with new shopping centers, chain stores and shiny new hotels. There's a Starbucks, for Pete's sake. And the tourists! The hoards and hoards of tourists! Had it been like that way back when? I don't think so.

The most striking change for me was the fact that all the colleges now charge an entry fee for visitors. In 1982 we strolled through the various college courts free as birds. We'd cut through one college to get to another. You could enter the magnificent Chapel at King's College whenever you wanted. No longer. Some colleges are completely closed to visitors and others charge anywhere from 2 GBP to 5 GBP to enter. I had to visit my old haunts at Clare College (2 GBP) and I coughed up the 5 GBP ($10) to get into King's College Chapel, but I rebelled at the others. So I missed seeing some of my favorite architectural highlights, like the Wren Library at Trinity College.

I commiserated with several university employees about these changes and they agreed that things were not as nice now as they were years ago. "It's just the way the world is now." I know it's a sign of the times, but it made me sad. You can't take one step in London, Cambridge and elsewhere without your movements being recorded on closed circuit TV. You see CCTV signs everywhere.

Still, I tried not to let it get me down. I visited the residence hall where we stayed and the Old Court of Clare College where we took our mediocre meals. I gazed at the beautifully manicured lawns, remembering that walking upon them was verboten. I spent a long time in King's College Chapel staring at the amazing fan-vault stone ceiling from the 16th century. The vaulting, stained glass windows, soaring spaces, make the Chapel one of the greatest wonders of architecture anywhere in the world. I watched people punting on the River Cam, enjoying the summer sun.

By then it was nearly 4 o'clock and I'd been walking around the town since 10 in the morning. I suddenly noticed I was 43 years old, tired and my feet hurt. So much for reclaiming my youth! Time to point my tired feet toward the train station and head back to Camden Town.

Click here if you want to see more photos of my stroll down memory lane.


Interesting Summer 1982 tidbits:

In the summer of '82 Ronald Reagan was President of the United States. Leonid Brezhnev led the Soviet Union...there still was a Soviet Union. Israel had just invaded Lebanon, sparking a war and the Lebanese Civil War. We arrived into a triumphant Great Britain: they had just won the Falklands War and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was riding high. Prince William, the heir to the British throne, had just been born and was baptized; an intruder broke into Buckingham Palace and sat on the bed of Queen Elizabeth II, chatting with her for 10 minutes before security arrived; and the Provisional IRA detonated 2 bombs in central London, killing 8 soldiers, wounding 47 people, and leading to the deaths of 7 horses. The first CDs went on the market.