College reunions - a good thing?

The cloisters, Hall and chapel, Magdalen College, Oxford

To Oxford, last weekend, for a Gaudy at Magdalen.  It's difficult to believe that it's fifty years since I started my degree there.  I'd only been to one Gaudy before, after which I concluded that I'd been right to keep up with the people I had and not more.  That was the best part of twenty years ago, when I was still in the City.  It seemed churlish not to go along with the suggestions of old friends and try again.

I'd been given a room that was a sort of semi-underground burrow, with the luxury of an en suite shower room but a carpet so filthy I wasn't inclined to walk on it in bare feet.  The profusion of cream paint brought back vividly the terrible drabness of so much college life.  Conversation at dinner was uphill work.  The speeches, by the President of the College and a knight of the realm respectively, were only semi-audible, and after straining to catch words of wisdom I concluded it wasn't worth the effort.  "The trouble with men is that as they get old they either die or grow pompous," said a woman I once met.  I'm not sure about the pomposity.  It may be that dull is a more appropriate word.   

An alarming reminder of what I was like as an undergraduate occurred when two men a little younger than me introduced themselves and asked me if I recalled their frequent visits to my rooms for coffee in my third year.  Scarily, I had no recollection of either of them. One said "You were so wonderfully opinionated".  So some things don't change.  

I had no thrilling encounter with anyone I hadn't seen for years and who will be my new best friend.  The most interesting part of the weekend was the light it shed on the tricks of memory.  I had forgotten the misery of much of my time there, when I felt inadequate and depressed by the medieval melancholy of the environment.  I had not realised how much of that time I had blotted out when looking back.  The whole experience was amazingly valuable, and a great privilege.  But I'm glad to have moved on.

One of the best things about the weekend was the poster at Oxford Station that I saw while waiting for my return train.  "God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us" it proclaimed.  Then "To know more phone Jeff", with a telephone number and a picture of Jeff at the side.  I am keen to know more about Jeff.  Is he a person or a trade name - an acronym, even, for something like "Jesus Evangelises For Free"?  I have a phone call to Jeff on my To Do list.  Surely he tweets for Jesus?

Antony Mair