FLOREAT CANTABRIENSIS
We drive into Cambridge today. No particular reason other than that too much exposure to hometown Letchworth Garden City’s particular vibe (imagine a bizarre synthesis of Stepford & the Arts & Crafts movement) can damage the soul irreparably. After struggling onto the Park & Ride bus that takes you from out-of-town car park to city centre, we ramble through streets dominated by university buildings. Cambridge is first & foremost a functional city. The university colleges are beautiful & unadorned by any traces of modernity, but the jumble of constituent buildings – ranging mainly from 16th to 18th century – is alive with activity. The cobbled streets are full of traffic; the unreconstructed churchyards are full of students ‘between lectures’ & picnicking Oriental sightseers; the Eagle in Benet Street is ancient wall-to-wall busy with poets, philosophers, awestruck American tourists & a wedding party, pissed & shouting in a corner. There is nothing of the museum or the artfully maintained Olde Worlde time warp about Cambridge. It lives & breathes inside today.
That having been said, if the streets, alleyways & courtyards are dominated by a sense of that which doesn’t change through time, so is there also a curious distinctiveness about the natives. Pubs, bars & restaurants ring to that languid nasal twang unique to the English upper middle classes. Whether it’s a group of Physics students planning a bit of a jolly-up in punts on the Cam (“Giles will bring the bubbly because his father keeps a damn fine cellar”) or an elderly couple in on a shopping trip from Grantchester (“Pick me up a Guardian from Borders, will you, darling? I’ll just get you a dry sherry”), it’s comfortingly clear that there will always be an England.
Just to be sure, I stop by the window of Ede & Ravenscroft in Trumpington Street & lust after a suit in moss-green tweed, or a pair of the hand-tooled brogues with leather toecap & suede uppers, or an all-wool Burberry overcoat, or a maroon velvet smoking jacket. Yes, they’re all there in the window. And inside the shop – glimpsed as I am hurried past - the assistants wear tape measures around their necks & speak like minor characters from P.G. Wodehouse.
We cross the Cam by the little bridge where Scudamore’s punts are all moored together side by side like shelled peapods. A blonde aesthete in a boater asks us if we want to hire one. I tell him I’m sorry but I don’t speak a word of English & we move on to cross the tussocks & reeds of Lammas Fields, the old common land that is too marshy to build on & thus lies unchanged in the middle of the city. Huge pollarded willows droop over still ponds. Cows graze & moorhens waddle up to the water’s edge.
As we drive away from the Park & Ride & head south towards Hertfordshire & home, I am struck as always by the vast, flat, grey fields stretching nearly to the horizon. A tractor & plough turn over the harvested earth & clouds of dust billow up behind. Crows & a few uncomfortable-looking seagulls wheel & drop into the murk. This is an unlovely slab of countryside, relieved only by the magical city of Cambridge sitting in its midst. And crossing the 20-odd miles of it is a small price to pay for a pint & a steak pie at The Eagle…
2:06:26 AM 
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