Intro

When townsfolk ask me what I do for a living and they find out I’m a student, they seem a wee bit shocked that I'm out of college grounds and then pay me the complement of Seeming Normal. However, I feel no more at home with the college-folk: on learning that I visit my college just once or twice a term, I get tarred with the not-a-proper-student brush. That is until I reveal that my term-time and vacation-time addresses are one and the same and that I married a local Cambridge man who has never set foot inside any of the University’s colleges. I then emerge as something of an exotic bird: the Cambridge student who spends most of her out-of-hours life with The Locals.

I can name most of our 31 colleges and our surrounding villages with reasonable accuracy. I know what plodges and bedders are, as well as the U’s and the Romsey Sessions, I walk the hallowed arches of lecture theatres Monday to Friday and then the dog with my father-in-law at weekends. I know my way around a punt just as well as the guest ale lists of Mill Road’s finest drinking establishments. I celebrate Christmas at Kings’, and New Year at the Empress.
These privileges are not meant as idle boasts, but merely to illustrate my status as a double-agent: a townie student, best of both worlds and master of none. Checkpoint this blog for the exotic bird’s-eye-view of Cambridge.