Thursday 30 May 2013

An academic memory

I have been watching pictures of my British alma mater, which made me feel quite nostalgic of the time. This picture is the building of the Senior Common Room, which is where I used to go when I was a PhD student after a paper. Like all universities, we had plenty of common rooms, but this was my favorite one, as it was theoretically reserved for academics, or aspiring academics, as I was at the time and staff. Junior common rooms, or JCR, were basically glorified bars, lesser bars in fact. The SCR was situated in an older building in a cedar surrounded part of the campus. The beers on the tap were real ales and this much better than what one could find on campus, and they were offering a menu that was actually quite decent. I remember especially a chicken and bacon lasagne (with garlic bread on the side) that I used to eat for supper every other Thursday, right after a guest lecturer (usually a medievalist as it was my field of studies) had given us a paper about something or other. As I usually did not have lectures or classes on Friday, it was my treat before the weekend: chicken and bacon lasagna and beer. I also had tea there, but this was more occasional. I used to walk to there via a small trail that used to get quite muddy. Some of my French friends, who were into Lord of the Rings, had nicknamed it the Hobbit's path. With the pseudo-medieval look of the building itself, my own field of studies, I have to confess the whole place and its surroundings reminded me of a Dungeons & Dragons setting.

1 comment:

Cynthia said...

We didn't even have common rooms at my University in France ... such a shame!