Further research

I went to Cambridge again yesterday, in a better frame of mind than previously because I discovered before I left that I have a place to live next year. Apparently all you have to do is moan to the accommodation office, and then, when they tell you not to worry about it, assure them that you are indeed worrying about it. Because voila, I followed this strategy, and now I have a room where before I was roomless.

I have decided that the gap between Oxford and Cambridge is not such a big one as I first supposed. Before I thought that Oxford was in an entirely different galaxy of excellence to Cambridge. I mean, a better galaxy. Not like in Star Wars where the other galaxy is like full of technology that we don't have and weird intelligent species that hang out with human beings and stuff, but more like some, um, other sci-fi show with a different galaxy, in which one of the galaxies is not even remotely comparable to another one because the other one is light-years more advanced and superb. Whatever. I thought Cambridge was like the slums of the Bronx and Oxford was Manhattan.

Upon reflection, though, Cambridge is really not the slums of the Bronx. I was being cranky when I thought that. Actually, not having been to the other boroughs of New York City, I can't really say what Cambridge is. But it's not the slums of the Bronx. That was just mean. When I went back to Cambridge yesterday, I spent a very peaceful and relaxing day copying this manuscript to relatively good success, though it turns out (oops) that I was copying all the wrong things. On the walk back I observed the city with a kinder eye, and it had some nice buildings after all, made of stone and everything, just like Oxford has. (But fewer, and less good.) I observed the nice buildings and appreciated the green spaces and the existence of the punts. And they were charming and aesthetically pleasing, even though Oxford is better.

To put it another way, Oxford was sort of everything I imagined it would be, like someone had taken a picture out of my imagination of what a really old English university would look like and used it to create Oxford. Cambridge was more like someone had eavesdropped on my imagination, missing lots of crucial bits, and used that to create Cambridge. So it's exactly right, in bits, but then a lot of it is catastrophically wrong.

I also switched trains at Ely yesterday, rather than at Stowmarket or Ipswich, and I realized as I was pulling into the station that it was Ely! (It rhymes with "really", by the way, and is apparently a reference to all the eels that lived in the waters by Ely.) Ely like as in John Morton the Bishop of! I was glad I had remembered in time to express my displeasure with the city for being bishopped by a nasty slandering meanie head. (Who, in case you're interested, attended the same college as Lord Peter Wimsey.) Of course I was only there for about four minutes while I waited for the connecting train, but that was plenty of time for me to stick out my tongue at the city. I would have liked to spend more time walking around and finding fault with everything but I had to get to Cambridge.

N.B. I would not really have done that. Ely is supposed to be very beautiful, and I'm sure that if I visited it properly I would be completely won over and would remember that it is not the city's fault that they had an asshole for a bishop for six years half a millennium ago. But I did really stick out my tongue. More at John Morton than at Ely itself.