All Terrain Thinking

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Made in England

A friend and colleague here is about to spend a year studying at Oxford University. He is a man of intelligence, charm, and unpolished energy-and he has never been to England.

"Have you packed your velvet smoking jacket?" I asked him.

"My what?"

"Never mind. Some silk cravats should do. By the way, how's your Latin?"

He didn't answer, but wore the expression of a man who has just realized he's left the bath tap on at home. He was ripe for advice, and over the last few day I have tried to explain to him what can be expected from a university that first opened it's creaking, wooden doors in the year 1167.

At the time, King Henry II was on the throne, and the language of the English court was still French-a linguistic hangover from the Norman conquest a century before. I know this because my ancestors were on the beach during the invasion and secured the first French teaching contract for unemployed Saxons. They went broke over the weekend.

Despite the savagery and debauched fun of the Dark Ages, Oxford University was to grow into an environment that would thrive on the oxygen of intelligence and discovery. It continues to do so. Colleague may also be astounded to discover that there are still places of learning whose knowledge can never be obtained through the power of purchase.

The German writer, Wolfgang Goethe, said that, "Architecture is frozen music." Wandering around the colleges of Oxford, with their gothic towers, vaulted libraries, and elegant quadrangles, my friend will understand exactly what he meant. The gardens are serene and secret, and the lawns Wimbledon-green and immaculately kept-for turf is the landscape of settled civility.

Oxford is also a place that brims with wonderfully-brained eccentrics. Professors of science may still be glimpsed staggering from chemistry experiments trailing laboratory vapors, while bookish, bespectacled dons can be spotted muttering to themselves in the quad, dipping into their pockets for lines of lost poetry, only to fine bits of three-day-old toast-and their glasses. It's the don thing.

Oxford professors also tend to be expansive, unpredictable, and slightly dangerous; three fine qualities in a teacher. In the past, some have been burnt at the stake for their beliefs, and one even had the dubious honor of introducing acne into Rhodesia. Yet although each generation of tutors gradually becomes rich in years and dignity, and may well adopt lazy smiles and carry noble paunches, mentally engage them and they move at warp speed.

Many are men of letters, some are men of bottles, but all of them sincerely believe that exams should be tread as a brief interruption to the proper business of education. Real knowledge is not a qualification, it is a process.

The student clientele has certainly changed. Anyone could be sitting next to -you from future dukes, to potential dictators, to beautiful Israeli girls who drive Merkava M3 tanks over the Golan Heights during their holidays. There will also, no doubt, be a smattering of emotionally incontinent fops who clutch teddy bears and, through an absurd right of birth, will end up in the House of Lords- that last infirmary of noble minds. For them, it must be like going home.

I suggested that if he was in any doubt about how to address either a member of staff or a senior student, he should bow slightly from the waist and say, "My liege." Equally, when asked by his tutor if he agrees with what the tutor has just said, and he doesn't have a clue, he should simply nod wisely and reply, "Cunning plan my lord."

Although Oxford is a place where dead languages are taught in preference to living ones, I told him not to fret about his ignorance of Latin. The university has now radically updated it's classical curriculum. It has progressed to the Middle Ages.

He might be presented with a Jurassic computer and asked to deal with such challenges as:

A GOBLIN IS RUSHING TOWARDS YOU!

Kill the goblin with an exe.

BUT YOU DON'T HAVE AN AXE.

He shouldn't feel to hassled about spelling either. Shakespeare never spelt his name the same way twice, and he never spelt it Shakespeare.

Outside the hallowed halls of learning, Oxford has much to offer. It is a city of old money, pubs, and bicycles, that bulges with student accommodation. It has dormitories and "digs" I suggested that as soon as he discovers what that means, he should a get a place of his own. I actually know of some charming cottages in Moreton-on-the-Bog, just outside the city. These 13th century cottages are small but-wait for it-"have interesting spindle windows with thatched boon lobs on the truncated west mitchet." The terracotta poove vents are a later addition. Admittedly they are dark, even in the light, but he can pick up some spray paint from the 1,500- year old post office in the village. II advised him to buy the brand which is, "Re-commended by seven out of ten mindless vandals."

"What's a mitchet?" he asked."

"You'll know when it leaks."

I also gave him some social pointers. Don't drop litter. Foreigners who drop litter in England are sent to Australia, nailed to the side of a ship, even though there's not a garbage can for miles.. And these days you have to pay for the journey.

Try to be polite to everyone. Manners have little to do with class, though etiquette does. I know working-class people with the most beautiful manners, and upper-class people who behave like yobs. Manners are there to get you ahead without anyone noticing what you are doing.

I hope he enjoys the annual Oxford and Cambridge submarine race, while drinking pints of Scruttocks Old Dirigible. And there's a rumor that at the end of the summer, Luciano Pavarotti will be bungy-jumping off the Magdelan College bell tower, naked, while singing that football song. That would be an education in itself.

If he's ever in trouble, he is welcome to visit my mum in Sevenoaks, which, due to a passing storm, is now called Oneoak and is not very well. She's used to taking in strangers.

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