Gown and out

It is over.

I am on the taxi rank.

It has all been so very exciting that I am still a bit trembly even now, although I think that is because actually I am a bit of a weed and also I have drunk far too much coffee this week.

I do not usually drink coffee, not from any virtuous health giving motive but just because it is a lot of organising followed by a lot of sitting around and it is all just too difficult. If I am going to drink anything it will be tea, of which there are two large jugs always on the stove, and which is in any case red and does not include caffeine. Hence coffee is always something of an exciting shock to the system, and I have imbibed absolutely buckets of it over the last few days.

I am now a Master of Studies, formally and officially, absorbed into the glorious and ancient tradition of Cambridge University, and am the holder of a piece of written evidence that I am not dim. I can wave this at anybody who should doubt my intellectual credentials, assuming that I can remember what I have done with it, and assuming in any case that anybody should ever give a hoot. Nobody has so far and so I am not holding out any hopes that such a glorious moment might ever arrive, but if it does, I will jolly well Be Prepared.

Of course you will be mildly curious to know about the thrills of the day, and even if you aren’t then I am going to tell you anyway, because it was absolutely spiffing in every way. We had a magnificent buffet lunch at good old Lucy Cavendish college, with so much college Prosecco that I was quite squiffy by the time it got to lining up for the photographs, with the consequent result that I am smirking like a merrily drunk person on all of them. We all had our photographs taken and then dumped our guests to sort their own lives out whilst we processed ceremonially through the town, the way people used to do when they were going to be hanged, except without the tumbril or the thrown vegetables, and with more long flowing robes.

It was all jolly very thrilling. We were all dressed up as if we were going to a very smart funeral, billowing black gowns and hoods behind us, with a chap with a stick and a bowler hat leading the parade, and ceremonially poking Japanese tourists out of the way. The Weather Gods had had an outburst of the most magnificent kindness, and the skies were cloudless and blue, with the sun smiling down benevolently upon us like an elderly praelector who has just been given a ginger biscuit with their cup of tea.

Cambridge was packed with tourists, all nudging one another and hoping we might do something interesting as we passed, which we didn’t, and we waited outside in our formally numbered ranks until we were allowed to pass beneath the august portals of the Senate House, where we processed forward under the supervision of an awful lot of college officials. These cloaked and robed personages inspected us all with the sort of minute attention to detail that might be employed by a colour sergeant who was expecting the King to drop in. They straightened our robes and folded our hoods and examined our shoes and collars and sleeves, and I was obliged to pin my fountain pen a little further out of sight, until finally the Lord High Very Important Lady turned up in robes of scarlet and ermine, and we all had to stand very still.

Our own praelector introduced us in Latin, so although I knew what she was saying I didn’t understand a word of it, and nor did most of the audience, although we all shivered at the grave dignity of it, and processed solemnly forward. One by one we knelt at the foot of the throne and proffered our hands to be clasped, and the Lady spoke some words of benediction and acceptance, still in Latin, and then whispered And Congratulations, with merry blue eyes and the warmest beaming smile I could possibly have imagined. I grinned right back, smiling so broadly that I couldn’t stop for ages until my face started to hurt later, and even remembered to bow.

Once you had bowed you had to make yourself scarce, which I did, out of the Doctors’ Door, where a person shoved the documentary evidence at me and I made my way outside into the sunshine. I stood on the Senate House lawn, dazed and shaken by the magnificence of it all, and only vaguely aware of ranks of gawping tourists peering through the railings, they weren’t exactly throwing peanuts but it was pretty close.

We could have had lots of photographs taken for some token fee of a couple of hundred quid each, which I declined, since Number One Son-In-Law had a perfectly functional camera which he was using liberally, and then it was over.

It wasn’t over, though, because all of the time it was happening I had the acute and piercing awareness that This Is Happening Right Now, and feeling intensively alive in the very minute, which has somehow made the memories so sharp and vivid that every time I close my eyes I am back there, with the smells of the spring soil and the river and the feeling of the flagstones beneath my feet and the sound of a punt passing under the bridge as we passed. It doesn’t feel over. It feels clean and fresh and bright and clear, and I can still feel the soft hands holding mine and the weight of the long hood over my shoulders.

It left me dazzled and vague and rather flappy for the rest of the evening. I couldn’t think of a single thing to say to anybody, which didn’t matter because they all talked amongst themselves, but I was shell-shocked and wordless, startled into silence and just able to grin occasionally.

It is now Sunday night, and hundreds of miles north, in a different life and a different place, but it is all still only a heartbeat away, flickering past my sight every time I blink. It is a relief to be home, to have the whole experience complete and finished, it is all safely squirrelled away in my thoughts now, there for me to remember whenever I happen to want to.

It is done.

I have added a couple of photographs.

You get the picture.