Revisiting past humiliations

I got a letter this week inviting me to a meeting of (and suggesting I might like to join) the Oxfordshire branch of the Cambridge Society.

Now yes, I went to Cambridge. I loved it (though not everyone does), and I got a lot from it and still do. They really are formative years, and I feel very lucky to have spent them in such an amazing place.

However, it doesn't have its elitist reputation for nothing. If you are one who arrives there relatively "loud, poor and northern" (to use the words of an ex-boyfriend), you don't half get reminded of it sometimes.

I think Cambridge is at its worst when in the process of actually celebrating its own existence. My very favourite example is something that happened to me during Commemoration Feast: an annual event to mark the founding of Trinity College by Henry VIII in 1546. This is an invitation-only event: as an undergraduates you are invited if you got a first in your exams the previous year (when you are known as a Scholar), if you are on the College students union committee, or if your tutor puts you forward as an all round good egg. In my second year I was Women's Officer, a TCU post, so I duly got an invite, which I accepted.

To my delight I was placed next to R, a friend of mine also on TCU, but the man sitting opposite me was rather less delightful. What follows Really Happened.

So, he said, what are you reading? SPS, I said [Social and Political Sciences]. Well, he said, I didn't realise they *gave* firsts in SPS. Well they do, I said, but as it happens I didn't get one. So why are you here? he said. I'm on the TCU committee, I said. Ah, he said, so we could call you a social scholar. I suppose you could, I said, and turned to talk to R in mild discomfort.

Shortly thereafter, the main courses arrived. As the vegetarian option, mine was something spectacularly (and predictably) uninspiring. But R's looked very good, it was meat of some kind in (if memory serves) a redcurrant sauce. Can I try your sauce, I said. Yes, go ahead, she said. And I daubed my finger in the edge of it and then licked the sauce off.

At which point I again caught the eye of the Scholar sitting opposite me. He looked me straight in the eye and said 'How are you going to tempt me into abject submission if you behave like that?'

I was invited to the same feast the following year, and had no hesitation in ticking the 'I am unable to attend' box. Why put yourself through it? I was speechless at the time, and have still never managed to come up with the perfect comeback. In fact I have enabled comments specially, in case anyone can think of one.

R didn't go to the college ten year reunion because she didn't want to put herself through it. I did go, and while I was freaked out (not to mention hungover) for a good few days afterwards, I did have a really good time. But there was still that status thing hanging in the air.

It was a black tie dinner (of course), and I don't think I had been to a single black tie function in the intervening decade. After a slightly panicked wardrobe rummage I decided on a long black dress and my dad's old dinner jacket. I thought I looked passable. I am not sure most people noticed or cared either way, but while I was sipping whisky after dinner in the Master's Lodge a woman came up to me and said Nice dress. Monsoon, about four years ago? Er yes, I said. And the jacket's my dad's.

So to summarise: do I want to get together with a bunch of people who, by being the kind of people who wish to define themselves by their elitist education, may likely also be the kind of people who make me feel provincial, underachieving and socially inadequate? No, I don't think I do.

joella