Friday, 22 November 2013

Flashback: Michaelmas Column 9

Full issue can be found here: http://www.tcs.cam.ac.uk/assets/downloads/TCS_Volume14_Michaelmas_Issue9.pdf

Well, this is it, my friends. Mis amigos. It has been fun, and laughs, but now we must part, for the Christmas Vac, and maybe forever. Who knows. TCS have betrayed nothing so far about renewing this space, or even letting me loose to do other writing things for them, so for now this is the last of these mutterings.

A girl came up to me this weekend a fter I refereed a college water polo match and was getting changed, and after listening to a bit of a conversation, said, ‘Oh! You’re Sophie Clarke, right? You write the column? I like it, it’s funny.’

 To be honest, she was probably just scared, as she’d caught the end of the match before hers, when I’d ‘accidentally’ mullered Tit Hall’s captain and shoulder shoved him underwater. Even if she’d thought that what I write is, quote, ‘a pile of steaming incompetence’ (thanks, ginger end! You know who you are!) she was unlikely to tell me that as she feared for her life. Probably. Considering that I was also nursing a large lump on my jaw b o n e from an elbow to the face a er some argy-bargy in the pool, it’s not an unlikely explanation.

Nevertheless, I was suffused with joy and happiness – someone knew who I was simply through my writing! is was almost as good as that time when I was referred to as ‘the infamous Sophie Clarke’ in the queue for Life. It made me think, what have I got from this column nonsense apart from nine missed deadlines (sorry Suzanne! You’re the best editor ever for putting up with me!) and a few thousand words of ramblings about my life?

Well…people have liked it. I think. To my twenty or so readers, thanks. It’s made me feel like I know where my place is in Cambridge again, helped me slightly to work through the traumas of coming back to this crazy town. I think my friends are grateful that, instead of cornering them with a packet of Revels and a bottle of wine, I pour out my problems to a collective group with more re fined language and a few more attempts at being amusing than when I’m simply rolling around trollied in the bar. I said in my first column that my gown had made me cry, when I bought my BA gown instead of dusting off my old undergrad one.

I wore the BA gown to formal at Pembroke the other day, and on my bike on the way there, a tear froze to my face then as well. I couldn’t believe how lucky I was to be back here and to have had such an amazing time with all of the new people in my second Cambridge life. I hope everyone else has had good, if not so transitional, terms too – and feel free to always say hello. I probably won’t hurt you, unless we’re in the pool.

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