I'm reading The Idea of Home: autobiographical essays, by John Hughes
(Giramondo 2004) born 1961.
After Newcastle (NSW) University he tried 'research' at Cambridge, but when
his grandfather, a Ukrainian who told him real stories, died, went off it.
He writes:
'Cambridge is a difficult place to drop out of - who would accept boredom as
an excuse? Certainly not my grandfather. It was, after all, my sense of his
expectation that had put me there in the first place. And so, the irony...'
Earlier he wrote:
'I hadn't enjoyed my time in Cambridge. I felt like there was something
wrong inside myself. I found myself translating all the time, but without a
change of language. Everything would have been so much easier, though, if
they'd only spoken something other than English. I wrote to him about this
and he replied that many people feel foreign in their own language.'
On 25/1/08 9:31 AM, "Roger Day" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Somewhere in a dark corner of my heart, I wish Oxford and Cambridge
> razed to the ground. In their place would be raised small housing
> estates and farms.
>
> Roger
>
> On Jan 24, 2008 10:21 PM, Dominic Fox <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>> My favourite is still the 'phone call to the porter of Jesus College,
>> around midnight Christmas Eve:
>>
>> "Hello, is that Jesus?"
>> "Yes, it is, hello?"
>> "Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you..."
>>
>
>
--
------ End of Forwarded Message
|