I am pretty sure that you, Gentle Reader, have never played on a 43-Man Squamish team. Unless you were a reader, as was I, of Mad Magazine, it may well be that you have never even heard of 43-Man Squamish.  It was the June, 1965 issue of Mad (#95 if you are now digging through your collection) wherein Mad Magazine’s long-time writer, Tom Koch, along with illustrator, George Woodbridge, introduced us to what was not destined, more’s the pity, to become the next great American pastime.

You are aware that this is the second of three posts about cricket, the first being An American Game wherein I argued that cricket was once also an American game and not just a British or European game. Such is not the case today, although there appears to still exist a sub-culture of cricket in this country. The final post is A Connecticut Yankee in King Johnny’s Court wherein I will detail Dennis Ryan’s brief, but not altogether unsuccessful, career in cricket.

I start with 43-Man Squamish because it seems to me that cricket could just as easily have been an invention of Tom Koch as was 43-Man Squamish. Take the positions as an example. There are 43 positions of Squamish: the left and right Inside Grouches, the left and right Outside Grouches, four Deep Brooders, four Shallow Brooders, Five Wicket Men, three Offensive Niblings, four Quarter-Frummerts, two Half-Frummerts, one Full-Frummert, two Overblats, two Under-blats, nine Back-Up Finks, two leapers, and a Dummy.

Cricket, on the other hand, has only 11 players, but they can play numerous positions on the cricket field as this diagram indicates:

Not quite 43 positions (I counted 40), but it comes close and your Backward Square Leg, Silly Mid, or Cow Corner is no less imaginative than a Back-up Fink, a Frummert, or a Brooder. And, like 43-Man Squamish, cricket also has its Wicket Man.

I know  that you are thinking that this is all very silly and that I am making fun of cricket…and you’d be right. But there are other similarities between 43-Man Squamish and cricket that just can’t be ignored.

For example, each squamish player is equipped with a frullip, a long, hooked stick that is used to stop opposing players from crossing your goal line. The frullip and its use is picture below.

I know that the frullip looks nothing like the cricket bat, pictured below,

but the original bats were not always this shape. Before the 18th century bats tended to be shaped similarly to a modern hockey stick. Cricket historians think this may well have been a legacy of the game’s reputed origins. Although the first forms of cricket are obscure, it may be that the game was first played using shepherd’s crooks. If a frullip isn’t a shepherd’s crook, you tell me what it most resembles.

I don’t want to carry this analogy too far, but it also strikes me that the “laws” of cricket and the “rules” of 43-Man Squamish are similar in that they seem to disregard the notion of syntax. For example, here’s some of 43-Man Squamish’s rules as devised by Tom Koch:

The Rules of 43-man Squamish

• Each team must have 43 players.
• Games consist of 7 Ogres (8 if it rains that day) that are 15 minutes long.
• Each player must wear the regulated uniform: a Helmet, Gloves, Swimming Flippers, and is equipped with a Frullip.
• Before play begins the Probate Judge flips a Spanish Pesta  and if the visiting captain guesses correctly, the game ends  immediately.
• Play then begins after the Frullip of the advancing team is touched to the Fluteny and “Mi too es enfermo per la carretera es verde” is chanted.
• Hitting the Pritz across the goal line is a Durmish and scores 11 points.
• Carrying the Pritz across the goal line is a Woonillk and scores 17 points.
• In the 7th Ogre (and 8th if it rains) only Niblings and Overblats are allowed to score.
• Each team has 5 snivels (similar to downs in football) to get the Pritz across the goal line.
• If there is a tie, a sudden death match must begin, but if both left overblats are out of the game, dirty limericks are to be shouted from opposite ends of the field until one team breaks up laughing.

The pritz, by the way, is equivalent to the cricket ball. The Flutney is the five-sided field on which the game is played. “Mi too es enfermo per la carretera es verde” means “My uncle is sick but the highway is green,” or something nearly similar to that.

As an example of the loss of syntax in cricket, consider Law 28 of cricket regarding Dismissing a Batsman (the rough equivalent of striking out a batter in baseball) which could have been written by Tom Koch and maybe it was:

“Losing a wicket refers to a batsman getting out. If dismissed by a bowler, the bowler is said to have taken his wicket. The number of wickets taken is the primary measure of a bowler’s ability.

For a batsman to be dismissed by being bowled out, run out, stumped, or hit wicket, his wicket needs to be put down. What this means is defined by Law 28 of the Laws of cricket. A wicket is put down if a bail is completely removed from the top of the stumps, or a stump is struck out of the grounds by the ball, the striker’s bat, the striker’s person (or by any part of his clothing or equipment becoming detached from his person), a fielder (with his hand or arm, and provided that the ball is held in the hand or hands so used, or in the hand of the arm so used).

If one bail is off, removing the remaining bail or striking or pulling any of the three stumps out of the ground is sufficient to put the wicket down. A fielder may remake the wicket, if necessary, in order to put it down to have an opportunity of running out a batsman.

If however both bails are off, a fielder must remove one of the three stumps out of the ground with the ball, or pull it out of the ground with a hand or arm, provided that the ball is held in the hand or hands so used, or in the hand of the arm so used.

If the umpires have agreed to dispense with bails, because, for example, it is too windy for the bails to remain on the stumps, the decision as to whether the wicket has been put down is one for the umpire concerned to decide. After a decision to play without bails, the wicket has been put down if the umpire concerned is satisfied that the wicket has been struck by the ball, by the striker’s bat  person, or items of his clothing or equipment separated from his person as described above, or by a fielder with the hand holding the ball or with the arm of the hand holding the ball.”

It is at this point that I believe one would start to shout dirty limericks.

If it’s cricket or squamish you play,
You’ll play to the end of a day.
Like the Man from Nantuckett…

I’d better stop here just to be on the safe side.

On a pleasant late Sunday morning, our last full day in Cambridge, Dennis Ryan and I took a taxi to the famous Orchard Tea Room in Grantchester, just a couple of miles from Sidney Sussex College, our home away from home. The Orchard is more than a room, it is an apple orchard as well. Tables and chairs are scattered under the apple trees where, since 1897, Cambridge students, faculty, townspeople, and tourists have taken morning coffee, lunches, and afternoon high teas.

The Orchard grew in popularity when the poet Rupert Brooke, then a popular graduate student of King’s College, took up lodging in the Orchard House in 1909. Brooke attracted a great following at the Orchard, among them John Maynard Keynes, Virginia Woolf, E.M. Forster, Bertrand Russell, and Ludwig Wittgenstein—the so-called Grantchester Group, or the neo-pagans as Woolf called them. A poet of the First World War who never saw action, Brooke is famous mainly for one poem, The Soldier.  You are probably familiar with its opening lines: If I should die, think only this of me / That there’s some corner of a foreign field / That is forever England. The foreign field in which Brooke is buried is an olive grove on the island of Skyros in the Aegean. Brooke died, not of battle wounds, but of a mosquito bite and an ensuing blood infection. He was not yet 28.   Brooke’s presence, and the presence of the other neo-pagans, is memorialized by a simple display board in the orchard that was just a few feet from where Dennis and I sat.

We offered to allow management to take our pictures and add them to the board, but we were rebuffed. Undaunted, we finished our lunch and strolled down a short and gnarly path to a rusted gate that opened onto a large, green meadow where the Grantchester Cricket Club was assembling for a friendly afternoon cricket match with Liddgate-Ousden.

The featured image above is the Meadow. We chatted with a few of the players who were standing around and they graciously invited us to sit with them on the sideline as the match was about to commence. Dennis and I sat for a time and watched the match unfold, aided in our understanding by the commentary of Johnny Anderson, about whom you will hear more in a subsequent post I am tentatively calling A Connecticut Yankee In King Johnny’s Court. That will be the third of a three-part post on cricket. This is the first. The second post is tentatively titled It’s Sorta Like 43-Man Squamish.

Cricket is, I suppose, the quintessential British sport. Wherever the British Empire reigned, cricket reigned too. Its origins are lost in the misty veils of history, but when the tower of St Bene’t Church (you’ll recall that we strolled by the church in an earlier post) was being built, about 1020 AD, a form of cricket was already being played in England.

Cricket is a truly international sport played by millions of people in 92 countries.  But not, seemingly, in the United States. And that is ironic because cricket was once the national game of this country. “The Hell, you say!” Yes, I do say. I do not lie to you, Gentle Reader. Cricket was one of the first outdoor sports to be played in America. An 1844 cricket match between sides (cricket “teams” are called sides) from the United States and Canada was the first international sporting event in the modern world, predating the revival of the Olympic Games by more than 50 years.

In 1751, the New York Gazette and the Weekly Post Boy reported on a match between a London “eleven” ( as sides are often called, there being 11 men on a cricket side) and one from New York City. This may be the  first public report of a cricket match in North America.  Both sides were probably from New York.

An article in the  Smithsonian Magazine in 2006 noted that the rules of cricket in North America were formalized in 1754 when Benjamin Franklin brought back from England a copy of the 1744 Laws, cricket’s official rule book. By the way, Dennis and I were admonished by one of the cricketers on the Meadow at Grantchester, “Rules are for Monopoly; cricket has laws.” One further reads in The Smithsonian  that “there is anecdotal evidence that George Washington’s troops played what they called “wickets” at Valley Forge in the summer of 1778. After the Revolution, a 1786 advertisement for cricket equipment appeared in the New York Independent Journal, and newspaper reports of that time frequently mention “young gentlemen” and “men of fashion” taking up the sport. Indeed, the game came up in the debate over what to call the new nation’s head of state: John Adams noted disapprovingly—and futilely—that “there are presidents of fire companies and cricket clubs.””

Abe Lincoln reportedly turned up somewhere to watch Chicago play Milwaukee in a cricket match in 1849. By then, an estimated 10,000 Americans were playing the game, and many more were watching.

The website of the United States of America Cricket Association, headquartered at Miami Beach, says that there are 1,000 clubs with more than 600 playing fields, and more that 24,000 active players of cricket in this country.  I suppose they should know and why would they lie? So, say what you will about cricket, but do not call it un-American.

But, let’s face it, most Americans dismiss cricket as an elitist game played by girlie-men who  dress in traditional whites and break for tea. And it’s slow. A match can take days to play. As slow as a baseball game might seem to some, cricket unfolds with glacier-like slowness. The longest recorded cricket match (a “Test” match—you’ll learn about that in Part II of this three part blog on cricket) was between South Africa and England played in Durban in 1939. The match lasted nine days (about eight hours each day with tea breaks of course), and ended in a draw when the British side had to board a boat back to England. International Test matches last five days. The friendly match on the Grantchester Meadow was going to be played in an agreed-upon two hours. Johnny’s wife was bringing sandwiches to the Meadow at 4 o’clock.

Cricketers are quick to argue that the game is far more dynamic, and more dangerous, than baseball. Johnny, our guide to the arcania of cricket, showed us a cricket ball: it is heavier—by half an ounce—than an American baseball. A cricket ball has a core of cork, is sheathed in layers of twine and cork shavings, and then wrapped in a bright red leather casing.

Johnny said that a cricket ball launched at a batsman by a skilled bowler (that’s like a pitcher in baseball) can be a dangerous projectile. The bowler, unlike a pitcher in baseball,  is in a full run after sprinting for up to 30 paces before hurling the ball. and unlike a baseball pitch, which is not intended to be bounced off the ground, a cricket ball, more often than not, is bounced off the ground of the cricket “pitch”whose grass has usually been trimmed and rolled to a concrete-like hardness. Johnny says that he has been hit in the chest by a “bouncer” and that it “hurts like hell.” Johnny said that the best bowlers can launch a ball at 95 miles per hour or more. That’s as fast as a major-league fastball. Johnny said all this and we believed him.

So, I don’t know about cricketers being girlie-men. And I certainly would not call a cricketer that to his or her (mostly his though) face. Johnny, for example, is a six foot and solidly built 62-year-old who had been a Cambridge policeman before he retired. No girlie-man he. But, Dennis and I both agreed, he did look fetching in his dress whites.

It’s such a beautiful day, Gentle Reader, that I am wondering if you’d walk with me for a time. I’ll take you on a guided tour of some of the sites around and about Sidney Sussex College. Are you game? You are? Lovely! Grab your walking stick and your old slouch hat and we’ll be on our way.

So here we are on Sidney Street looking south I think. Just to our left, as we’ve exited through the Gate of Sidney Sussex College, you’ll see a fine old book store.

If you turn around, you’ll get a charming view of the Sidney Sussex Chapel Clock and Bell Tower.

Seen enough? Okay, let’s walk just a few feet and turn right onto Green Street. Look, there’s Bill’s Restaurant where Dennis Ryan and I ate three meals during our week in Cambridge and then had dessert and Bellinis on the last night of our stay.  Bill’s is a happening place—always busy, always friendly. Bill, or one of his minions most likely, makes a very good hamburger.

Take care on these cobblestone streets, Gentle Reader. They are ancient and uneven and can pose a problem to those of us of an age who walk on tender knees. We’ll just walk down Green Street a bit longer and then turn left onto Trinity Street.

We turn onto Trinity Street just at the corner of Trinity College’s Great Court. We will amble on for a bit. Trinity Street becomes King’s Parade as we pass by King’s College and its magnificent Chapel. Then it become Trumpington Street. A little confusing perhaps, but this is England after all.

There’s the Senate House on our right. It’s an early 18th Century Building of neo-classical design. It was where the University’s Council of the Senate met. The Senate House is now mainly used for the degree ceremonies of the University of Cambridge. It is also the building upon the roof of which Cambridge students once hoisted, overnight and unseen, a derelict Austin 7 automobile from which they had removed the engine and transmission. If you read the blog post Boys Will Be Boys, you know all about that. That’s one of the buildings of Gonville and Caius College in back of the Senate House. Alum of G&C are termed “Caians.” Among the notable alums are John Venn whose Venn Diagrams you have undoubtedly come across, and Francis Crick of double helix fame, whose path we will cross a little later on in our stroll. Steven Hawking is also a Caian.

Now we are on King’s Parade which, I am sure you have noted, is dominated by King’s College and King’s College Chapel.

That’s the Senate House on the far right. Remember? We just walked past it. King’s College was founded in 1441 by Henry VI. The Chapel is maybe the most iconic Cambridge building.  There are eight Nobel laureates who were either students or fellows of King’s. A notable alum is Alan Turing of Bletchly Park fame. Bletchley Park, you’ll recall, Bletchley Park was the home of British code breakers during World War II. It housed the Government Code and Cypher School, which successfully decrypted the secret communications of the Axis Powers and broke the German Enigma code. Yes, they did that by stealing an enigma machine, but let’s let bygones be bygones shall we? Other notable alums are John Maynard Keynes, Salman Rushdie, E. M. Forster, and, perhaps most important of all, Sir John Harrington. What’s that you say? You haven’t heard of Sir John Harrington? But he makes your life better each day, several times a day I suspect. Sir John was the inventor of the flush toilet!

Getting a wee tired are you? Let’s walk just a bit more and then we’ll stop for refreshment. We’ve come to Bene’t Street where King’s Parade (formerly Trinity Street) becomes Trumpington Street. I want to show you the Corpus Clock on the facade of the Taylor Library of Corpus Christie College. Here it is. What do you think?

Awesome! Yes, I agree. Big too. That gold disk at which you stare (blink your eyes now) is nearly five feet in diameter. Let me tell you a little about it. The face is 24-carat-gold-plated stainless steel. There are no hands or numerals as you can observe. The hours, minutes, and seconds are displayed by the opening and closing of those slits you see on the face. They are backlit with blue LEDs. That peculiar looking insect on the top that looks like a grasshopper is called a Chronophage, “time eater.” Let’s watch it for a time….You see how the Chronophage moves its mouth appearing to eat the seconds as they pass. Did you notice that the beast blinks its eyes? It likes what it eats, I think. By the way, Cambridge Students call the Chronophage Rosalind. No, I don’t know why. Can you read that Latin inscription below the clock? Mundus transit et concupiscentia eius. Your Latin’s a little rusty you say? It’s from the Vulgate John 2:17 and translates (thanks to Mrs. Nina Carlson, my high school Latin teacher) as, “The world passeth away and the lust thereof.” Yes, I agree, more’s the pity.  Just a few more words about the clock and then our little tour is almost complete. The clock is accurate about once every five minutes by design. The irregularity, according to the clock’s inventor, John C. Taylor, reflects life’s irregularity. Except for a motor that winds the clock’s mechanism and provides electricity to the LEDs, the clock is entirely mechanical. The clock was conceived and funded by John C. Taylor, a wealthy inventor and fellow of Corpus Christie College. Taylor donated £million to the project which took two years and 200 people to complete. It was dedicated on September 19, 2008 and unveiled by Stephen Hawking.  Expectations are that the clock can run for 200 years. Speaking of time, perhaps we’d best move on if you’re ready.

We don’t have far to go. In fact, if you turn around, you’ll see we are on Bene’t Street. See the sign above the Chop House’s Window?

Are you oriented after gazing at the Corpus clock for so long? That’s King’s College off to the left. No, let’s not eat at the Chop House. I’ve got a better place in mind and it’s just down Bene’t Street. There’s but one more stop before we eat. Here it is on our right, St. Bene’t Church, the oldest building in Cambridge. Those in the know figure it was built around 1020 AD, well before the Norman Invasion in 1066.

Bene’t is a contraction of Benedict. Bene’t is an Anglo-Norman name. Benedict is the Latin form.  The church is affiliated with Corpus Christie College for which it served as the chapel until 1579.  The tower was probably built around 1020, but the bell-openings are a “modern” addition, having been added in 1586 or there about. The bell tower contains six bells, five of which were cast in the 16th or 17th centuries. The bells still ring, but it’s best not to ask for whom they toll.

Turn around. There’s our final stop on today’s tour. Right across the street. It’s the famous Eagle Pub.

It’s really a very large place and probably the oldest pub in Cambridge opening in 1667. It sits on land donated to Corpus Christie College in 1525. The College still owns the land and is the Eagle Pub’s landlord. As an aside, the various Colleges that comprise Cambridge University (there are 31 colleges) own about 70% of the land in Cambridge.  The Eagle is famous for at least two things: the RAF bar and Francis Crick and James Watson. I might add the bangers and mash as well. But you see we are entering the Eagle through the RAF Bar. Look up.

During WWII, the Eagle Pub was frequented by Royal Air Force airmen who would put a chair on a table, or sit on a chum’s shoulder and burn their names and unit designations into the ceiling with candles or cigarette lighters, or otherwise affixed the graffiti with lipstick or charcoal. When the Americans came to England in 1942, they carried on the tradition. Over time, the graffiti became covered with nicotine and other deposits. A pub regular got permission to clean the ceiling to reveal what was written underneath.

But wait, there’s more. In the early 1950’s, the Cavendish Labs were located on Free School Lane just around the corner from St Bene’t Church. The Eagle was a popular lunch spot for the scientists and staff working at the lab. Among those who lunched at the Eagle were Francis Crick and James Watson, credited with unraveling the DNA code. Crick and Watson are reported to have eaten lunch at the Eagle six days a week. On February 28, 1953, Francis Crick announced to all that he and Watson had “discovered the secret of life.” Those gathered at the Pub shrugged their collective shoulders and waited for Crick and Watson to stand everyone to a round. Whether that happened I don’t know, but Crick and Watson are memorialized with a plaque.

Well that’s the tour for today. Let me stand you to a pint or two of ale, Gentle Reader, and I highly recommend the bangers and mash.

Doesn’t get much better than this does it? Sort of reminds me, as we sit here quaffing a brew or two in the historic Eagle, across from the ancient St Bene’t, enjoying our bangers and mash, of Shakespeare writing in Richard III:

 This royal throne of kings, this sceptred isle,
This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,
This other Eden, demi-paradise,
This fortress built by Nature for herself
Against infection and the hand of war,
This happy breed of men, this little world,
This precious stone set in the silver sea…
This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England.

Cambridge may not be the “city of dreaming spires” as Matthew Arnold dubbed Oxford (Oxford, in Cambridge, is known as “the other place”), but it does have its spires and among the highest are the four spires on Kings College Chapel pictured above. The four corner spires soar to a height of 151′.

The Chapel itself is a marvelous example of late Gothic Perpendicular architecture and boasts the largest fan vault in the world. Construction was commenced in 1447 under the reign of Henry VI and completed, more or less, in 1547 shortly after the death of Henry VIII. It is, perhaps, the most iconic symbol of the City of Cambridge. If you, as I, listen to NPR’s Christmas Eve broadcasts of The Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols you are hearing the Kings Chapel Choirs and the townspeople of Cambridge gathered in the Chapel. With its soaring stain glass windows, and the fan vault, the Chapel is a monument to the potential of the human spirit and truly a work of kings.

But does that stop your determined Cambridge student prankster from thumbing his nose at this edifice dedicated to the greater glory of God? It does not. For example, sometime turning the night of November 28, 2009, Santa hats were placed on the four spires of the Chapel.

Remember, to reach the peak of the spires one ascends 151′. It was probably the first time in the 563 year history of the Chapel, that all four spires had been climbed at the same time. University authorities were pretty sure that the prank had been perpetrated by Cambridge students and were not very happy. It took several steeplejacks with ropes and ladders a couple of days to make the ascent to remove the offending hats.

On another occasion, someone put a traffic cone on the top of one of the spires. Scaffolding was erected to get to the cone but work had not been completed before the work day came to a close. The next day when the workmen returned, they found that the traffic cone had been moved to another spire!

But wait, there’s more. In June of 1958, students somehow got a derelict Austin Seven car onto the roof of Senate House, a massive Neo-Gothic edifice constructed between 1722 and 1730. The engine and transmission had been removed from the car, but still. It took University authorities a week to get the wreck off the building.

On at least two occasions, cars have been suspended from the Bridge of Sighs at St. John’s College. The cars are floated down the Cam on punts, secured to the underside of the bridge with cables, and when the punts float away, Bob’s your uncle, the car is hanging from the bridge.

Now I’ve titled this post Boys Will Be Boys. I am not being sexist here you know. If these pranks were perpetrated by University of Cambridge Students, then odds are that it was boys who were the perpetrators. Although today about 40% of Cambridge University Students are women, such was not always the case.

The first women’s college at Cambridge, Girton, was not opened until 1869. Even then, the women of Girton (there were five) were located away from the site of the other colleges and instruction was given by lecturers who took a train to Girton when their spare time allowed. It’s reported that a priest, passing by the location of Girton College, referred to it as “that infidel place.” Not until 1948 were women actually awarded a degree. Previously, though they were allowed to attend lectures, and even take the exams required for graduation—upon application—the University Council declined to award degrees but allowed University Fellows of good will, and in their spare time, to read and mark exams completed by women students. The last all male college to admit women was Magdalene (pronounced maudlin) and on that occasion, in 1985, Magdalene students wore black armbands and flew the college flag at half-mast! They marched around the college carrying a coffin symbolizing the expected demise of the college. But, surprise, surprise, the rating of the college on the Tompkins Table, an annual listing of all of the colleges of the University based on the performance of their undergraduate students on that years exams, went up, and continues to rise!

Well, there’s more to the story of women at Cambridge, but they appear to be less inclined to foolish, and potentially dangerous pranks. Boys will be boys, to be sure, but Women will be Women and that’s something for which we all ought to be grateful.

Oh, Gentle Reader, what a special day this day turned out to be. Dennis Ryan and I became tourists by taking a 45 minute punt tour on the Cam guided by Dan, a punter and teller of tales of the first water. He was never at a loss for an anecdote during our leisurely punt up the “backs” of the colleges of Cambridge that abut the Cam. His stories, mostly true I think, were entertaining and informative (if we can rely on their accuracy and I think we actually can).

Then Dennis and I hopped aboard a tour bus that makes an hour circuit around Cambridge and Madingley, the site of the American Cemetery. At Madingley—a 30 acre site, which is officially American soil—you will find 3,809 headstones with the remains of 3,812 American servicemen. You will also find a wall inscribed with the names of 5,127 American servicemen missing in action. Included on the wall are the names of Glenn Miller, the American musician, and Joseph P. Kennedy Jr., the man who might have been president, both lost at sea, 1944.

Interesting enough to be sure. But the moving moment of the day, for me, came when we made our way back to Sidney Sussex College at about 4 o’clock on a lovely Cambridge afternoon and graduation day for many of the Cambridge colleges, including Sidney Sussex College. When we pushed open the great wooden gate that stands as a bulwark against the madding crowd (and, believe me, the streets were filled with madding crowds today), and entered into the almost cloistered tranquility of the college grounds, before us stood five fresh-faced youths who, having completed the prescribed course of education for mathematics, physics, and linguistics (the degree taken by the young lady, Julia Black, on the right in the featured image above), were about to receive their Cambridge degrees. As Ms. Black revealed to us her degree, the last one to do so, she said it was really “the only proper degree among the lot.”

Look at their faces. Beaming, happy faces. Maybe the world will wipe the smiles off their countenances in years to come—I hope not—but in this moment, they were happy. A.E. Housman, the classical scholar and poet (you probably remember him best as the author of The Shropshire Lad), who was the Kennedy Professor of Latin at Trinity College, Cambridge from 1911 until his death in 1936, once said, “I find Cambridge an asylum in every sense of the word.” Although I am sure there are reasons to ascribe the sense of asylum as an “institution for the mentally ill” to Cambridge—Dennis and I have seen examples of street people who probably would be better off institutionalized, and there are no shortages of stories about more than eccentric Cambridge Dons—the sense of asylum as a place of refuge, of shelter or protection from harm, certainly applies here, as it applies to many colleges. Students at Cambridge are sheltered from the storm. They are supported to the extent they do not need to work during term, in fact, are actively discouraged from holding outside jobs; they live on the grounds of their selected college. For the three years of their undergraduate education they are provided with a tutor and a supervisor in addition to the lectures which, by the way, they are not required to attend. They must, however, meet regularly with their tutor and supervisor, the penalty for not doing so being that they are not allowed to take the exams for graduation. As an interesting aside regarding the extent to which Cambridge University was willing to go to protect its students from the evils of the world (read London), the train station is located well away from the enclave of Colleges. Not a problem with today’s modern transportation to the station, but more difficult in different and older times. In fact, the University had its own police force, called Bull Dogs, whose officers were empowered to arrest Cambridge University students who were found at the train station in possession of a train ticket.

I suppose the strictures now are not so confining as they were “back in the day,” but the sentiment is, at its core, grounded in a true sense of responsibility for the welfare of the students entrusted to the maternal arms of the Colleges. In loco parentis run a muck.

But consider the words of Michael Oakeshott, the British philosopher and political theorist, graduate of Cambridge’s Gonville and Caius College where he became a fellow, and commentator on education philosophy. He wrote that a college education is an “invitation to disentangle oneself, for a time, from the urgencies of the here and now and to listen to the conversation in which human beings forever seek to understand themselves.” Does it always work? Of course not. Did we listen to those conversations when we were undergraduates? Sometimes. But Cambridge, not alone among the colleges of the world, Cambridge does seek to allow students to disentangle and to listen to the conversations around them, conversations like the ones Watson and Crick had at the Eagle Pub on Bene’t Street where they lunched and talked about (and finally announced) unlocking the secret of life and then broke the DNA code. And so many more life altering conversations with the likes of Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, Stephen Hawking, Ludwig Wittgenstein; funny conversations among comic notables like Hugh Laurie, Stephen Fry, and John Cleese. How wonderful.

When I looked into the faces of these five undergraduates and saw the joy that reposed there, I thought that maybe, just maybe, they had found that shelter and protection from danger that is a sense of the word asylum, and that they had, for their time here, if not for all time, disentangled themselves from the urgencies of the here and now.  And for a brief moment of their time, before they marched into the Sidney Sussex Chapel to be released once again into the world, Dennis and I were part of that asylum. That, Gentle Reader, was worth the trip to Cambridge.

My good friend, Steve Bass, reminded me (as though I needed a reminder) that one does not go to England for its cuisine. So far I am in agreement with his reminder. Take, for example, the full English breakfast which Sidney Sussex College provides us as part of our “Sidney Sussex Experience.”

If there’s anything that makes a person British, I have to think it’s the full English breakfast. Tea and crumpets? Sure. Fish and chips? Sure. But beyond those culinary delights lives the Full English Breakfast. Consider the featured image in today’s blog (a continuation, by the way, of the events of July 18, 2017). It indicates what the British think are the essential ingredients of a Full English Breakfast. here are some individual preferences, but sausages, hash browns (McDonald’s are better), eggs (served just as depicted), baked beans (likely from a can), and bacon, the rashers of which remind me more of cured ham, sliced thin, than bacon. Of course, I like my bacon done veryveryvery crisp which renders the color dark brown.  Fried mushrooms (but not too fried it appears), fried tomatoes, and fried bread (which is not toast; do not call it toast) also make the list, but are deemed by the British Full English Breakfast eating public less essential. Black pudding is high on the list, but we haven’t seen hide nor hair of that here in College Hall at Sidney Sussex College. Other than the lack of black pudding (and maybe I just didn’t see the stuff), the Full English Breakfast here at Sidney Sussex is pretty  much the British standard.

Now, one might think that the Full English Breakfast, filling and satisfying if you are British, might not be a health-conscious breakfast.  You would be wrong. The sausages can reduce blood pressure and the potential risk of cardiovascular disease because of the niacin in the sausage skin. Niacin is also good for the eyes, skin, and hair.

But wait, there’s more good news. Tomatoes also reduce the chances of a stroke. Baked beans alleviate arthritis and the symptoms of gout because of the folic acid and other good vitamins in the beans. I can’t think of anything good about fried bread, so I urge you to stay away from it.

So, with all due respect for Steve Bass, a man I have know for a half-century and whom I love like a brother, maybe one does come to England for the food…at least for a Full English Breakfast.