A Room with a View (sometimes)

Comrades,

On occasion I stay over at Ruskin College when the need arises - on both Walton Street and Headington Sites.

Whilst Headington is being refurbished - the Webb rooms are now more like hotel bedrooms - Walton Street bedrooms languish in readiness for our move out of our historic home next year.

This posted item begs me to ask the question though, just how did you regard the standard to which you should

maintain your domecile whilst a Ruskin student?

In the main I tend to think my room resembled that of what I was when I came to Ruskin, a low-ranking civil servant, mindful of my place in the scheme of things, but certain of the need to look calm, steady and ready for promotion should the opportunity arise.

Others, however, took a more more resigned view of their abode. Badger, when he was awake at least, looked up his room as a place to hold up until the pubs were open. Unsavoury magazines could be found festooned upon the floor. Our dear friend Mr Baggins was known to toss fishheads and the like on the top of his wardrobe.

Other folks as fastidious as myself included Mike, Joe Batty and Harry. The ultimate in cleanliness however, but more of the brand of purity and scarcity (certainly in his first few weeks at Ruskin) was Master Fizzy Crowley.

Who else recalls that our young friend refused to fully unpack his suitcase lest, in his own words "I decide I don't like the place"? So, in monastic splendour the young Crowley existed only to be tortured in later months by those childish sorts who would storm his room and literally turn it upside down.

As a last word let us not forgot those bastions of the cleaning implements Wendy and Co. who toiled away in Bowen in a fug of grime, decay and general grunge. And surely this state of wretchedness was not helped by the permanent layer of the sickly sweet odour of the dreaded weed on the top floor.

I am sure that chemists could catalyse and define the noxious state and toxic nature of what happens when the stink from lower floors rise to clash with vapours from the rooms of slumbering, narcotic-feulled literature students.

Ah, those were the days!

In Solidarity

Ian