Gosh, I can see why people like it. St Hilda’s is a lovely venue. It’s a Victorian college, founded in 1893, and the main building has a real grace and charm. The setting is perfect, with the river running close to the main door with lawns and trees. The accommodation is fine, if a bit student-y (it is a college, after all) and the Garden Building, where I was, has a complicated sort of trellis arrangement on the outside.
As a picture paints a thousand words, so to speak, here’s what it looks like from the outside:
Goodness knows what all the woodwork is for, but I can tell you, it’s great for hanging out the white jeans and white tee-shirt that I managed to slosh red wine down. I don’t know what it is about me, wine and anything coloured white but, as sure as night follows day, the three things will come together and then it’s Ho for the tube of travel wash and some impromptu laundry.
The highlight of Friday night was, without a doubt, the after-dinner speech by Priscilla Masters on the subject of Luck and her early life. Priscilla’s parents, who sound an incredibly generous and open-hearted couple, adopted Priscilla and six other children (I think it was six; I was laughing too hard to take notes) the children coming from all four corners of the globe.
The great thing about St Hilda’s is that it doesn’t loose sight of the fact it’s an academic institution. The speakers present proper papers and I knew I was going to enjoy it when the very first one was Jill Paton Walsh on Lord Peter Wimsey’s first case, the Attenbury emeralds, followed by Kate Charles on Margery Allingham. Theology, morals, psychology and motivation all got thoroughly analysed and it set the tone for the weekend. It’s great to have serious stuff like this but treated with enough humour – and there was lots of humour – to lighten the discussion. It was a bit like the best conversation in the pub who’ve ever had and set the standard of the papers to follow.
Privately, Jane Finnis and myself descended to personalities over a bottle of wine. I essayed the theory that Rudyard Kipling’s short stories were complicated (Mrs Bathhurst to you, Jane!) Jane took the opposite view and the ensuing literary discussion (complete with quotes, poetry and yet more wine) was one of the best bits of the weekend.
The only thing wrong with St Hilda’s isn’t a televisions and I didn’t have a radio. Dear Lord. This, with England’s fate hanging in the balance at the Oval (Cricket, yes, we’re talking about cricket) was a severe deprivation. Calls home filled some of the void and so did Len Tyler’s frequent trips to his car radio. (“We should be at the Oval, Dolores; Flintoff’s hitting them all over the ground.”)
It was Len (L.C.)Tyler who pondered one of the conundrums of the weekend; when is a Man a Woman?
Now, those of you who know Len, author of the excellent The Herring Seller’s Apprentice, will know that he isn’t given to such deeply philosophical sounding speculations. Not shortly after breakfast, anyway. I mean, it sounds like something almost German in its complexity. What it actually was about was the annual meeting of Mystery Women, the group set up by Lizzie Hayes. I asked if he was attending and hastened to reassure him that mere sex was no barrier. After all, Martin Edwards and Andrew Taylor are members and Andrew’s got the tee-shirt to prove it! Len duly attended and after that came the punting.
Okay, hands up, I was pants. Priscilla Masters, who was watching my attempts from the front of the boat (she was sort of lured into it) eventually took matters into her own hands, suggested I shipped the punt-pole and paddled us up the river. And back.
And, as I’d been silly enough to get in a punt wearing white jeans, it was back to the laundry again….
Here’s a picture of all the graduates throwing their hats in the air after the celebration. It was a wonderful day, set in the architecturally wacky late-Victorian dream of Thomas Holloway’s Royal Holloway. Royal Holloway is now part of London University but when Thos. built it – it opened in 1886 – it was a women’s only college inspired by his wife, Jane, who reckoned it was a good use of quarter of a million or so. There’s a statue of Thomas presenting the college to Jane in the middle of the quad and he looks fairly smug about it – and with good reason, too. There’s few buildings which bear the imprint of their designer quite so blatantly. It looks like a French château run mad. It’s impressive but always makes me want to laugh, too – so result! The graduation started with sparkling wine and Haribos (you know, those squashy sweets) outside the History Department, and then, after this laid-back introduction, we moved into the very formal surroundings of the Chapel. The Chapel, as you might expect from such a sturdy individualist as Thos, is decorated without a trace of English restraint, but in an exuberant Italian-with-attitude style, glowing with colour and with lots of women saints on the walls. Here’s a bit of the roof. 
Trumpeters sounded, the graduates walked in, received their degrees and the whole thing went like clockwork. Then it was off outside, into the gigantic Quads, for more sparkling wine and nibbles (if you could get to them; graduating gives the Young a fairly hearty appetite.) It was a wonderful day; it all ran to plan and even the sun shone. 
. I'm off to Sunny Cornwall (fingers crossed) next week so I'll talk more when I get back.
Here's everyone hard at work, doing it. I can’t put the crossword grid on the blog for some reason, which is frustrating, but these are the clues – they’re not too hard! The “grid” is a standard scrabble board.