City 6: Cambridge

9.11.2017

This is my first walk and talk in some time. In returning, I want somewhere classy to wet my beak. And so to Cambridge, a city of roughly 123,000 people which was only granted city status in 1951. Originally Roman (well aren’t most English cities???) it faced the maladies and opportunities of every age. The Black death appeared here in 1349, whilst in 1382 the peasants revolted. Good on em. Gotta love a peasant revolt.  At one time Stephen Fry studied here and my, don’t we know it. He still lives here as does Emma T, I think. Gotta love him too. Man's a genius, an atheist and depressive but a philosopher too. In my mind Cambridge is a City of Philosophers. Ludwig Wittgenstein, taught at Cambridge from 1929 to 1947, Bertrand Russell too and so I travel here to see a philosopher and therapist.

Nothing ages like happiness. Or ideas. The idea of 50 cities is old. It needs a reboot. A different kind of approach. For this a different kind of person is required, that person being Julie Webb, a friend of friends, Di and Paul. After a 7.20 departure I rock up at 10.20… 3 hours later. Cambridge from Lichfield is 105 miles. 105 miles of snagged, snarling gridlocked little roads. The journey East of Lichfield is always treacherous. Road works on the M11 reduced me to a crawl, then a drag and finally total paralysis. The raging irritation at the theft of time never goes away. Enough to reduce a Buddhist to tears or send him out on a killing spree.

England is breaking down but can philospophy help? Can it supply the therapy we all need? Nine points to walk and nine major ideas to explore. We start out talking, not walking, about movements in therapy with originate in philosophy. Julie has a fascinating mind and an equally fascinating past and we emerge much later after three hours of edifying chat.

The first idea we explore centres around what it means to be human. According to Joules we are not born human, we only become human. If that's true I'm not sure what I am. More or less than human? Answers on a postcard. But keep it clean. 

Point 1: Home

Point 1 is Joules’ house in Great Kneighton. It is a plantation of overpriced houses constructed according to a Stalinist plan. The architecture is grim. There are no gardens, just brick blocks in ever narrowing streets. Perhaps Wittgenstein, one of Julie''s favourite philosophers would have loved this Modernist labyrinth. I half love it, I'm half appalled, but the interiors are softened by subtle colours and appropriate furnishings. Le Corbusier's famous dictum for buildings as being machines for living seems relevant here. It's an experimnet in living where of course the house prices are exorbitant. Half a million for a stylish shoebox. Does anybody talk to anybody else? Not really. Why would they want to? There is, along with Foucault's notion of the death of the author a sense of the death of the idea of community at play here. I'm reminded of Strangeways and Prison architecture and wonder about the  anxiety of paying ones rent here, as it spirals higher and higher with no controls. Conversely there would be an acute joy in owning one or more of these properties and watching the prices soar with every passing month. Space, in Cambridge, is at a premium. Charity is not.

Point 2: Cemetery Gates

From Kneighton we move to Trumpington which reminds me, as you will no doubt appreciate, of Trumpton. I expect to see a fire engine flash by with helmetted firemen shouting out Pugh, Pugh, Barmey McGrew, Cuthbert, Dibble and Grub but no such luck. We enter our first graveyard of the day whose outside fence is festooned with leaflets advertising events and things. From a distance they look like Tibetan Prayer flags. Joules loves hanging about in graveyards, not that's she's ghoulish, I think she just loves the peace and quiet. Graveyards, like Churches are the one place nobody goes any more.

Morrissey used to spend lots of time in graveyards with his friend Linder Streling but that was the 1970s and Manchester. Back on the mainroad its 1920s Cambridge. It would be nice to think that our 20s will roar like the 1920s did but it seems unlikely. We live in an age of Anxiety where that creamy English dream is rapidly vanishing, in spite fo people's efforts to preserve it. The ever present road  and that murmurous hum of rage is a continous reminder of the unwanted present. The never diminishing sound and motion of the car, that 20th century torment never goes away. It is irritated and irritating, the equivalent of Chinese water torture but amongst the dead it ceases to matter.

Point 3: Towards Grantchester Meadows

Autumn advances as we perambulate down the Grantchester Road en route to Granchester Meadows, title of that amazing, pastoral ballad penned by Pink Floyd's Roger Waters. Everything around us is so...well...autumnal. A few fluffy white clouds bimble like sheep through a meadow of blue sky, but here there are no flies in the ointment. This is picture postcard England. There are gorgeous Horse Chestnut trees to goggle at in the exquisite chill of the November air. The palette of diminishing green amongst the leaves is augmented by flashes and sweeps of red, orange and yellow, mostly yellow. There are glorious Scots Pines too that make me wistful for Scotland. Anstey Hall Barns flashes by along with Sold Signs on just about everything on offer.  I spot some Russian dolls in a house window on the Grantchester Road and go over to investigate. Even if you sold most of your major organs you still wouldn't be able to afford the terraced houses that line the less exclusive streets. Everything you see has been gentrified and sent into the fiscal stratosphere. The House of Little Archer, (The Jeffrey) is tucked away behind wrought iron gates and John Minor, I mean Major, lurks nearby. Solid Tory stock all of them. Strictly no scum. I am reminded that it was Little Archer, post perjury scandal who donated that statue of Satan to the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. How the other half get their tax breaks, eh?   

Point 4: The Grantchester Grope

On our way to Grantchester Meadows, we pass the famous (some would say notorious) Byron Inn, frequented by the club-footed Lord himself who used to swim in local duck ponds and even the river, on occasion. He was a tremendous swimmer was Byron and even swam the Hellaspont before the Fever claimed his scalp at Missolonghi at the outrageously young age of 36. Still Shelley was younger, 25 I think. They burned his body on a beach, there's a famous painting, but Byron was shipped home. It is rumoured he arrived minus his manhood due to the predations of trophy-hunting groupies. From Grantchester Road we move onto the Mill way and pass the faintly ridiculous  with its apple trees and outdoor chairs. Here a blue blooded bunch of lovelies met and talked about love and law and poetry. And a bit of philosophy no doubt. It's too cold to linger which is a pity. One can almost hear the ghosts of the dead quarrelling about the mysteries of existence even now.

Point 5: Messing about with Punts

A large part of the glory of Cambridge can be attributed to its architecture, the foliage and the river. Stratford has the Avon, London has the Thames, Worcester has the Severn and Cambridge has the Cam. Joules and I walk a significant portion of the river and I am struck down but its picture book prettiness. It really does look a picture in the paddock, this filly. I am reminded of a cartoon of Oscar Wilde with Lord Alfred Douglas punting at Oxford. The title of the cartoon is, I think, a Dream of Decadence on the Cherwell. In the pic fatty Ocsar weighs the punt down alarmingly whilst Bosie in the bow is virtually planing en plein air.

Along the latter reaches of the Cam I am intrigued by the the idle punts that line the banks. Described as flat-bottomed boats with square shaped bows they are propelled not by oars but by poles capped with a metal shoe (of varying design). Punting is both an art and a lifeystyle choice with many nuances. For instance, in Oxford they stand inside the boat whilst in Cambridge they balance on the till and punt with the open end forward. Knowing things such as this sets you apart. 

Point 6: Shop, Shop Away, Shop, Shop Away Oh!!!

Down the Cam, past willows and tudor houses we roll into town, Joules in a reverie, myself bemused and perplexed. The University Careers Service with its impressive yellow and red crest, with four lions prominantly displayed announces itself. It looks well appointed, Georgian, symmetrical, more utilitarian than elegant, this building. Outside there are rows upon rows of bicycles which, along with the punt, are the staple means of transport for the good citizens. To a mere outsider, and I've never been anywhere that I felt more of an outsider, we are only afforded glimpses, mere flashes of this demi paradise. One can be cynical, one can sneer but Cambridge doesn't care. It doesn't need you, you see, but you are free to enter just so long as you make yourself scarce ASAP and keep the noise down. It is a gateway to a world I can only wonder at and I don't have a passport.

There are consolations though, in the form of the shops. Down past the Anchor onto Silver Street and you'll find Fitzbillies, a Borkin and Burke type cake shop and a few doors further down is Eve and Ravencroft's High Class Tailors and Hosiers. This find gives me cause to scream with laughter. If only Jemmy Norton was here to share it. They are Academic robe makers by appointment are Ravenscroft's. By appointment mind. You can't just wander in off the street.M ake sure you give em notice before rocking up unannounced. Have your measurements handy and dont forget to wipe your feet.

Point 7: King's College

Onto Trumpington Street, past the Corpus Clock, tick tock, to pause outside the Cambridge Chop House. There the eye is drawn upwards and an image creeps forth from the dark cave of my psyche. We're back to bookends. In my mind King's College is the appropriate bookend for Christchurch, in Oxford. Christchurch seems grander but King's is cuter. Kings College is the Masterpiece and the centerpiece of this film set that is Cambridge. Begun in 1446 by Henry VI it was finished in the reign of Henry VIII, adulterous lover of lampreys and tennis. The City isn't much but its enough, like the square mile in the City of London. What is it but the river, a few hundred buildings and its ghosts yet it represents absolute quality and class, privilege and distinction in every imaginable intellectual direction. It is all so English too, and perhaps it is the Heart of England. The best of it, reduced to 300 square metres. That’s all it needs to be.

Point 8: Sweet

Following a near death experience in Morocco back in 1994 I decided it was time to change my life. That was the big idea anyway and to my credit I did follow it through. In a single weekend I gave up Cigarettes, Booze and Meat and I haven't looked back. The only poison I haven't been able to beat is the dreaded sugar. I'm still addicted; a wasp drawn to drown in sugary beers, lagers and ciders discarded by sated drinkers in pub gardens the country over. Mr Simm's Olde Sweet Shop wouldnt look out of place in Diagon Alley in Harry Potter's London. An exemplar of Victorian rectitude it oozes class. Like a Museum full of glass cases full of insects, fossils and gems its presents its wares in an orderly fashion. Taxus, genus, species. Everything in neat rows and those Union Jack pennants, like Shark's teeth descending to slice through the atom-beleaguered air. Who doesn't love an English Sweet Shop?

Why diabetics of course.

Point 9

The triumph of style and content.

And so to endgame. We've chatted like a pair of old fishwives all day and covered a lot of ground. It seems to have flashed by and I feel I've only scratched the surface.

We round a corner and find a market. It's stylish and boho and I find salvation in a leopard-spotted coat. Too much to buy but still a joy. We find a Subway and order sandwiches. Mine is an incredible tuna masterpiece. Joules sips tea and nibbles something savoury. We munch outside and there is further chat and laughter.

In the waning half-light, we retrace our steps, skipping back to Great Kneighton via cycle tracks. At one point we are almost run down by a Chinese cyclist who refuses to tinkle. I call her back and remonstrate with her, getting her to demonstrate use of her bell. Embarassed she does, then rides off into the gloom. 

A final chat unfolds about oppositions that dominate in any given moment. The what’s and whys of tension. The need for it. The fact that we can feel torn between an opposition or a series of oppositions and that we are compelled to work through multiple possibilities in order to achieve even a fleeting sesne of personal balance. All these possibilities, vying for predominance create an atmosphere of uncertainty, of anxiety and it is this which confonts us in every second of every day. As thinking entities. 

WH Auden, renowned poet, spoke of the Age of Anxiety. Leonard Bernstein, Composer-Conductor, turned it into a symphony (not his best work) and we have ended up living in it. Julie, fan of Kierkegaard that she is, sees anxiety as a positive thing, a motivating force.Rather than run from it, pill it out of our existence, we should work with it and let it propel us towards positive change.

"Anxiety drives us to ‘do’ emotional work and to redescribe ourselves, our lives and our experiences," she says." We are only ever describing or re-describing things. That, as far as I believe, is the full extent of our freedom."