On Newness

We all (of those who went) remember that first day of primary school. And most of us who remember this would also remember with sharpening clarity that first day of high school. For me, both were painful events of separation and loss. I filled my navy-blue flap hat full of miniature tears on the former occasion. The porous fabric was ill-equipped for first days, despite , and because of, its virginity. The second time, there were no tears, but rather the swaying organs of grounded vertigo, gravity flirting with the stomach. I knew not a soul apart from one boy I had scant eye-contacted at my previous school. Even that rope of familiarity had disappeared before I could swipe at it; he was in none of my classes. Standing next to the vice at the front desk of Metalwork, hearing laughter at the back which could never, ever at that moment have allowed me to participate: that was disempowerment. I was not a blip on the consciousness of any boy in that room. But they monopolised mine. Man, how it sucked to be new.

Six years were spent in that crucible, inadvertently forming friendships that no one could have celled in a spreadsheet. Some people manage to grate themselves against their high school after they leave it, draw blood, until everything they are, their life, their networks, is emphatically not their old school. That is a wonderful exercise in young-adult reformation, and university, or work, or unemployment, is the best place to start over. But I must be honest: I was born and made there, and I quite like the mould. I have, of course, expanded since those tender years. I've made friends whom I'll love permanently and without whom I couldn't...do (unless they attempt to murder me, which is my one and only, fairly generous I hope, out-clause) in the last five years. But I find it hard to construct my identity without leaning on those old, weathered props: that I became who I am in the grassless ghetto of a brilliant school, whose inhabitants I grew with and up and into, as they grew with, up and into me.

Thus it was a shock to remember what newness is: that old feeling which is always new, a taxing exercise in alienation. Severed from the place where I worked on a self and friendships continuously for 23 years (there was a brief period in nappies where I didn't give a fuck about anyone and shat indiscriminately; not my most popular), everything around me is self-evidently new. But I also am new. Departing from the subtle languages which are so well-established with every single one of my old friends is terrifying. It is, pardon the extension, ultimately like I'm speaking a limited, sparse form of Swahili which people must strain laboriously to understand.

At present, this language languishes below the poverty line. Newness is reciprocal, and the unique environment of Cambridge streamlines permissible conversations such that most run out of steam after the standard questions and answers. First, your name? Next, your discipline? Next, your accommodation? Lines may diverge from one or more of these categories, and the discourse may bloom into something better. But these last weeks have shown me how terrible I am at small-talk; but also why the name 'small-talk' works. It's not simply that the subject matter is trivial (things have a habit of getting very deep, very fast here), but painfully constricted by mutual lack of knowledge. I have no idea how big or how far I can push a particular conversation with a particular person. I'm uncertain about which quantities of 'identity' I should ration or release. Indeed, the very thing to be rationed is now unquantifiable: I've lost it, somewhere between my name and my subject. Newness has shown me, at least, that my personality is heavily implicated in what I can get away with.

This adds to more than just a ban on (ironically) racist jokes: I have to start over. Hardly a revelation, but the depth of this cross-world displacement never fully hit me until now, as I, and newness, arrived from opposite sides of the globe. Nothing like newness for a bit of old-fashioned introspection. Continuity within change, or change within continuity: I like to think I'm tacking another modulation onto Ovid's Metamorphoses. What is Toad in Cambridge? His liver looks different; but his bowels - praise the lord - look the same.

So what's come out the other end? What nugget of this wonderful place, digested, compacted and released, can I give you? This unplanned metaphor is already making any account I offer into poo, literally. But I suppose that adequately captures the difficulty of saying something that's been said so, so many times before. Nevertheless, let's start obliquely with the Autumn. The season is so beautiful here that it compensates for the dwindling days. Multicoloured leaves seem to highlight just how well they have nature down pat here. One of the first things that struck me about the town and surrounding villages is the idyllic perfection of urban-rural balance: trees are everywhere, yes, but scattered around town are 'greens', which aren't just equivalent to 'parks' - those strange compartment spaces whose openness almost feels like an aggressive command to exercise and be done with it - but rather manicured images of country-in-city. Tidy, but not too stylised, small paths meander through without a hint of disturbing the grass and mature, great-uncle trees. As you follow the river, every now and then you come across a swing gate - originally to keep cattle in place? - which you have to pull open and leave clang behind you. I don't know what's got me so enthralled with these gates. But they provide a kind of checkpoint value. They partition your journey into stages, and there's something so civilised about partition: even when you don't understand why it's there. But subtle demarcation is one aspect of the green's mildness. These spaces are at an age where they are perfectly comfortable with themselves.

These mini-pastoral spaces are, of course, as man-made as the buildings. But the buildings are something else entirely. Each college has its own architectural Geist; and though I'm far from expert, it's difficult not to see the character of each college projected onto its facade. The gate of Trinity is heavy, mediaeval, menacing, cherried on top with a dull but unmissable Latin inscription in gold, proclaiming the founder's importance. To the public: oh no, you're not bloody getting in here, and if you are, then you're damn well going to know who built the thing you're getting into. Ironic, I suppose, that no one reads Latin anymore: the dynamism of language will always crumble the monument. But will it? From a purely aesthetic standpoint, Latin inscriptions still carry their own aura of monumentality. In fact, it might even work better this way. 'What does that mean?' 'I dunno, but it sure looks important.' King Henry would have wanted it no other way.

Then, by contrast, King's. That sentence, or some variation thereof, can be overheard a lot within those hallowed sandstone walls. 'It's radical, it's different, GO KING'S!' And so the imaginary cheerleaders throng. But I like to believe. The architecture communicates this difference, and there is no greater foil than Trinity. Just up the road, The Trinity Gate occludes all eyes: you can grasp opportunistic glances into the quad when the door swings half open, but all you will catch will be a bit of grass and the odd window. Stroll past King's, however, and look! A thin sandstone screen mechanically marks the boundary. But you can see all within: the grand late addition of the Gibbs building straight ahead, Wilkins building on your left, world-famous chapel on your right. The membrane is permeable, an ornate invitation: come inside, the scholarship is fine. Or at least a poor Kingsman would like to think so.

Once again, I've sprawled past my bedtime. The blog is an art form I'm still grappling with; concision is another. But I promise to grapple more from here on in.

From the ivory town, goodbye for now.