First Day at University, 1971, by Laurence Peters

From MemoryArchive

Who: Laurence Peters
What: First encounter with university life
When: October 1971
Where: Brighton Sussex England 

Leaving Home Mum and dad wanted to make a day trip out of the task of hauling my suitcase and supplies down. We had no car and we were all used to the train--father having worked for British Rail for donkeys years it was the way we traveled--the smells of slightly damp upholstery poorly ventilated compartments all edged with cigarette smoke was as familiar a part of my life as buying a newspaper or running for the bus.

I don't remember much about the trip--the ozone from the sea air hitting my nostrils as we walked down the front, the fish and chip meal we grabbed at a local seaside restaurant. I remember it as a bright afternoon that allowed us to linger and explore a part of Brighton in off season before checking into the student guest house. Sussex made a big thing about that--living in a guest house the first year--a sense of real independence-and adulthood--not an institutional hall of residence--a real place--in the heart of Kemptown--a pretty run down area of Brighton but real, gritty and working class with a pub on nearly every corner and odd assortment of small grocery stores, junk shops and hundreds of town house guesthouses with their bright vacancy signs, featureless gardens and huge front windows.

I remember feeling the excitement and anxiety that I would bump into a prospective student who would note that I came down with my parents and duly black mark me forever from being accepted within the student fraternity--it kept me walking at a distance from them--in a way that gave me to use the great phrase "plausible deniability." We must have looked quite strange--mum with bags of stuff under her arm--walking behind and bringing up the rear --my dad carrying a bag and me wheeling a suitcase trying to look inconspicuous.

I speculated on who would be at the guest house. Who would greet me. What kind of characters would appear as the cosmic wheel got spun and my life changed from school boy to student. The student of romantic literature--then imaged in my mind as Dr Zhivago coat wearing, bookish, rakish with my dark fisherman's cap, adventuresome hero of my own life. Greeted by a landlady --an older Welsh woman addicted to her 20 a day and with those working class hair turbans that seemed right out of Britain's longest running working class soap opera, Coronation street. Her tough confident smile strongly suggested “don't give me trouble and I won't give you any” as she told her husband to ask if I needed help with any bags. She said curtly "you're early" but you might go up and meet Jeff--he has the room next to yours. Jeff was sitting on a bed and polishing a very nice pair of tan boots. His room was large neat --clean with a small portable typewriter on a desk that doubled as a bedroom sideboard with a photo of a young attractive female. He was tall with movie star good looks and a nice ironic edge to his voice with sentences that looked as though they could also double as movie dialogue. The conversation was easy--he was there early--he was from UCLA and looking forward to spending more time in England--a place he had visited many times including a summer or two at Oxford. His ambition was to become a writer and he had already written a few stories but was interested in working with some professors to really understand English Literature so he could write better. He was at least 23 and I was all of 17 going on 18 and felt totally out of my league but kept my end up as far as talking about my recent reading.

I felt a bit daunted--but excited by the idea that there were students from the States here who had seen something of life and had some clearer ambitions for themselves than getting through the next exam--the next hurdle--the game that had dominated my life until this point. One by one the house mates that would form the group that I would ride around with in the first year entered--taking their different parts --Ian the upper class guy with a stylish public school accent and fashionably cut hair with always a laugh ready to be expended at the slightest hint of absurdity who studied law and drove a car--a nice Anglia and would end up like his dad as a barrister. Alan the studious, determined and organized Londoner who like me was Jewish but unlike me had grown up in a highly Jewish neighborhood of Stamford Hill who would be a room mate. Steve, the highly excitable Cornishman whose crazy curly hair, penchant for white fisherman sweaters and goonish accents would make it impossible not to crack up. Then bespectacled Kevin the kid who I later learned died in a car crash on the Autobahn who was ceaselessly mocked for his tendency to tell tall stories but only wanted to be liked and admired despite his squat appearance, and coke bottled glasses. Ewan the totally upper class guy who pulled up in an Austin Mini --with the swagger that comes from having your father one of the captains of British industry. Neil the Scotsman who loved a good time and was always ready with a song, a story or a joke in the pub, where he spent most of his evenings entertaining Ewan. Then there was quiet Phil who came from another working class area of London--who had dropped out of school and then worked as a laborer before finding out that it led nowhere so got himself a diploma at a local college and was dismayed to find so many decadent students taking all their privileges for granted. Not to forget Mike who was a Birmingham journalist who had as he liked to brag going to school with Jimmy Page-older than all of us--in his thirties --feeling the same as Phil that he was not at college to repeat adolescence but like Jeff wanted to get serious about literature. We all finally arrived about six and gathered together in Jeff's room to plot next steps--why not visit the campus someone suggested and grab a meal perhaps a drink. Good idea --we had two car drivers--Ian and Ewan and we all crammed in one or the other vehicle and were off on to our first adventure.

It was a four mile hike up from Brighton to Falmer where the campus was situated up on a long and country road. We were all buzzing with excitement. I had never seen Sir Basil Spence's award winning design for the campus and arriving at night the scene seemed magical --the large Italinate inspired archway -the Venetian canals surrounding the main buildings beckoned me into imagining a whole new set of possibilities for myself and my future. Where it was all going was not important--the night sky, these people suddenly drawn together seemed to be part of what the future was about. My parents had long ago left on their train back to London and I was in a new place as far away from home as I had ever been before.