Nigel’s Dreaming Spires

For the wedding weekend we were very fortunate enough to be able to stay at Keble College in Oxford which had a very profound effect on Nigel …..

He insisted on walking around on tiptoe and speaking in a hallowed whisper,  such was his awe and wonder,  saying that he had been taken over by an almost continual attack of the goosebumps, but not of a Derek Acorah type nature ….. this was completely different!He said he had a spooky sort of feeling (but again,  not of an aforementioned Derek Acorah type nature) that he had finally come home and this is where he truly belonged ….. amongst clever people,  thinking seriously intellectual thoughts concerning long complicated words that he would have to sound out and big sums with crossings out, powers to the ninth degree and letters that meant numbers!!!

He was even worse when we went into Oxford itself and looked at the libraries and other universities …..

…. He went all glassy eyed and said that he could feel intelligence coursing through his veins which made his head feel funny, as if it would pop ….. and he had an overwhelming urge to run through the Schola Grammaticae et Historiae and plead with them to ……“Learn me!”

Promising that if he got an anglepoise lamp like in the student room we are staying in,  to work under (because that is what all students do) he would learn “everything”, even Latin and Rowing so that he could go there and be a Don or something and wear a swishing gown and matador hat, by which I presume he meant a mortar board.

Oh good, good, good, good grief! What have we exposed him to now?

I think it’s best that we try and keep Nigel as calm as possible and see how he settles back down at work ….. not wishing to crush his ambitions, but perhaps once he sees the workmen are still there and he puts on his high viz vest and hard hat perhaps his present overwhelming and robust urges will abate a little.

However, if his intellectual enthusiasm remains ….. I suppose we’ll just have to get him some books and a tutor who can get him through his SATS to start him off on the road to academia!  Heaven help him or her and us!!!