"The Perfect Host Family"

The house was quite a long way out of town, and served by a very infrequent bus service. There was a bed, and a loo. Apart from that there was a wash basin, but very little else. Certainly nothing by way of a shower or a bath. Nothing was ever said about meals.

What student would put up with this? Well, I did, in Lyon ('Lions' we called it, in true British fashion). I had to offer a language to enter the Diplomatic Service, and French seemed the only possibility. I'd done it at school for around 8 years, and one - not surprisingly - wasn't allowed to offer dead languages like Latin and Greek in the exam. The idea apparently was that one was supposed to demonstrate 'potential'  - i.e. an ability to learn a foreign language. So, having decided that I'd meet too many other English speakers in Paris, I enrolled at the University of Lyon for an English course. Unluckily at school I had always been bottom of the class in French, being spectacularly feeble in the spoken language.

On arrival in Lyon I had managed (with some difficulty) to locate the accommodation officer at the university. Not being used to the French queuing system I stood back modestly and was amongst the last to be seen. Perhaps that was one reason I ended up in such a dump. Perhaps another reason was that the woman (the officer) gabbled away in her own tongue and I caught hardly a word. She gave me the address and mumbled something about Bus route 4, but luckily another British student was going in the same direction and dropped me off, otherwise I'd still be wandering around Lyon to this day.

The meals situation soon resolved itself in not perhaps the most satisfactory fashion. It seemed the family was going to provide nothing: not only that, I was told  - even I caught the word "Non" - that I couldn't eat in the house, and that a crumb left on the floor would result in the direst of penalties. Lunch and dinner were available in a sort of enormous student canteen. I particularly recall the French non-queuing system: I along with 1,000 others would arrive about an hour early and all try to push to the front. It was quite amiable; the French clearly regarded this non-queuing as part of the fun of being a student. I saw the same people - the hungriest ones presumably - day after day, and we got quite pally despite my severe linguistic limitations. When we finally rushed in we got served with a metal tray, nearly always with 'steak', which I presume was horsemeat.

Luckily for me I got one decent meal a week. I was asked to teach  English conversation to an 18 year old French boy 1 hour a week. Not having done my TEFL course at this point I'm sure I was a dreadful teacher. But the lessons were in his home, and the boy's mother produced an excellent dinner, although rather richer than I was used to, and certainly a lot richer than the student fare.

In England I was used to eating breakfast, and I wondered how to resolve this serious lack in France. Not having the money to find a restaurant every morning all I could manage was to purchase a baguette each morning at the local boulangerie and munch it during my interminable wait for a bus.

The family, who seemed very keen not to get to know their strange English guest in any way at all, permitted me one bath a week. I would like to have gone on the odd jog, but the lack of a shower made this out of the question. So I investigated sports as offered by the university. There were only 2. Fencing wasn't for me and that left rugby, but the bureaucracy defeated me: 6 photos, a doctor's certificate, buying boots, etc. - it was all too much, and anyway there were only about 2 games per term.

I remained amongst the great unwashed...to cap a dismal episode I also learnt no French and never got into the Diplomatic Corps!

Luckily for our students, OISE Oxford prides itself on the high quality of our host family accommodation. Quite unlike the hosts from my episode, our families are keen to engage with students and embrace the opportunity for cross cultural learning, and they provide breakfast and dinner!

A novel approach to Christ Church Meadow

Did you know that you can get into Christ Church - well, more specifically into the the Memorial Gardens - without going through that big gate in St Aldate's? At any time of day or night? No? Well, I'll tell you how, or at least I'll tell you how we did it many years ago (i.e. way back in the last century, when I was a student).

Some time in the 1960s my mate Bill, the (self-appointed) captain of the University canoe club and I got hold of 2 kayaks and paddled up stream from Folly Bridge to the rather cunningly concealed entrance to the Trill Mill stream. I'm not quite sure what gave Bill the idea in the first place, or how he even knew such a stream existed. It's possible that he'd heard that T.E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia) had managed the feat about 60 years earlier, when he was an undergraduate at Jesus College.

He (Bill, that is) had done a little research. "It could be a bit narrow and twisty, so we'd better take 2 boats - and we'd better each take at least a couple of torches" he'd said at the planning stage a few days earlier. "I've also no idea how strong the current might be....it could be a bit tricky if we have to go back and we can't turn around." With those encouraging words I almost dropped out, but I suppose the bravado of youth won through, although another somewhat sobering thought did occur to me - what if we got separated? That might have been a tad worrying, at least for a sensitive chap such as myself. After all, it was going to be pitch dark. I refrained from voicing this particular concern to Bill who seemed determined to press ahead come what may.

As I recall it, the entrance was on the right, somewhere near Oxford Castle. I doubt if I could find it today; anyway, according to another friend who went through the tunnel few years after me as a stunt for Radio Oxford, the entrance is now blocked off. We went in, Bill in the lead and me somewhat apprehensively a little astern. At first it wasn't too bad, but it soon got so dark that I could make out Bill's boat only with my torch. Even then I occasionally thought I'd lost him when he negotiated the odd bend. I seemed to be able to touch the roof and the walls pretty easily. This reassured me slightly until another slight concern hit me - what if it gets even narrower and we get wedged in?

We were rather vague as to where exactly we went. We rather hoped we would go under Carfax, although how we would know it if we did, we didn't know. Suddenly there was a dim light overhead: it turned out to be a drain cover, and there were traffic noises. Suddenly somebody walked over the drain. I remember a sense of relief  - we were no longer alone in the world. Well, perhaps it was Carfax, but we found out later it's more likely that we had been crossing under St Aldate's, probably near Alice's shop.

In fact our voyage ended relatively soon after the drain cover incident. A dim light showed ahead: eventually we emerged, blinking in the unaccustomed light, into that little pool that separates the tunnel exit from the bridge in the Memorial Gardens which all the tourists on their way to visit Christ Church now must cross, gawping at the (Harry Potter) hall to their left as they do so.

We had one remaining problem. That little pool has pretty steep sides; even if we could have clambered out, wrecking the flowers as we did so, there was no way that we could have got the canoes out. There was nothing for it but to continue down to the Thames, hoping we weren't accosted by the Dean or someone for trespassing.

One final point of interest. The 'Oxford Mail' carried an article a couple of years ago claiming that Lawrence had discovered an ancient Victorian era punt in the tunnel, complete with 3 dead students, no doubt with boaters and blazers, who'd supposedly got stuck years earlier. This I'm assured can't be true: the stream is far too narrow for a punt. Good story though!