Cambridge

[liv]

I have a really ambivalent relationship with Cambridge and the Cambridge scene. In one sense, I was already bored of Cambridge by the time I moved there aged 15. My social life had been Cambridge-based since I joined a school there a little before my 9^th birthday. And it was limited and limiting and small-town-ish and I couldn't wait to get away. In another sense, though, I always feel rooted and at home there; the university means it's just not like any other small town.

This past weekend was, well, very Cambridge. I was so pleased to have a weekend with jack and a chance to talk and socialize without too much of a pressing schedule. We visited Saffron Walden for no particular reason other than that it's there and it's pretty, and found a rather amazing selection of those lovely blue Penguin non-fiction books in the Oxfam there. And had tea in the town hall served by a bunch of sustainability geeks, and didn't quite find a pub that lived up to the general traditional village ambience, but managed a decent lunch nonetheless. The afternoon we spent catching up with my brother who has a book out and is about to head to Algeria to work with refugees from Western Sahara. And my Grandmother who was chatty and full of historical insight.

We returned to ghoti's brilliant find, Las Iguanas, for dinner with pseudomonas and doseybat. And then on to atreic's incredibly wonderful birthday ceilidh. Apart from the fact that dancing and bouncing is always lovely, there was an amazing intersection of different social groups I'm connected to. Partly because they're all starting to merge into one these days, partly because atreic knows nogazivan well, and through her, lots of my crowd from Oxford, as well as the usual Cambridge people and a bunch of mathematicians who also know jack.

The other thing is, well, the reason that I have such strong Cambridge connections half my lifetime after leaving, is because I was lucky enough to meet doseybat just before she went up to Cambridge and I to Oxford. Bat spent her undergraduate years making an amazing network of connections with goths and geeks and all round eclectic, radiantly intelligent, unconventional, deeply gender diverse people. Dating lethargic_man cemented my connection to that crowd, and then pseudomonas moved to Cambridge and was assimilated, and it's through that social scene that I met jack. I'm also connected to similar and overlapping social circles in London through the Pembury and LJ and actually some people I was originally at school with but who are connected to the Cambridge crowd independently.

I was quite surprised to encounter people at the ceilidh who didn't already know doseybat, actually. All in all, the proportion of people I know and was excited to see was only slightly lower than at our own wedding ceilidh earlier in the year. I wore the same dress, a vintage Laura Ashley thing, bright turquoise with a big foofy skirt, which is just the thing for dancing, and atreic followed our example and provided lots and lots of very tasty cheeeeese. And there was a lovely moment when I decided to sit out a dance and had to turn town about six different people who asked me to partner them.

Sunday we spent the morning chatting to my parents, who also fed us an amazingly tasty lunch. And then headed to a rather delightful Question Time style panel discussion organized to raise money for Magen David Adom, the Israeli equivalent of the Red Cross. It ended up being a highly sophisticated discussion about the relationships between Anglo-Jewry and Israel, chaired absolutely brilliantly by the historian Anna Sapir Abulafia. julianhuppert was on excellent form as a panellist; I think he gets more impressive every time I hear him speak. The entire panel and most of the audience identified as Jewish atheists, and there was just that incredibly Cambridgey thing of people who pack a huge scholarly punch in all kinds of different fields doing low-key Jewish charity events and making them into something fantastically educational and interesting. I ended up trying to explain Israeli politics to jack, which I am not really best placed to do, but I was very proud of being able to introduce him to the community that shaped me, being intellectually brilliant.

In lots of ways, Cambridge people are my people, the Jews and the geeks both, and I'm really enjoying being back in England and having enough money to spend lots of weekends in that very comfortable environment.

Comments

[forestofglory]

It's interesting how different people can experience the same place so differently. I don't think I knew anyone Jewish while I was at Cambridge before Jack introduced you to me. Also it would never occur to me to call Cambridge a small town, because while it may not be very big it is hardly rural.

I generally have very fond memories as Cambridge as place. They urban form was very different from where I grew up. Get used to the not-grid was tricky. I remember feeling so impressed (in a way that I suspect only New World people are) at how old Cambridge is when I first moved there. Even after the feeling mostly faded I would sometime round a corner and be suddenly struck by that feeling again.

[liv]

I think of Cambridge as a small town because the size of town that suits me is a bit bigger. In some ways it isn't, because of the university and the tourism and all the culture that comes with that. But it's cramped to an impatient teenager, and small enough that it can be hard to find a sufficient concentration of people with common interests if you're not directly connected to the university.

This Jewish crowd I'm talking about, the secular intellectual European set, they are really not very open or visible to students. Equally the student Jewish scene is very not very open to people who aren't Orthodox and quite often to people who don't come from north London. That's a shame, definitely; it's not exactly a town vs gown thing, it's more complicated than that, but there are connections that should be there and aren't.

[forestofglory]

I hope that didn't come across as me saying you where wrong. "Small town" is relative after all. But I think it may have different connotation in the US than in the UK.

I'm living in Midwestern college town now, and it feels much smaller to me than Cambridge. I just looked up the populations of both places and current town has about half the population of Cambridge. Also I have car now which makes things seem less far away.

[liv]

Oh no, totally didn't feel like you were arguing with me, don't worry! You're absolutely right that it's relative, especially when we come from such different geographical contexts. The city where I am now has about the same population as Cambridge, but it feels much more "urban", because it's newer and more industrial, but at the same time much smaller, because there's just so much less going on culturally.

[siderea]

I find it so amusing how much your Cambridge is like my Cambridge.

[liv]

There totally is a Cambridges wormhole, isn't there? Pity it's only conceptual and not geographic. I'd love to introduce you to some of these people if it were at all practical for you to come and visit!

[blue_mai]

and I like how your cambridge is very unlike my cambridge :)
although obviously I can sort of see your cambridge around...

[liv]

*grin* Cambridge is, of course, nothing if not multi-faceted. Do your parents not have a social scene like my parents' scene, with highly cultured, highly intellectual ex-pats who get together? Or maybe they just don't socialize with an ethnically defined group like that.