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livI 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 9th 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 withjack 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![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
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 ![[twitter.com profile]](https://p.dreamwidth.org/e0caa790ec10/-/twitter.com/favicon.ico)
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 meetdoseybat 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 knowdoseybat, 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.
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 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.
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.
