I blinked. ‘Uh, hi. Yeah, yeah, no, I’m here for the talk yeah.’ Taking the initiative and breaking free of our mutual paralysis, he reached forwards and opened the door. The unmistakeable scent of old books met us at the door, more a warning than a welcome. A rich cardinal-red carpet, coated with faint embroidery and matted dust, crept past the tall, dark bookshelves, each laden with fourteen-vol- ume histories of Rome, Greece or Carthage. Gilded oil-paint portraits of men dead four hundred years ago gazed down upon us with idle contempt. Daunted, I felt the suffocating sense that I was intruding upon somewhere I did not belong rise in my throat like bile. ‘That’s them,’ he whispered. We approached the centre of the cavernous, dimly lit room. A curtain of hanging dust, illuminated by the yellow light lay between us and the event. Atop a small stage, two figures shuffled and gesticulated with vigour, their up- per-middle-class inflections echoing around the sonorous chamber, imbuing the very air with intellectual rigour. As wrestlers grease themselves in oil; as boxers wrap their gloves; as gladiators dust their palms with apprehension and readiness, so did these old dons leaf through their notes, wipe their spectacles, sneer and grin at one another, exchanging snide academic retorts, to the rapturous ap- plause of the small collection of students already congre- gated in front of them. ‘Perhaps, had Professor Taylor actually read a word of Plato…’ ‘Oh Hutchinson, if only you could subscribe to a school of criticism more modern than the Late Renaissance…’ All of this received, clearly to the pleasure of the professors, laughter and ovation from the enamoured crowd, who had gathered early in uncomfortable little chairs for front-row seats to the main event. We crept through the gloom, whol- ly ignored by the seniors, pulling chairs out most gingerly. I had taken my seat in near silence, beads of sweat already collecting in my palms. I glanced over at my companion, still in the process of moving his chair, his hands trem- bling slightly. I watched his eyes widen in an instant of panic. Wood screeched as the chair was dragged across the uncarpeted floorboards. Under the gaze of five irrita- bly turned heads from the front row, as well as the brief, contemptuous winces of both dons, his face rapidly turned
In my ten-minute march from my quarters to the library – making sure to arrive a few minutes early, lest I embar- rass myself by barging in late – the projected image in my mind’s eye of these two men, grew to near-deific exaggeration. I imagined them to be impossibly astute, effortlessly erudite, sage elders, the unquestionable leading authorities within their respective fields of study, who would transcend literary discourse as I had known it. Anticipation and excitement for new levels of intel- lectual engagement were the helium filling my bright red balloon of expectation, though the thin rubber squeaked and whined against the warming mass of gas pumped in excitedly, and my knuckles began to whiten around its string. I seemed to glide though the glass automatic doors, skipping up the stairs two at a time like a child, as I neared the backroom venue. Beginning to waver, I approached, with trembling hands, the old oaken door, which closed off the chamber from the realm of the liv- ing. Tall and sturdy the wooden barrier stood, as though sizing me up, questioning my dedication to literature. ‘Hi! You here for that talk as well? This one’s supposed to be good!’ Beside me had appeared a ruddy, freckled, ginger-head- ed, excitable-looking fellow student, whose wide grin communicated a welcoming and disarming air, but could not hide a distinct nervous energy, despite its best efforts.
Patchworks of Time Shifat Matbbar (Year 12) Look. Look at the scenery. Surroundings subdued in strange scents, that wrap themselves in cold embrace. That warp silks of a foreign time at arm’s length: to the throat. Colossal structures, strange, that rise and fall in breaths of time and cast streaks against the silence. The era has departed. And bolstering sunlight has barred days from today – our small and hidden place – hidden in then and Now. The exposing present which liquidates all our yesterdays into transparent cells. Cells that hide – not light – but obscure our sight. And so, we are free. But where have we gone?
Artwork by Georges Bradshaw (Year 11)
The Fruits of Academia Adam Akhtar (Year 13) O xford University. Few places on Earth contain the intellectual population density of this insti- tution, an epicentre of human knowledge and intellect dating back half a millennium, rivalled only by Cambridge to the East, and Harvard to the West. Here gather the nation’s sharpest minds, enjoying the fruits of centuries of academic wealth, all bound, upon gradu- ation, for influential government jobs, public office, the civil service, top hedge funds, cutting-edge scientific research, or decades of academia. The excitement I felt at the prospect of moving from a dreary and stifling sixth form, to the teaching place of the greatest leaders, writers, explorers, and statesmen which the past had to offer, set my heart racing with palpable force.
Like any fresh, eager new student with a simple-minded hunger for learning, I was delighted to discover an English Faculty poster, inviting students to attend a ‘veritable clash of titans’: the Department’s two most esteemed senior dons, professors Taylor and Hutchinson, the ‘Gor- gon’ and the ‘Kraken’, were again to act out their widely known academic rivalry, with ‘a hearty debate on Ham- let’s plight’. Exciting stuff! I was almost certain that I had read half a JSTOR essay about Dickens and antisemitism at least co-authored by one of them, and I sensed that the other might have been on the board of judges for the RSL Chris- topher Bland Prize at one point. Shakespeare had been growing tiresome in the Sixth Form, but these genuine academic heavyweights would surely be able to breathe new life into an otherwise worn-out topic, free from the intellectual bottlenecking of the A-level curriculum.
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THE ALLEYNIAN 711
CREATIVE WRITING
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