This Monday heralded the end to Freshers’ Week and the beginning of the battle of the blues. We refer not to our various annual sporting fixtures with the other place, but rather to the interminable fight for our health that plagues us so as undergraduates, teasing us with a brief revival in the 4th week before the true colours of 5th week are plain for all to see. You’re going to be snotty for the rest of your time here at Oxford folks, and we don’t just mean towards Brookes.
Of course, nothing has changed there. In 1925 Cherwell reported, “Autumn fashions in influenza, as variable as Paris evening dresses, have already manifested themselves. This year’s attack takes at first the form of an ordinary chill. On top of this, jaundice is more than likely to appear. Cherwell readers should send for medical aid. Non-Cherwell readers should be left to stew in their own juice.” What I’m sure they forgot to add was “Oxstu readers should be actively exposed to germs”.
In the spare time when you’re not overdosing on aspirin, beware, ladies, of the traps laid by Oxford men. In 1965, we received a letter from a new member of St. Hugh’s. She said, “My only alternative to being unattractive and unintelligent is to be a Notorious Exception.” People are less likely to be so vague and forgiving in modern-day parlance.
A particularly good example of why the women need to keep their wits about them is a 1975 letter from a certain N.J. Greer of Worcester College, stating simply “Dear Sir, I like naked ladies”. Oh, would that we could return to the good old days of public humiliation, when “frape” was taken to the grander stage of the editorial section and not just privy to your circle of esteemed “friends”.
We finish, then, with a reassurance that politicians are only elected as disposable blunderists. We have, from 1985, a quote from the Tory Oxford City Councillor Mrs. Nonnie Tiffany who, while discussing proposed reform of the social security system, suggested that “the unemployed should learn to manage their budgets better, and could save money by eating more porridge.” Let’s hope our current crop of politicians are thinking along more enlighttened lines.
