Part I: Seals teeth and whales ears - Scott Polar Research Institute ...

a limited membership of about twelve. We had parties in College at which a great
deal of beer was consumed and bawdy songs sung. The Kittens also organized
parties and dances at places like the Barn (at Fen Ditton), the Golden Lion (at
Royston), the Red Lion (at Trumpington), and other venues. I rowed in the rugger
boat in the May bump races; we were a motley crew and one year managed to sink. I
am not sure now whether we made any bumps, but we probably did - we were very
enthusiastic and fit though not very skilled or graceful. I also played tennis and
squash for the College, though I was never interested in cricket.
I had met up with John Moss, against whom I’d played schools rugger in
Westmorland and he was now at St John’s. In the Lent Term was the rugby cuppers
tournament and I think that in the three years I was playing for Cath’s we ended up
playing in the final against St John’s. We thought it would be good to play together
for a change as a team and John and I were instrumental in forming a club selected
from the first teams of the two colleges – which we called the XXI Club, because it
had 21 members. I don’t now remember the other John’s members, except for Alan
Longhurst. We had quite a strong fixture list, mainly with matches against RAF and
Army teams in East Anglia; as they were generally older and heavier than we were,
these games were hard-fought.
I developed punting skills - skills that have never left me - and became quite an
expert. On summer afternoons, often with a few girls, we would punt up to the
Orchard tea rooms at Grantchester. In May Week we punted down to the Madrigals
at Kings. And those days we could still swim in the River Cam, either at the men’s
bathing place, which had some privacy for changing, or from the grassy banks
anywhere. I went bird watching at the local sewage farm and in the Ouse washes,
where in the winter terms the migrants were passing through; also out to Madingley
Woods at night in summer to hear the nightingales, and to Wicken Fen and Welney
Marshes for fenland birds. Much later several contemporaries reminded me that we
had been bird watching together in those days. Among them were David Cobham,
whom I later met again when he produced an Antarctic Film, John Haynes, who
became a headmaster and Tony Hurrell (later Sir Anthony Hurrell) who was in the
Foreign Service, at one time Ambassador to Nepal, lucky chap, among other
postings.
The winters were very cold and there was no central heating of course. In those
days the entrances to College staircases were open and the cold seeped or flowed in.
The rooms had fireplaces, but coal was rationed to a bucketful a week, so we had to
be careful. My bedroom had a washbasin, but for a shower or bath I had to walk
outside across the court to the basement of another building.
It was in the closing months of the war in Europe and food rationing was with
us. One of the features of Cambridge then was the ‘Fitzbillie bag’. Fitzbillie's was a
cake shop and if one had one of their bags, with a name written on it - it was a
passport to relative luxury. On presentation of the bag, and the necessary food
coupons one could buy a cake; without the bag we went without cakes, because
there weren’t enough to go round. It took me a year to get such a bag, and then only
by inheriting a rather tattered one from a friend ‘going down’, but this meant that I
had ‘made it’. My usual choice was the Fitzbillie's date cake because it was filling.
One food that was not in short supply was dried egg powder - for obvious reasons; it
was rather tasteless. But we seemed to be perpetually hungry and used to fill up on
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