Grizedale 40th Anniversay Reunion - Friday

This is the event I was at last weekend, I did mean to write it up earlier, but came up a bit short on the spoons side of things.

Grizedale was my college when I was at Lancaster University in 1982-85, and a line I heard several times over the weekend was 'At other universities, people's first question at reunions is 'What degree did you do?', but at Lancaster it's 'What college were you in?' And it's right, the colleges were very much the hub of university life.

My trip up started with a pleasant surprise when I bumped into a friend I hadn't seen in 18 months at the station. We only had a couple of minutes to talk before her train, but good to catch up.

London was a little more stressful as I've never been through Euston in the chair, and it's well over a decade since I used it at all. Getting there was annoying, for an underground station with level access to the trains there was an awful lot of up and down in Kings Cross/St Pancras! And I hadn't appreciated quite how far I'd have to push, it must have been a significant proportion of the half mile between the two stations. The tube trip itself was so short I barely had time to put my brakes on. But I got there in the end. Passenger assistance at most stations is a couple of people who'll go fetch the ramp if you catch them, at Euston it's a separate waiting area with about 4 guys behind the counter and another four with electric buggies to run passengers to the trains. And given all that I still got told to make my own way down to the train, but it was the closest platform to the office and there was someone there to run me up the ramp.

And off I went, facing backwards, on a Virgin trains Pendolino - i.e. the tilting train. Turns out going backwards on a tilting train with no side support makes me travel sick. I spent most of the last hour with my eyes closed! I knew Lancaster University had grown since I was there, but it didn't stop an involuntary 'Bloody hell!' when we finally passed it and I realised campus was now almost down to the rail lines.

I was met at Lancaster by Sam, one of my online friends (also a Lancaster grad, though about 15 years behind me), and we went for a quick beer in the nearest pub - the Merchant's, which I think had just opened when I left. That was my first experience of having my chair grabbed from behind by a 'helpful' drunk. I'd actually stopped because I needed to reverse out, not because I needed help going forwards. Grr!  This is why I normally have my handles folded! It was the first day this year that was fine enough to sit out in the sun, which was very pleasant. Then it was time to head up to the university - if I could find a taxi. None to be had back at the station, so I ended up waddling the chair down to the bus station (the slope is pretty extreme), where I got a taxi straight away. I was particularly impressed that every taxi in Lancaster is wheelchair accessible - Wheelchair Accessible Vehicles with a ramp into the rear rather than the London black cab fashion, though I actually travelled in the front seat rather than the chair.

First priority at the uni was to pick my key up, and the start wasn't too auspicious when I got jammed in the door of the building where I was supposed to pick that up, fortunately the receptionist rescued me. I was booked into one of the university's B&B rooms, in a block of County College I'm pretty sure wasn't there when I was. The narrow corridor to my room, barely wide enough for the chair, brought back memories. I'd mentioned the chair and requested a ground floor room when I booked, but the one I ended up with technically wasn't wheelchair accessible. I could have gotten the chair through the door, if I didn't mind a 27-point turn, but it was simpler to climb out and drag it in - that did mean I left the keys in the outside of the door pretty much every time I used it. Inside I could get the chair to the bed, but not past it (pretty typical of hotel rooms in my experience), and it wouldn't go through the door into the tiny en-suite. Fortunately I can manage around that. The bed itself was a double, and my first thought was 'that's better than mine at home' (and I wasn't wrong). I'd guess the room as twice the size of mine when I was a student.

An hour or so's rest, a quick wash and brush up and it was time to head down to Grizedale, which meant negotiating the Spine. Lancaster is a campus university on a hill, it's aligned roughly North-South along the crest, and the main route around campus is a long pedestrian footpath, the Spine, with most of the colleges and departments fronting onto it. Because the ground falls away to the south, there are regular flights of stairs. Wheelchair accessibility wasn't great while I was there (I remember one girl had a mobility scooter, and there were a handful of others with ambulatory mobility impairments, but I don't remember any wheelchair users at all). Fortunately things had improved.

There were ramps around pretty much every stretch of steps, the one exception was a spot I'd expected to be a problem, and that had a wheelchair lift, which did the job, but didn't impress me. It was basically a boxed in platform lift, but rather than press a button to call it, it was press-and-hold a button, and the same to work it once you were in. Not ideal if you have limited hand strength as many chair users do - I was just able to do it with my bendy fingers. It was even worse headed up as the angle on the door made it much easier to get in so you would roll out backwards, which would have been fine but for the plate glass window you rolled into!

Grizedale had been completely demolished and rebuilt since I was there (the original principal admitted they might have skimped a bit on the cement in the mortar for the original building during a speech later), which got me a bit turned about as I didn't realise it was on the original site, I thought it had moved down to the new development. But I bumped into my taxi driver from earlier who set me right. My next problem was trying to figure how to get in the 'automatic' doors. At which point I heard a familiar voice say 'You still causing trouble, Dave?' - Tony, who I'd not seen in at least 15 years, and still looking much the same as ever.  We were quickly joined by Andy and Linda, who I see regularly as they live not to far from me (frighteningly their daughter graduated Lancaster last year), and later by Gregg, another who I'd not seen in about 15 years. He and everyone else insisted it was 13, that I'd been at his wedding, but I didn't think so.

The event was the college's 40th anniversary, rather than a specific year group's, so there were lots of small cliques like ours rather than general mixing. There were a handful of other people from our year, but the only one we knew wasn't about on the Friday. The evening was okay rather than great, it was based in college reception and the bar, which weren't ideal mixing areas. There was a hog roast laid on, so we were fed, and the bar was doing a brisk trade. We stayed in reception until about ten, then headed up to Fylde bar to see if we could find some better beer, which we did. Turns out all those ramps are less helpful if you're going uphill, I consented to being pushed. Fylde looked a lot more like we remembered. It had been refurbished, but they had kept the look of the place. But it called last orders at 11ish, so we headed back down to Grizedale and the bar.

Grizedale's new bar is on a mezzanine floor and exposed me to an even more ludicruous wheelchair lift. This one had a sign on it saying "get porter to turn key". The porter was easy enough to find, he was directly opposite, but we ran through every key on his two foot long key chain without any of them fitting - not helped by the light in the lift turning off every 20 seconds. Eventually he went off to find the college administrator, who told him that he needed to go up to the bar and press the call button. So that makes it a lift that's actually impossible to use independently - I was less than impressed.The bar horrified us. Not only was it all shiny and modern, not the dark, wood-panelled 'World's End'* of our day, but  there no bitter on tap, in fact no bitter to be had. OTOH there was an energy drink on tap and cocktails available to order. Our old barman would have been spinning in his grave!

We broke up about half one and headed back to our rooms, Gregg and Tony pushed and I navigated, which seemed a perfectly fair division of labours!

* Grizedale used to be the southernmost building on campus, so logically our bar was 'The World's End.' Having a bar in the same building you live in was remarkably convenient!

Grizedale 40th Anniversay Reunion - Saturday & Sunday

Saturday dawned drizzly, this felt much more like the Lancaster University I knew and loved. My two usual anecdotes about Lancaster weather are that the year I applied the independent handbook of UK universities said "On the first hill after the Irish Sea. The weather will come as a surprise to anyone not from Iceland," and "It started raining as we first crossed into Lancashire, and stopped just after I graduated."

Breakfast was 8 til 9 in County's 'ReFuel' cafe, only Gregg and I made it, Tony opted out (Andy and Linda were staying in the hotel down from campus). Mixed crowd of, mostly Chinese*, students and other people there for the reunion. Perfectly reasonable full English, though I was still startled that Gregg had converted into a vegetarian since I last saw him. He'd have been on my list of people least likely. We were supposed to be meeting up with everyone else there at around 10:30, with the plan being to make a trip into Morecambe, where most of us had had digs for at least part of the second year, but Linda texted to say could we make it 11:30 instead.

When they appeared Andy was looking very, ahem, delicate. Apparently the state of his hangover hadn't been helped by the middle of the night fire alarm - they had had the Wimbledon team staying on the same corridor prior to playing Morecambe and weren't sure if it was Wimbledon high-jinks or Morecambe supporter sabotage. We took pity and decided Andy should go back to bed. Interesting discussion over coffee comparing ReFuel with the old Inboard Dining Scheme, where you had your meals provided in the then Count Refectory. I'm glad I self-catered....

So Gregg, Tony and I headed off to Morecambe in search of our roots, and lunch. I successfully spotted the street I lived on through two terms and a Morecambe winter, but had no desire to get closer. We parked on the seafront and set off to find Eric Morecambe's statue (legendary English comedian, Morecambe's most famous son). As a surface to roll along, Morecambe sea front was absolutely dire, large chippings in tarmac that just grabbed at your wheels to slow you down. The weather conditions were bad enough we couldn't see any further across Morecambe Bay than the end of the pier. But the sea side of things was actually better than the land side. No seaside town looks great in Winter, but Morecambe was decidedly grim, with quite a few shuttered buildings and bulldozed amusement parks.

We found Eric, who was looking good despite someone trying to saw him off at the ankle last year, took some photos, then headed across the road for lunch at the King's Head (I think, might just as easily have been the King's Arms). Typical half-assed approach to access, there was a ramp at the door, and an accessible loo, but all the wheelchair height tables were on a raised podium with no ramp. Tony had the steak pie, I had the battered Whitby shrimp (which struck me as ironic that I was eating East Coast seafood with the West Coast's prime shrimping grounds visible out the window), and Gregg was delighted to find he had a choice of several vegetarian dishes, until he went to the bar to order and found the only one on was the veggie toad-in-the-hole, which was so good it put him off food for the rest of the weekend.

Back at campus we headed back to our rooms for a little rest, then it was time to get ready for the main event. The dress code was 'black tie, but dress comfortably' which was a little bit contradictory. I'd decided there was no point trying for full black tie, or even wearing a full suit as suit jacket and chair with no mud guards/clothes guards seemed like a bad combination (not to mention all my luggage had to fit in the back bag of my wheelchair), so ended up in suit trousers, a white shirt, black tie, and a black vee-neck jumper for whenever it was too cold for just a shirt. Fortunately I wasn't the only one not in a DJ and bow-tie, though sod's law said Gregg, Andy and Tony all were (senior accountant, finance director, lawyer - they get more chance to use them than us software types).

The festivities opened with a reception in Grizedale's foyer, glass of plonk and waiters circulating with finger food. The one who came up to me had mini-blinis with smoked salmon, and I nearly took out her entire tray trying to pick one up. Apparently rolling the length of campus leaves me even more incapable than usual of fine finger control. I actually had to switch hands before I managed to get one. Gregg's wife Catherine had arrived by then, and she confirmed that I was right and everyone else was wrong, I didn't make their wedding and hadn't met her before - I think that was the year I went gliding in France. Next up was the first of the night's speeches, with Grizedale's first principal talking about setting up the college in the middle of a recession, admitting they might have skimped on some elements, like sufficient cement in the concrete, or plastering the walls. The plans having actually been drawn up for a Swedish prison also got some discussion, though allegedly the prisoners got bigger rooms - I think mine was about 2'6" for the bed, 18" of floor space, then 18" of desk, and about 12 foot long, with the luxury of a built-in sink. The speech ended up with unveiling a picture to commemorate 40 years as Grizedale. The picture was instantly recognisable as cameos of all the colleges, though rather oddly, neither the old nor the new version of Grizedale! (Apparently there was a Grizedale link to one of the buildings shown, but people had to have that pointed out to them).

And then we 'processed' all the way to the Great Hall at the other end of campus for the meal. We were impressed when we got to our table, all the name plates were correctly spelled (three of us have surnames that are regularly mangled) and there was no chair at my place so I could just wheel straight in. Ham hock pate as a starter, chicken as the main, looked a bit plain, but was subtly herbed (pasta as the vegetarian option), and a berry pie in custard for desert, followed by coffee and cake, with a bottle of red, a bottle of white and plenty of water (the university's own brand, in reusable bottles).  We had music all through the meal from Evie Plumb on keyboard and vocals, she struggled slightly with a two hour set, but lovely voice and I wouldn't be surprised to see her go further. Turns out she's a Grizedale student and was giving up her 21st birthday to perform, so she got a big bouquet at the end. There was a speech before each course, starting with Patrick, the current Principal (lovely guy, we were talking to him on the Friday), reminding us what things were like when the college started, such as only half the country having a land-line phone, never mind a mobile. Linda came up with an anecdote to match that, they had one of the early microwaves in their kitchen, the college administrator popped in, noticed it and said 'Oh, you've a TV in the kitchen, that's nice'. The following speeches were by a student for each decade, but for some reason they skipped the 80s, which was a bit stupid as Dave Mainwaring was attending from  our year, and went on to be Student Union president. Everyone did a good job of their speeches, including the current JCR president, 'Prince Jojo' - another lovely guy, he was chatting to us later and one of the other speakers, Satnam Rana of BBC Midlands, came up and asked 'Are you really a prince?' To which his answer was 'No, yes, it's complicated!'

And then we processed all the way back to Grizedale for the bar and disco, my shoulders had completely given up by this point, so I was just letting people push me everywhere (except on the ramps, the ramps were fun). We tried popping into Fylde again, but the bar was shut - at 10PM on a Saturday? So on to Grizedale it was. We didn't even bother with the bar this time, just snared a table in the foyer and sent the other guys up to the bar for beers. Dave Mainwaring joined us eventually and I was thinking 'don't really remember him,' then he got a little bit drunker, his Scouser accent a little stronger and 'Oh, of course I remember him!' He kept eyeing the wheelchair, but not asking (points for that, especially while drunk), so eventually I put him out of his misery and explained about the HMS. We had a great time, chatting about the people we'd known, and every time a new name came up Linda would google them to see what they were up to: 'estate agent in Egypt', 'dodgy, sounds about right', 'research scientist in Austria with 14 patents to his name', 'he's still alive, never!' and so on. We finally broke up about 2AM.

Sunday breakfast at 8:30 with Catherine and Gregg, and Gregg still suffering from Saturday's toad-in-the-hole (the moral of the story appears to be not to ask for veggie food in Morecambe). Then back to the rooms to check out by 10AM, and I spent an hour rolling around campus and taking pictures, though with my bag on the back of the chair and protesting shoulders I didn't even try to head down the south Spine to Grizedale. Then we all met up for a final coffee in ReFuel, said our goodbyes and I loaded the chair up into Andy and Linda's Volvo estate for the ride home - sunshine all the way 'til the Thames Crossing, at which point the skies turned grey and threatening and the temperature dropped 5 degrees. Ah, Kent, the Garden of England....

And Monday I didn't stir from bed until late afternoon. In fact I'm not sure I've been out the house all week, so I don't know if my shoulders have recovered yet! But a great time, and hopefully we'll be back in ten years time.

The trip back did confirm a suspicion I'd had: if I was trying to do my degree over again, with my body as it is now, then I'd need a powerchair, I couldn't cope with just a manual. Too much back and forth from one end of the Spine to the other!

*This was true even in the 80s, my taxi driver was telling me the Chinese equivalent of David Beckham showed up on campus last year, after a Chinese select team played  a charity match against Morecambe, and drew a crowd of 2,500.