Yet it was Mrs Beddoes rather than me who seemed genuinely sad. I was more preöccupied with the loss of the quid I had paid for the creature. She took the body away, with less reluctance than I expected. I wasn’t happy to dispose of it without ceremony, but what choice did I have? With my low standing at Downing (both as a freshman and as someone whose tutor had taken against him) I could hardly apply for a burial plot in the Master’s Garden.
Now that my private zoo, with its single arthropod exhibit, had closed because of a death in the family, I had to find other ways of feeling at home. I fell back on my old hobby of yoghurt-making. Busying myself with measures, timings and temperatures helped me pass the time without trauma, even at weekends. For me, yoghurt-making was an occupational therapy rather than a statement of counter-cultural allegiance.
It was also easy, and almost legal in college terms. All I had to do was boil the milk, let it cool, add the culture, mix it in and leave it in a warm cupboard. I experimented with a technique that eliminated the cupboard stage of yoghurt-making, which was always the most awkward part for me. I used a thermos to maintain the temperature of the mixture. It worked very well, though it had one drawback. Anyone who visited me in my room would ask about the thermos, unscrew the top out of curiosity and then put it back on with so much strength that I’d never be able to open it myself. Eventually I prepared a label that said Stop and Think! Fingertight for You Is Plain ImPOSSible for Me! Leave Me Loose! And still I had to remind people.
I love the idea of ‘fingertight’ — an unscientific but perfectly intelligible description of a degree of mechanical closure — but I live well outside the standard range (normal variation between individual grips) on which it is based.
Once I’d started using the gas-ring I began to itch for more complex acts of cooking. Hall food even at its best was bland, so in a mood of nostalgia for the food at Mrs Osborne’s I started making curries. On Mum’s kitchen bookshelf at Trees there was a book of International Cookery which included some timid versions of Indian dishes, though she had only indulged me with them before I actually went to India. At the time she must have thought a plateful of tentatively spiced rice was the nearest I was going to get to the subcontinent.
It happened that the nearest shop to me geographically, on Regent Street, had a fair range of spices. It was essentially Indian, despite bearing the name of Harold T. Cox. I could get all sorts of exotic treats there.
The A-staircase kitchen was the scene of frenzied frying, making nonsense of the ban on this most alluring of cooking methods. We simply washed out our fragrant pans the moment we had finished using them, hiding them where they would never be found.
Even in the rebellious 1970s this struck me as an unsatisfactory solution. I didn’t want to get away with things — I wanted to be vindicated. So I ‘hid’ my frying pan where Mrs Beddoes was bound to discover it. She looked at me sorrowfully and said she would have to confiscate it. Nothing personal, Mr Crow-maire, but rules were rules.
‘Just so, Mrs Beddoes. So why don’t we have a cuppa together and take a look at the book of rules?’
Of course I had given this document at least as much attention as any piece of coursework. I waited for her to find the relevant passage. ‘… Cooking activities involving frying are strictly prohibited. You see? I’m afraid I must take away that pan.’
I let her take the first few steps with my pan towards whatever pantry Valhalla she commanded, and then said, ‘Not so fast, Mrs Beddoes. Have you ever seen me frying anything in that pan?’
‘No, Mr Crow-maire, but rules are rules.’
‘Then show me where in the rules it says frying pan. I believe this college specialises in Law in a small way. It shouldn’t be difficult to get a professional opinion on the interpretation of these rules.’
‘Well, what else is a frying pan for, if not frying? Tell me that!’
‘For boiling, for poaching, for sousing in a maize-flour sauce, for simmering, for warming through. Do you not see, Mrs Beddoes, that this pan is the only one that is perfectly suited to the unfortunate shortness and curvature of my arms?’ I laid it on thick till she was thoroughly flustered. By and large it’s easy to create a misleading impression of exactly what I can or can’t do. No one likes to question my say-so.
Tomorrow on Wittering Sunday
So I got my pan a reprieve, and my revenge on the rules. Revenge, despite the proverb, not best served cold but sautéed, and so hot it burns the tongue.
In a certain sense I got my come-uppance shortly afterward. There was no carpet on the common spaces of Kenny staircase and the parquet was slick. One day I had fried up a storm and then washed up as usual. I was scooting briskly along with the incriminating pan when I must have fallen forwards. I say ‘must have’ because a blow to the head interferes with the sorting office — the mechanism which processes short-term memories into long. My brain hadn’t yet decanted that thimbleful of information into the proper tank, and so it spilled.
It was hardly surprising that I should have fallen out of the wheelchair. If your knees have no play in them you must punt yourself forwards in a precarious position, and if your arms aren’t very good at their job then you have very little chance of breaking your fall. My little frying pan was light, but it didn’t help.
So the college legend goes that I was found with my head in a frying pan of blood. This sounds wildly exaggerated, but then the blood vessels in the scalp can put on quite an alarming show. Scale down the horror, and it’s still a fairly startling sight to greet an inexperienced Spanish doctor assigned to Addenbrookes Hospital. It was a short ride in the ambulance. Old Addenbrookes was just the other side of the wall from A staircase, Kenny Court, Downing. Plans were well advanced to transfer it to a new site further out, but for the time being I had a hospital more or less en-suite.
Having seen the state of his patient, the doctor prepared a syringe of local anæsthetic. At this point I rejoin the narrative, speaking volubly. Consciousness resumed with a swirl of departing images. All I saw was a nice dark man with a hypodermic. I lunged for it to the best of my ability. He said, with the most enchanting accent, ‘You have had a fall. I am a doctor. This will make you feel better.’ I said, ‘I know all that. Hand it over.’ I hadn’t given up on grabbing the hypodermic, and made some sort of impaired dive for it.
The doctor was inhibited as we tussled, by the knowledge of his greater strength. He was shy of pressing his advantage.
He said, ‘Please let me do my job.’
‘But I know just what to do. This is Lignocaine, isn’t it? Just the right stuff to use. Well done. Are you Spanish?’
‘I am. Hold still, please.’
There are as many types of concussion as there are of consciousness. Mine was bossy and high-spirited. I didn’t want this handsome foreigner to think he was dealing with a standard-issue pig-ignorant xenophobic Brit. Even a university town is not free of such folk.
I spoke the first Spanish words that came into my head. ‘Mañana Domingo de Pipiripingo,’ I sang out, taking great care with the pronunciation, ‘Se case Juanito con una mujer que no tiene manos y sabe coser …’