12th February 2002

 

This article was published in the 2002 edition of Martlet magazine.

THE SPIRIT OF PEMBROKE

Drunken students? Naaah ...

My grandma, along with the rest of the nation, was shocked to read newspaper reports of wild behaviour in the hallowed halls of Cambridge during the autumn. The alleged urination of John’s students over their bar was only another media splash to add to the one generated by those fruity feline females, the Alley Catz, allegedly running naked around St Catharine’s. My grandma: aghast. Deans, those mystical creatures, reared their cobwebby heads to denounce the wickedness taking place in their sacrosanct colleges, the forces of good ranged against the debauched and depraved, the institutional Gandalfs overwhelmed by ring-pull wraiths. My grandma: convinced I’d wound up in a den of sin.

The thing about media hype is that it goes to extremes. Qualifying your story with ‘some’ or ‘a minority’ is no good. If you’re going to run something about brainy kids getting inebriated, it may as well be all of them. So all Cambridge students, on the evidence of these articles, often use their bars as urinals, dance naked on lawns and quite literally throw their student loans down the toilet. Not only scrounging layabouts but probably rich ponces too - what a story, especially when there’s a war on.

Amidst this media storm, Pembroke nestled unnoticed on Trumpington Street, peopled by clean-living, tee-total types, up with the lark every morning and besmirched by the dark forces emanating from nearby colleges. Er, no. Pembroke’s students are similar to any other students in Cambridge, and Cambridge’s, despite media insistence that above-average intelligence means abnormality and freakiness, are similar to any others in Britain. In Pembroke, as many of us drink as drink at Catz; as many of us do not. I bet as many of us have a history of frolicking naked on perfectly manicured, world famous lawns. Once a newspaper gets hold of something, reality is warped in a way that Salvador Dali would have been proud of. While students elsewhere ticked along quite nicely, chronometrically speaking, Cambridge’s were melting.

So what really happens in Pembroke today? Life is loosely centred around our wonderful bar and JP, for many people. Although the decor could never be described as anything more than ordinary (though it is being refurbished this summer!), it is invariably packed out. Everyone knows almost everyone else and the spirit of Pembroke is very much in evidence.

The hardcore turn up from seven onwards, taking their hallowed places on our four bar stools, radiating an aura of respect with their easy lean and assured right-arm pint motion. Neill the barman, football on TV in the background, slickly moves from tap to tap, to fridge and till and back again, with the stony authority of someone who takes his drinking very seriously. In dribs and drabs, people arrive for their evening in the bar. First years play pool, third years rush in and rush out again, buying chocolate for the essay night ahead. Many just sit and chat, or read the papers, sometimes even with a soft drink (what would the tabloids think!?).

When moderately busy at nine, the Formal Hall crowd stagger in, convivial and boisterous. The papers made much of this Cambridge disease of ‘pennying’, whereby the student drops a penny into the glass of another, who then has to empty its contents. Legend has it that this is to stop the Queen from drowning; whatever your views on the monarchy, this is a humanitarian mercy mission in a glass of Pembroke wine. Authorities insist that this is a mock-tradition, simply invented by the ‘youth of today’ to drink themselves into a stupor, justifying themselves historically. But, down the hatch may well have once been down the Pitt. I’d be interested to hear from former undergraduates whether such diabolical acts were ever committed in Hall during their time of residence ... Pennying is of course banned in Pembroke and quite rightly so. Yet, in these days of a Labour government being just as bad as the other lot, charging us fees and plunging us up to the eyeballs in debt, when a student sees even a penny disappear into a full receptacle, fiscal exigencies oblige them to retrieve it.

In the last hour knots of people from hostels show up, with an evening of work behind them and a couple of Pembroke pints yet to savour. Most of the time, we behave and are even quite civilised. From time to time, I concede that things move up a notch for some. The birthday boy or girl wanders round, bottle of wine and glass in hand, to share a little bit of their joy. Tables are crammed with glasses empty and full, the jukebox is pumped up and a few budding Pop Idols in the corner give their rendition of California Dreaming which could be a lot, lot better. You know a night is a heavy one when the Red Witch appears; not an arcane office of The Society, but a favourite drink (though I’ve never had one) which involves a glass of Pernod floating in a pint glass of some red liquid. Conversation ranges from the intensely giggly to the warped and surreal, often a bit of both.

Urine? Not unless the Carlsberg’s off, and then you get pretty close. Nakedness? Not often (though in my Freshers’ Week we were all regaled by a y-front waving engineer from atop the chocolate machine and I’ve never quite exorcised those demons). And I’ve emphatically never ever rolled down Trumpington Street or pushed a mate at speed in a Sainsbury’s trolley down Tennis Court Road.

But of course, this scene is not played out every night, and the scope of Pembroke life is much much broader than this. We have one of the biggest college drama societies in Cambridge, the Pembroke Players, who are putting on five shows this term alone. Rowing is very much practiced, by those who can do without their sleep, as well as many other sports - hockey, badminton, football, rugby, volleyball, squash ... We have music, poetry, the Choir, Amnesty, RAG, Pembroke House, Student Community Action and multifarious other valuable ways of frittering away all that spare time. Pembroke students get out there and do stuff, both in college and outside it - helping the homeless, gliding, writing for the student press. It’s not only socialising within college as the newspapers may suggest. We work hard academically and get out there and broaden our horizons (as if The Mail would tell you that). So why shouldn’t we enjoy ourselves and do a Rumpelstiltskin from time to time? You can’t blame the papers for wanting to get light-hearted pieces into the currently heavy news agenda. But take them with a pinch of salt. Or maybe a dash of grenadine.

Anyway, I persuaded my grandma that the only way I relieve myself at Pembroke Bar is with an ice-cold (ish) Pembroke pint. Alas, she still thinks I’m an alcoholic - just not one that puts the pee into Pembroke.

 

© Ben James 2003