The Cambridge Easter Term Bucket List

Finding the fun in the joyless.

Cambridge Cambridge University College Easter Life Pembroke red chinos Tab the tab

You’ll enjoy Easter term, they said. It’ll be amazing and work-free, they said.

That’s the last time I listen to my friends at Durham. Bastards haven’t done a day’s work since they got there. They just drink themselves into a coma every night to forget the pain of that dog-eared envelope from Oxbridge telling them that this year was really competitive and unfortunately they weren’t able to offer them a place etc.

Nonetheless, over the holiday they inspired me to write a bucket list of stuff to waste time doing this term, since it was probable I was going to fail my prelims and never be able to come back to Cambridge.

I thought I’d have a chance at getting through most of this list since I ‘only’ have prelims (which are such ‘hilarious’ jokes of exams) and then after them I’ve got even less work than the nothing I’ve had for the rest of the year. Anyway. On to the list…

Pleasant drinks in scenic location

There were two complicating factors in this item. The first was obtaining alcohol. The first pub I walked into ID’d me because seemingly I look like an 8 year old with a relatively severe heroin addiction, as evidenced by the bags around my eyes and emotional baggage of what looks like a thousand years of torment, but is actually just 16 weeks at Cambridge.

The second pub I walked into was one of those pubs you only find down South that takes payment in truckloads of gold doubloons, because a pint of cider around here costs more than the apple orchard it came from. I solved this issue by going to Sainsbury’s and ram-raiding the special offers part of the alcohol section. Cambridge has taught me well.

Drinks? Tick. Pleasant Location? Pending.

The second problem I encountered was finding a scenic location. Initially I used The Tab’s rather excellent guide to Cambridge’s benches, but I found that the families/school groups also occupying those benches seemed to be somewhat upset by the 8 year old heroin addict lookalike sitting next to them necking red wine from the bottle whilst grumbling about Durham, so I moved. I eventually found a scenic spot on the fen. Some cows tried to mate in front of me, and then one of them did a poo. I left.

PSHCE didn’t prepare me for this

Partaking in Cam-based river pinball

All through the winter I’d watched in envy as tourists had expertly piloted their punts into each other, walls, trees, Queens’ College, and the other pesky obstacles that litter the Cam. I thought that finally it would be my turn to become skipper of such a bumper car, but alas I was thwarted.

It seems that punt operators are actually only capable of acknowledging your existence if one of the following conditions is met: (1) you are a tourist, or (2) you are a student, but you are in a rush to get somewhere. Since I satisfied neither of these conditions, my frantic arm-waving in front of the punt people’s faces was met only with glazed eyes as they looked straight through me and towards another horde of semi-zombified tourists, which had just meandered around the corner and was clearly in dire need of an armada of small wooden crafts to crash into ducks with.

Like tetris, only far more difficult.

Going summer smart-casual

I’d naively assumed that Easter term would begin and a university-wide email would be sent out stating that anyone not wearing chino shorts, blazers, summer dresses, and/or earbuds blasting out the sick tropical house beats of Kygo would be immediately sent down.

Unfortunately, this has not been the case because, as my various international friends keep reminding me as they exit their rooms in polar survival gear, ‘it’s only like 18 degrees here. Back home in ‘Straya the coldest it ever gets is 53’. Time to don the crampons, break out the ice axes, and struggle to the warm embrace of the library. Again.

50 Shades of Red Chino: the death of style.

In fact, all I really do nowadays is sit in my room and twiddle my thumbs. It’s got to the stage where the only solutions to the boredom is writing and/or reading crap Tab articles. Desperate times call for desperate measures.

Next time the bastards from Durham tell me to enjoy myself, I’ll tell them to go back to polluting the Durham student press with yet more articles about how glad they are they didn’t go to Oxbridge because we’re all mean-spirited, judgemental arseholes who hate on people at other universities.

Pricks.