Woo hoo! Pardon an adolescent outburst, but I’ve just had an hour playing the new Merton Dobson organ, and after all I’ve written about it on this blog, it was a fab moment. Here’s the view straight up from the organ bench (and yes of course I played the Zimbelstern – who could resist?)
The RCO Easter Course starts properly tomorrow, but anyone who could get here tonight got the keys to college organs around Oxford, so it was hunt the ON switch time in several dark organ lofts and chapels. Pembroke’s modest switch hidden inside the panelling had me baffled for quite a while, as did the duplex switch at Jesus, which turned the humidifier OFF as the organ went ON, which sounded of course as if you had just switched the organ blower OFF. But a happy evening was spent on the lovely Letourneau at Pembroke, and the equally fine Drake organ at Jesus. Here they are.
We are staying in Merton College, and that takes a little getting used to. In my day Merton (along with most other colleges) was strictly men only. The only time women were officially tolerated overnight at a men’s college was during a College Ball. After a Ball it was considered a bit of a trophy statement for the men to bring their partner into college breakfast the next morning. (Us girls were usually pretty bedraggled by then, with smudged mascara and a collapsed ballgown, and frankly, greasy bacon and eggs were not exactly top of the agenda, but we generally went along with it.) Otherwise “staying in Merton” meant only one thing – misbehaviour. Gates were locked at 10pm, and by this time we were all supposed to be back in our own virginal beds. Fat chance – freshers were quickly educated in the ways of sneaking in and out of locked colleges, bypassing the Porters’ Lodge. I have climbed over the 20 foot high wrought iron gates at the back of Magdalen College more than once – as this was in the heyday of Laura Ashley and Annabelinda, I was in flimsy sandals and a full length frock covered with flounces which would catch on any spike going. In the dark, and slightly the worse for wear, feeling tiny froglets squishing between my toes with every step as I stumbled through the water meadows back to my own college is a fine Oxford memory.
