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Apart from Oxford, I also applied to Leeds, Leicester and Bath. All invited me for a look at the place.
I remember it was raining the day I went to Leeds, which is
bound to create a bad impression.
I think they have or had the longest corridor in the world in 1 of their
buildings.
The labs looked very much like those at school.
I don't think I've been back to Leeds since.
I don't remember much about Leicester.
I think it was a general engineering course.
Not very impressed.
We go shopping to Leicester fairly regularly now.
Bath was
something else altogether.
An electronics course.
A purpose built campus on the outskirts of town. I think it's built on the side
of a hill, with several levels to it.
I think it was a lovely sunny day. I remember being shown round some modern lab
blocks and some electronic projects involving microprocessors.
I remember being lectured about coming there to work ie. no time
wasters required.
Didn't get a proper look at the town, although I think I had been there on a
junior school trip before.
Anyway I put it down as my 2nd choice.
I've been back to Bath lots of times
since, with friends living down that way.
Accepted at interview to study Engineering Science at Exeter College Oxford.
Bit of an accident really, like so much in life.
I had virtually no interview technique.
I was invited down to Keble College
overnight for interview. Quite a large red brick college in north Oxford right
next door to the engineering block.
I watched an episode of I Claudius in
the TV room while I was there.
I remember being asked to explain my answers to the exam questions, up in the
air, in some modern building with huge picture windows.
I got no feedback as to whether my answers were right.
The Oxford Colleges operate a system were there are about 3 groups of Colleges
that share their interviewees around.
A mad dash around Oxford finding the relevant Colleges and rooms for interview.
Various awkward meetings led by the tutors, rather than me taking control.
I remember 1 of the questions being - why does an aircraft have a tailplane?
I was just lucky that the Exeter tutor
asked me the right questions ie. getting round to electronics and radio control
systems.
Before starting at Oxford, my grandad (mother side) managed to sort out some
training at the Jaguar apprentice training school.
I was there for 6 weeks learning how to use machine tools etc.
I wasn't actually sponsored, but working there was a possibility after
univerisity.
While there, I managed (with some help) to finish off the pulse jet, as a
project.
A few friends and I had started to build this at home from some plans as my dad
had a 2nd hand lathe in the garage.
Some of the bits (central fuel feed, venturi inner and air blower) were quite
simply turned out on a lathe.
We thought we'd tackle the tricky bits later.
Jes got someone to make the petal valve backplate, but the holes were a bit
off, which probably caused trouble later.
I got someone in the Jaguar experimental shop to cast me a big lump of
aluminium, from which I machined the nose cone.
I also made a set of wheels for our OS 20 powered stock car
from the leftover material.
The aluminium had a lot of bubbles in it which may also have caused trouble.
I fabricated the combustion chamber and tail pipe from stainless steel sheet
with some help from the instructors.
This involved cutting a very fine thread on a large ring, later welded to the
tube, and then screwed onto the nose behind the petal valve assembly.
A big problem was the petal valves themselves.
These should really be stamped out from sheet spring steel, but we were only
able to cut them out with tin snips from any material we could get hold of.
Anyway, it never really ran properly, but we did manage a few seconds with
compressed air blowing into the front.
This was captured on 8mm cine film.
You can see us run away as it glows red hot.
(Un)fortunately you can't hear the appalling noise it was making.
I'd like to convert this into an avi clip and put it up here - maybe 1 day.
The pulse jet was lent to some other interested party and never came back.
All I have now is 1 of the used petal valves.
Here's a picture of the petal valve and something similar complete and
running.
A serious shock to the system, being dropped off in Oxford.
Once again, I was taken from an environment that I understood, and dumped in a
new one.
I had no idea what else I wanted to do, but I knew I hated being there.
I felt alone and out of place.
I just got on with the work.
I had a tiny room on the top floor at the south west corner of the college.
If you climbed out of the window onto the battlements you could look down on
Turl Street, but otherwise all you could see was sky.
Actually, it was 2 rooms, but 1 had just enough space for a single bed and a
washbasin, and the other just enough for a desk and a chair.
I think I didn't have much of my stuff with me eg. my bike, guitar, stereo etc.
all stayed at home.
I didn't expect to have much time to do anything other than study, and I was
pretty well right.
The 1st year was quite intensive, including doing all the maths necessary for
the whole course.
1 of the most tedious courses going was surveying. I remember students lying down on the lecture theatre benches to make the point, which didn't go down too well with the lecturer. We all had to survey the park with measuring tapes and theodolite in the 1st term. There really wasn't enough time to do this. Fortunately, everyone starts at a different point, so all of the relevant measurement points are available for trade by the end of term. With a suitable dither added to the real results you can end up with a complete circuit with a reasonable closing error.
At the end of term there was a revue in the main hall and a concert in the
main quad.
I went to the revue, although it didn't mean much to me, as it seemed to mostly
consist of impersonations of famous members of the college that I had never
heard of. I didn't attend the concert as you had to pay.
When I returned to my room, it had been broken into.
All of the college rooms are interconnected by fire escape hatches, which means
that once you get into 1 room on a landing, you can get to all of them.
I guess that the end of term revue is an ideal opportunity.
I didn't really have anything worth stealing. I think I just lost a travel
alarm clock.
I pushed some furniture against the hole and went to bed. I heard most of the
concert anyway.
I think it was Eddie and the Hot Rods. I guess that people with rooms looking
onto the quad would have seen it for free too.
I had been away for the whole 8 weeks, which was the longest I had ever been away anywhere. It was quite strange going home.
At start of 2nd term at Oxford I was better prepared.
I took my stereo and guitar. At this stage, I could just about manage to hold
down a 3 finger 4 string moveable bar chord.
Unfortunately I went down with flu, which seemed to be a
particularly nasty strain involving lots of throwing up etc.
Someone was bringing me meals, but basically I spent several miserable days
alone in bed wondering how I was ever going to catch up with all the lectures
etc. that I was missing. Eventually I started to feel a bit better and went out
to get something to eat. I remember feeling the cold wind making my eyes water.
The next day I woke with a terrible pain in my eye. I coudn't bear to look at
daylight. The prospect of dealing with it at university was too horrible so I
went home.
As happens so often the GPs had no idea what was wrong with me and just gave me
gradually stronger pain killers.
After a couple of weeks of this I got down the hospital where it was diagnosed
in just a few minutes and treatment could start.
By this time my eye was quite badly damaged and it took a long time to heal,
including a 2 week stay in hospital.
It has left me with permanent damage to sight in 1 eye. Fortunately, the other
is still pretty good.
By this time I had missed far too much at university to carry on with the
year.
Fortunately the college/university were very understanding and I was allowed to
restart the Engineering course in the next academic year.
The 1st term was of course quite a breeze, as I had been there before. I didn't
have to survey the park again.
This time I had a much larger pair of rooms up the north east corner of the
college looking west into the back quad.
Still on the top floor though. I think you have to be well connected to get the
lower rooms.
I had a bit of trouble with the person in the room under mine.
I don't think I ever found out who it was, but they liked to play ELO loud late
at night.
It would miraculously stop when I got out of bed, went downstairs and banged on
the door. The door never opened though.
The chap next door could really play guitar, which was cool, not a problem as
he didn't do it at stupid times.
The eating arrangements at college wound me up a bit.
Breakfast was fine in the main hall - just toast and coffee for me, but full
english available for the wealthy.
Lunch was OK although you had to pay with the college's own paper currency.
The problem was dinner, which didn't start until about 19:00. I was used to
eating about 17:00. I had to start buying stuff to keep me going.
When you did get dinner, there would be no choice.
Quite often it would be a perfectly good piece of meat covered in some horrible
sauce that I would have to scrape off.
You had to wear a black cape.
The food would be served up by serving girls.
The worst thing about it though was that you had to pay for it anyway, so you
might as well eat it.
You were allowed to sign off just a few meals each term. When you're a student
on a grant you can't afford to waste money.
I guess they were trying to get college people together. I never found anyone
that I had anything in common with though.
I had my bike with me.
I used to cycle up to the engineering department for lectures etc. I remember
cycling up in the cold with my red kagoul pulled tight to keep out the wind.
When the weather improved I started to walk instead.
The bike sheds were underground.
1 day I went to get my bike and it wasn't there, just the lock around the
drainpipe. I hadn't been there for weeks.
I reported it to the police and I got to look through their extensive
collection of recovered stolen bikes. Wasn't there though.
I was very sentimentally attached to that bike.
A few weeks later walking back to the college I saw my bike locked up leaning
against the wall near blackwells.
It wasn't locked to anything. I just picked it up and took it back to my room.
I've managed to keep hold of it since. Safely in the garage.
I have a nice modern mountain bike as well, but it doesn't get much use.
Here's a picture of my bike in Oxford with my famous Paddington bag.
In my final year at Oxford I started to go out a bit to see bands etc.
I went to see a band called "Tom and the Quads" fairly
regularly.
Eventually, the singer spoke to me. I said something like "Are you Tom then ?".
Anyway, it turns out that his name is Will and the band is named after the tom quadrangle of christ church
college, where he was studying the same course as me.
I mentioned my interest in making music, and we got together to write some
songs.
Suddenly I had a social life, and I started to enjoy being at Oxford.
With Will's encouragement I got a band together, which after a few false starts
ended up with 3/4 of the Quads (Will, John, Martin), me and Penny.
We practiced for weeks in the tiny underground music room of Exeter college,
and played just once at the stage club.
We played some of my songs and various covers.
Here's a photograph of me on stage.
I have a tape (now a cd) of this, and of the last (public) Quads gig.
We didn't play again, as Final exams were coming up, and it seemed only
sensible to do some revision.
I haven't seen any of them for years (actually saw Will again in 2010), but
Penny has been on TV.
I spent a lot of time solving the rubik cube.
I managed it eventually, although I have to get the corners right 1st, which
takes ages sometimes (in 2009 I returned to it and invented a move to swap 2
corners).
I went to a college ball.
There was no way I could afford the £50, but the Quads were booked to play and
got me in as a guest.
I can't remember which college it was.
Here's a photo of me catching up on sleep in 1 of the breakout rooms in the
early hours
As part of the course we did a bit of basic programming on a PDP11 (I think) which was in
(probably almost filling) the next room.
I remember thinking that these computer things will never catch on. How wrong
can you be ?
Here's a view looking south from the top of the engineering building.
You were supposed to do a final year project.
I looked at a few of the suggested subjects, although you could of course make
something up.
Anyway, I found out that it wasn't compulsory, and being ultimately lazy,
didn't bother.
I also found out that you didn't actually have to do all of the practicals ie.
just get a certain number of marks.
So once I had exceeded that by a bit I stopped. I remember a particularly
tedious experiment in soil mechanics involving shear collapse. The look on the
marker's face when I refused to rework my report to improve on 2 out of 5
marks.
In effect the band was my final year project.
As far as jobs were concerned, I knew I wanted to return home to Coventry
and get a job in engineering, preferably electronics.
GEC was the obvious, but I also applied to other firms in
Coventry including car manufacturers.
I understand that my application to the GEC was the 1st that they received that
year.
The milk round came to
Oxford and I had a couple of interviews (at least) at the randolf hotel.
Once again I had no interview technique.
Turning up in my leather jacket and jeans with my Paddington bag was probably
not a good idea.
I got a 2nd class BA in Engineering Science (apparently equivalent to 2.1).