Incoherent memories

A mish-mash of memories of St. Matthias that are not entirely reliable .

One of my earliest memories of St. Matthias was lugging my battered metal trunk out of the lift and along to room 11 in Bishop Monk. After I had unpacked all my stuff I sat in my room feeling pretty sorry for myself. I had only really come to Bristol on the strength of having a friend who lived in Frampton Cotterell. After staying with him a couple of times I knew I loved Bristol as a place and I had also met an attractive Bristolian girl at a party. Such was the basis for putting St. Matthias at the top of my list! So, there I was, friendless and far from the parts of Bristol I knew. I picked up my cheap guitar that my mother had bought me from Oxendales catalogue when I was fourteen, and began to strum my way through a couple of songs I had written. Such must have been the melancholic sounds emerging from my room that my neighbour in room twelve must have felt sorry for me and tapped on the door and introduced himself. After politely listening to the angst-ridden lyrics to my song he recited some poetry that he had written. It was far above my intellectual level and intensely depressing. That is how I met Alan Durham who was later to go on to become S.U. President. I went to bed that night more depressed than ever. Not only did I not know anybody and was over a hundred miles from home but I was also out of my depth academically! An early opportunity to make new friends and influence lecturers came a couple of days later at the 'Fresher's Sherry Evening' in the JCR. I decided I would make an effort, so I put on my cleanest clothes and a brave face and went down to attempt to socialise. All went well at first, polite chit-chat with other newbies over a glass of sweet sherry. Then the worst, (or in retrospect, the best), thing happened to me. I was introduced to Kevin Kibbey who, I think I am correct in remembering, was hanging out with some of the second and third year students from the rugby and football clubs. They had returned early to college to supposedly welcome all first years but actually, as I found out when I did the same in my third year, they were there to cast an appreciative and lecherous eye over the new female students and impress them with their savoir-faire . Amongst this group of large and hairy men was Paul Campin, (now sadly passed away), who looked disdainfully at my dainty sherry glass and then shoved a half pint mug in my hand. To my horror it was full of sherry. I drank it and got another. The lady at the college infirmary, 'Conifers' was really quite sympathetic considering. I suppose she had seen it all before. She suggested spending the next day in bed drinking lots of fluids, presumably after the cleaners had disinfected my room! To this day I still cannot drink sweet sherry, even a whiff of it and I feel queasy. It was not long before I felt a part of the place. I had quickly become a regular member of the football team. I had jacked in my biology course and now played the part of a bohemian Art student, dressing appropriately. I got involved with Chris Parker helping to run Sunday night discos and was also accepted as one of the 'Berts' in Bishop Monk. As I remember it there were seven main Berts. Kevin Kibbey, Phil McLennan, Tim Whiteford, Barry Hayward, Nigel Seaton, Alan Sopp and myself. I believe I was Bert 6. The Berts would often meet up in Bertie's, (Phil's) room for coffee. I remember clearly that he had exactly enough coffee mugs for us to have one each and in his eccentric way had given each mug a name that reflected its colour. They all began with 'S'. The yellow one was Sunny the pale blue, Sky. I always seemed to get the brown one! An early 'Bert' phenomenon was 'Rommell Shouting'. This occurred whenever two or more Berts were together late at night and had had a few jars. On a count of three they would bellow 'Rommell' at the very top of their voices, loud enough to wake the dead and anyone else who was peacefully sleeping on campus, and then silently disperse into the night. The origins of this odd practice came about when Alan Sopp regaled us with the story of how his father, Ernie, had fought with Montgomery in the Desert Rats during World War II. The story quickly became exaggerated to the point where Ernie Sopp had met and shaken hands with Erwin Rommell in the midst of the desert. The re-enactment of this unlikely event would happen whenever a Bert saw another Bert walking towards him around college. They would quicken their stride, extend their right hands and respectively yell, ' Ernie', then, 'Rommell', and rush to shake hands and greet each other. No corridor, lecture room or toilet was safe. Eventually most of this ritual was dispensed with, leaving just the communal shout of 'Rommell' whenever two or more were gathered together and they could cause annoyance. I remember one of the more intellectual third years coming up to us once and asking in a bemused tone, 'what is this Rommell business?' Perhaps he was doing some anthropological or psychological study. The shouting reached its climax when seven of us would lean out of a third floor window in B.M. at one in the morning and shatter the pristine silence. Even the sober and responsible Hall Chairman, Malcolm Philcox had been known to join in occasionally. Of course it stopped as suddenly as it began and we found other ways to irritate/amuse our fellow students. Living in Hall was great fun and also quite exciting. For the first time in my life I was independent. I could buy whatever food I fancied, go to bed when I felt like it and entertain whom I liked in my room. Of course there was a down side. Finding clean clothes to wear was a major problem, nobody I knew in the men's hall bothered to do any washing except the most basic, swill your underwear out in the sink and stick it in the spin drier, sort of thing. There was always the problem of getting some sleep when others felt like partying. I can remember getting up one night to see where some incredibly loud bluesy music was emanating from at one in the morning. I arrived on the third floor to be deafened by two large loudspeakers out on the corridor and a number of people 'getting down' to the music, which turned out to be Captain Beefheart's 'Safe as Milk' album. The owner and purveyor of the music was Jim Stevenson. It is an album I still play but now on CD and about twenty decibels more quietly. About halfway through the year something fairly disastrous happened. If someone had asked me, (or, I suspect, anyone else in Hall)," who is the last person you would wish to see with a master key to Bishop Monk?" the answer would have been unanimously, "Kevin Kibbey". How Kev came to own a master key I never found out but the fact that someone had one soon became clear to all. It started in a quiet way. Students would return to their rooms to find their furniture rearranged or a sod of turf down in the bottom of their bed. It gradually got worse; I remember one poor soul finding all the furniture from his room carefully arranged on the croquet lawn as if it had been teleported there. The opportunity for mayhem with a master key was not lost to the rugby club whose phrase. "Does it fly?" struck terror into the heart of Bishop Monk residents. At first tests were done to see if cushions and bedding 'flew'. This was achieved by hurling them out of a third floor window. Later larger items were put through their aerodynamic paces culminating in a whole bed which smashed into the ground and disintegrated. John Jones and Geoff Dawes were usually the test pilots.