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Things
I Learned at University
How to bike on cobblestones and where to signal right.
How to walk through doors held open by Old Etonians
and not scowl. How to make myself invisible in seminars
by staring at the table. How to tell Victorian Gothic from Medieval.
How to eat a Mars bar in the Bodleian. When to agree
With everything in theory. How to cultivate a taste for sherry.
Where
to bike on the pavement after dark. How t sabotage a hunt.
When to sunbathe topless in the Deer Park. When to punt.
How to hitch a lift and when to walk and where to run.
When not to address my tutors formally. How to laugh at Latin pun
and when to keep quiet and preserve my integrity.
How to celebrate an essay crisis. When to sleep through fire alarms.
How
to bike no-handed, how to slip a condom on with one.
When to smoke a joint and when to swig champagne.
When to pool a tip and how to pull a pint. A bit of history.
When to listen to friends and whether t take them seriously.
At the same time how to scorn tradition and enjoy it.
How to live like a king, quite happily, in debt.
Kate
Bingham
Kate Bingham was born in 1971 in London where she now lives with her husband
and daughter. After reading Modern History at Oxford, she worked as a teacher,
a television programme researcher, and at a literary agency. Her poems have
appeared in The Independent, The Rialto, Oxford Poetry and Poetry
Wales and in 1996 she received an Eric Gregory Award for young poets. In
1998, Seren published her entertaining and forthright first full collection,
Cohabitation. In the same year Virago brought out her first novel, Mummy's
Legs . 2000 Slipstream