The changing world (6) - my undergraduate year, 1964-5

Until this part I have written from unaided memory. Now there are diaries to aid me and things will be more detailed.
   So in late September 1964 I left a quiet Yorkshire village with fear than 100 souls for the teeming millions of The Great Wen. I left family home of 43 years for a student hostel, International hall Brunswick Square, several hundred students, half foreign. My neighbour in the next room was Olivier Espitalier-Noel, a white native of Mauritus. I had to look up where it was - Indian Ocean. I soon made friends with two like first years, Hugo a vet and Rowan Francis a medic. I also befriended a Czech post-doctoral student. When he was about to leave I asked him for the one thing from England he would like to take back home. 'Speakers Corner' was his wish. Years later, visiting post Soviet Prague I saw his wish had come true.
   We also had a couple of students form communist China. They were the antithesis of the polite Chinese. They would be in the TV lounge with the news being watched and they were loudly denouncing the lackeys of capitalism and running dogs of imperialism. Before long, at the height of the cultural revolution, they were called home to China.
   Across the square was The Square, the School of Pharmacy, University of London formerly the college of the Pharmaceutical Society and the top pharmacy school in the land. I was the first student accepted after interview by Frank Hartley, the dean. I was one of 72 in my year, 50% female, a proportion I questioned in a student union meeting only to be shot down as a chauvinist. We had a few foreign students. I remember one Indian from Kenya and Ogumbanjo from  Nigeria . For the first time in my life I met real live Jews, Bloom, Linderman and Rubnstein. Previously known only from the Bible.
   IIRC we had to wear jacket and tie to lectures. I see a blazer with badge was £8 3s Od and a tie 1/6 raton, mine, to 17/6 silk for toffs.The timetable was full. Morning lectures, afternoon practicals. I remember another science discipline students saying an arts course was a soft life by comparison. True. But it was not the work schedule that other me. I had been a year out of formal study and I doubted things were going in. My philosophic doubt which was supposed to free me from religion proved to be no practical help at all. I became acutely depressed even suicidal. I sought help. College staff told me to hand in and see the medics. They did I was ill and this was likely to be a chronic affliction. Planned to turn my back on Christianity. But I was back in church, Hinde Street Methodist the home of the university Methodist Society. But the college Christian Union was of more help, especially Professor Fairbairn who would invite students home to Enfield for great food and fellowship.He was brethren and held the chair of pharmacognosy, material medication, natural drug sources. He had gained his doctorate researching anthroquinone laxatives, sennosides. Sennokot came from his research. It was quipped that he was not given the chair of 'cognosy but the commode.
  I heard John Stott for the first time at a London Inter Faculty Christian Union (LIFCU) event, speaking on Filled with the Spirit. I survived my first term despite the trauma and am sure that from that time on I was a regenerate born again Christian. I wanted to witness to my faith but the fellow students working in the lab were a pagan lot. I found a firm Christian friend in John Sullivan. We were students together at All Nations Missionary College too and he was my best man. But on the bench next to me were Clive Walton and Ken Warren. We were placed alphabetically. They were heavy drinkers it seemed. I only had a sherry with my tutor and occasional cider.These lads drank but when I asked about drugs Ken said he had tried pot and it made him sick. Pharmacy students had especial reason not to abuse drugs. We had to treat pharmaceuticals with respect. We had to memorise the cordage of all drugs in the British Pharmacopoeia. An onerous rote task as most of us had no idea what the various drugs did. If we were tested on dispensing and failed to spot an overdose, the exam was failed. We studied chemistry. pharmaceuticals - the formulation and dispensing of drugs, pharmacognosy - material medication (my favourite) and pharmacology - brag actions. The latter involved experiments with animal tissues. The lab was licensed for vivisection -cats preferred as they bleed less I was told. Other Christians who were to graduate with me in 1967 included Welshman Howard Bilton, David Durham  and Robert Gray, Non-Christians included Peter Curphey who rose to the top being eventually president of the Pharmaceutical Society.Not a top student IIRC. He had failed medical school.I never understood why ours, the top place for pharmacy, took failed medics.
    At the end of term it was home on the train. I could afford it I had a student grant, not a loan. It was means tested but dad paid his share too. Later I often hitch hiked. From home up to the A61/Ai1 roundabout then away. I once made it to London in one go faster than the train and amazingly met the driver in a pub the next day. Once I was picked up by the principal of Oak Hill Theological College. It was after I graduated and he kindly put me up for the night. My record hitch was over 300 miles from Portsmouth to home in one do the driver diverting from the A1 to our door. That was 1966 the year one never forgets.
   The secret of high hiking was to dress well and carry a sign as to your destination. I was clean shaven and wore my suit. In fact the reason I put off my beard to 1970 in Nigeria was that by then there was no more hitch hiking.
   After Christmas at home and seeing Margaret who was on holiday from teachers' college in Derbyshire. I think it was then I proposed to her and bought the engagement ring in Thirsk.We were both 18 and had been in love for perhaps three years. But it was not to be. I came to believe she did not share my faith. I may well have been wrong but I was to break off the engagement late in 1965 I think hurting both of us. After 48 years of happy marriage I can still say I regret what happened and am still sorry. But she is happily married to a Thirsk contemporary and has her own family now. I remember her parents with affection. Her father was a casual labourer whose hobby was the horses. But his betting always seemed under control. Years later I heard he had won a five figure sum on an accumulator bet and was able to but the family's council house.
   Boxing day Dad drove Geoffrey my brother, Margaret and I for a walk in the dales. Just north of Bedale on an A road with high banks and nowhere to get off to the side, we went up to a right hand bend. Round it came a Rover 2000 overtaking a mini. I thought we could not miss. We didn't. Impact around 100MPH? I picked myself up from behind the front passenger seat. My first thought was for myself. I was OK bur no-one else was. Margaret had flown backwards over the collapsed rear seat and cut her head open over the eyebrow. Geoffrey had hit the instrument panel. We had seat belts but were not wearing them. It was not compulsory. He was unconscious. his face a mess of blood retiring over 100 stitches. dad was coming round and thought he was cold from winter walking. I had to tell him not to move. He was trying to get out despite two broke legs and a broken arm. The other driver and his wife had broken legs. They were from Leyburn.and were going to follow a hot. I told them what I thought of his driving and of hunting. The police apologised for being slow on the scene. They said their response would have been better if we had crashed on the A1. Everyone was admitted to the Friarage except me. When asked if I was concussed I said no. They should n=have asked if I remembered the moment of impact. I didn't. next morning I woke up with a very bad back and needed help to dress. I had also slammed my wrist into the front seat base cutting though my steel watch bracelet and breaking two metacarpals, a bone previously broken playing school football in goal. Dad was in hospital some months though he had the record time for getting out of bilateral Thomas splints. Geoffrey finished up in mental hospital in York for some months. It put him back in schooling but gave a love for Leeds United which I came to share. I never found out Dad's insurance settlement but IMO it did not really account for his loss of earnings as he could no longer carry his case of brushes for so long each day. he was the top better wear salesman in the north of England.
   The driver was done for dangerous driving and received a paltry fine with costs. I think this was because the clerk to the magistrates advising on sentence was the defendant's family solicitor. If I had known I wold have come up first class on the train to witness, my first ever court appearance,
   Back for Lent term my diary has few entries. At this stage it was merely for appointments etc, not for recording daily events. An old ex-RAF school friend, Norman Sansom visited but the old spark of friendship had sadly cooled. But we saw Bart's Oliver on stage, an excellent production.
   Having not dome Maths at A level but three sciences, I had to do extra maths and an exam. was it here we first did statistics and square roots. A calculator was literally wheeled in. It was the size of a hostess trolley, my first computing.
   Our pharmaceutics professor was Shotton, a dull, uninspiring man. OTOH, Louis Sharpe who taught dispensing was a real character. Ridout did microbiology. I thought its smell ominous but not so bad as the radio-pharmaceutics with deadly isotopes detected only by the clicking Geiger counter. Buttle taught as professor of pharmacology. An eccentric man, the absent minded professor. He would turn up to lecture and ask us students what the subject was to be. Bowman and West were readers in 'colony and authors of our standard textbook. I have introduced Fairbairn in 'cognosy aided by Dr Betts with his memorable explanation of why "my little nut tree, nothing would it bear'. Nutmegs are monoecious. You need both a male and female plant for fruit. Whalley was chemistry prof. Midgley lecturer.
  A week of Easter vacation was spent youth hosteling in the Laked with Hugo and Rowan. One of them turned out to be suffering vertigo when on Striding Edge,  Hellvelyn in snow.
   Among visits paid in summer term were some extra-curricular ones. The Daily Express in Fleet Street was impressive with the molten lead printing. Westminster Hall impressed with antiquity and history. Sundays I went to Methodist Westminster Central Hall, Maurice Barnet minister and Dr Loyd-Webber organist, father to two later very famous sons. Then I moved to hear Lloyd-Jones twice on a Sunday at Westminster Chapel. John in the morning, Acts in the evening. I still have my notes. If I wanted a little lighter relief I went to hear Stott at All Souls but my main activity was Christian Union. The Doctor taught me all about the importance of expository preaching. I started preaching for the Methodists in Yorkshire. My first effort was on the king, Mannaseh.
  A factory visit to Allen and Hanbury's, Ware, was memorable for tablet production and all the blackcurrant pastilles you could eat.
   Exams were passed. I had been a diligent student six days a week. Sunday was a Sabbath from study. I found this therapeutic and a proper application of the fourth commandment. My children were to prove not so observant. My pattern of study meant I never went to hear the Doctor expounding Romans on Fridays,During the long vacation I worked in the pharmacy of the Friarage Hospital, Northalletron then enjoyed a fortnight youth hosteling in Snowdonia. I climbed all the major peaks including Snowdon by three different routes in four days. On the horseshoe I met up with a school party from Birmingham. Mist was thick, the path marrow. Most said they were happy not to see the thousand foot drop with side of them.
   In September before term I helped at the IVF (now UCCF)'s welcoming centre for overseas students, Doughty Street.