You could get to Aberdeen from Oxford in a day on the train.  Bicycle to from Summertown House to Gloucester Green before even the electric milk wagon made its rounds.  From there the intercity bus to Kings Cross, London, and onwards to Newcastle.  And then the language and scenery changed utterly as you got into Princes Street, Edinburgh. On the train to London, sleepy eyed commuters, two sitting side by side on each side and these two facing each other across the path of an undescended table in cabins secured by a sliding door.  Newspapers were up for protection--it is doubtful that much new was read behind them--and these were unfolded, shaken and crumpled (no self-respecting business man or public servant would dare to handle a tabloid on the train--and when the conductor opened the door to punch your stub, or make you a ticket, no words were exchanged, or eye contact made as the deals were done. It was assumed that people had ate their breakfasts, so there w...

I never actually saw any philosophy students smoking Gitanes in the Philosophy department lounge--oh, yes, these were the bad old days, when people smoked everywhere--professors in bathrooms and classrooms, students in coffee lounges and corridors.  The only place that was sacred--notice I don't say smoke free--was the library, where old rules prevailed.  There the pledge I took--the oath I swore--to get my library card at the Bodleian Library in Oxford (note: Old Bod) seems to have made the trip to the New World.  Smoke no cigarette, kindle no flame ... so I promised the Earl of Pembroke, who guarded the door. Yes, they had treasures to protect, and there are miles of tunnels with book fetchers among cast iron stacks (book presses) designed by Gladstone in the New Bod, and luggers at their push carts--hurrying picked books and manuscripts to a waiting conveyor belt in response to reader requests--in triplicate--that traveled from the handwritten quarto sized guard bo...