Notes from the Midlands

The occasion was the 21st birthday of my cousin, Sarah, at the family home in Bewdley, not far away from Kidderminster. In the final year of a teaching course at York University (while I, as she remarked, am in New York), she is a bright and very affable young girl, though no doubt teaching will change all that soon enough. One's 21st birthday is, of course, a moment for celebration and looking to the future; though left largely unspoken throughout proceedings, there was also a certain sense of poignancy, if not sadness, that my cousin - her sister - Claire could not be present. She had died while still a teenager in a minibus crash in the Midlands in the autumn of 1993. Had she lived, she would be about my age and have celebrated her own 21st five years earlier.

Still, it was a lively and boisterous occasion, the party being held in a marquee in her parents' capacious garden and supplied with copious quantities of food and drink. Most of the guests were Sarah's friends from York University and from her childhood in the Midlands, though there was still a sizeable representation of older friends and family. It didn't half make me feel old, though. Less than a month away from my 27th birthday, I was never entirely sure whether I should be chatting with the 2nd and 3rd year undergraduates that composed the majority of Sarah's guests, or making rather more adult conversation with the rest. I am ashamed to admit that I couldn't help silently drooling over one or two of the student body; one girl, in particular, was in possession of what I think were the two most perfect breasts I have seen in recent times and was not shy of displaying them. Proof, if it were required, that I am a drooling pervert. God knows what will happen when I have to start teaching (or rather, TA-ing) in a year's time. Put me and the English accent in a room with some nubile 18-year old American girls and it will probably be all I can do not to trip over my own tongue, let alone avoid getting kicked out of the University and summarily deported (needless to say, K is less than thrilled at this prospect, because, as she said, "we always fancied our TAs in college").

Still. It was all good fun in a teacher-at-a-school-disco kind of way, and I think most of them were suitably impressed at what I laughingly refer to as my 'jetset lifestyle'. I was rather happy that I didn't have to venture outside much, though - aside from the Worcester countryside, I find most aspects of the West Midlands - not least the accent - to be uniformly horrible. We went for a pub lunch on Sunday before I came back down to Cambridge at the pub at the end of the road. My family on my mum's side seem to have this bizarre obsession with pub lunches, even when they're manifestly horrible, and especially (as in this case) ridiculously overpriced. I got a leathery piece of beef and some overcooked vegetables for 8 quid or so, though everything else on the menu was at least ￡15. For the equivalent - $30 or so - I could get quite a feed in NYC. But then, as Mum reminded me - "this is the Midlands, dear, they're not very sophisticated round here".