I still have my diary from 1971 which reminds me that on 1st October that year I went up to University in Durham for the first time. That’s fifty years ago: half a century!  The entry simply says “Go to Durham” and is underlined. I have vivid memories of that young eighteen year old: excited yet slightly anxious, perhaps in many ways naive but eminently ‘sensible’!

My parents drove me there, the blue trunk with all my worldly goods having been sent on ahead. (That trunk is still in my loft and I doubt could now be taken down since the loft ladder was installed and the access hole reduced in size!)  I had gained the required grades in my A-levels and was about to embark on a BSc degree in Psychology.  In many ways this was quite an unusual choice at the time and I had only come across it as a subject when exploring courses in physiology. But when I discovered it I realised it was exactly what I wanted to study.  Curiously it has been at the core of my life, in various ways, ever since. At times a love/hate relationship but ever present.  I can remember people saying  “oh, you’ll be able to psychoanalyse me!”  It was always said with an amused smile but you couldn’t help but feel they were secretly worried this might be the case!  Psychoanalysis was in fact the last thing I would have learned on my very ‘Behaviourist’ course.  In the 1970s it was generally considered that the only thing worthy of study for psychologists was behaviour and the shaping of it. Any notion that ‘the mind’ could be studied in a meaningful and scientific way was dismissed and Freud was seen as something of a charlatan.

Unlike many other universities Durham has a collegiate system rather like Oxford and Cambridge. So you had to apply to a particular college. I chose St Mary’s, a women’s college founded in 1899 after a charter in 1895 which allowed women to receive degrees. In 1952 the college moved to its present site and comprised two blocks, a rather striking ‘old’ block and a less striking ‘new’ block. I was slightly disappointed to discover I was to be in the ‘new’ block.  I was shown to my room; a simple little box with bed, chest of drawers, sink, wardrobe, easy chair, study table and chair. It was rather bare and gloomy but within a few days posters adorned the walls, a circular turquoise rug covered some of the floor and my red enamel mugs and teapot sat next to my kettle on the shelf. Soon after arrival I met the girl next door.  She came from Newcastle, so not very far away and we were soon chatting. I waved goodbye to my parents with a lump in my throat but in the comfort of already having made ‘a friend’.  Within that first week I made nine friends. We were all in the ‘new block’ and were either neighbours to each other or students on the same course.  We would sit as a group for evening dinner, spend time in each others’ rooms drinking coffee, share our woes and our joys. Fifty years on and we are all still in touch with each other, bar one who moved to Australia. Just about every year since we left we have got together for an annual reunion. We have been to each others weddings, supported when sometimes those marriages didn’t last, rejoiced in the birth of so many children, then grandchildren, shared in the challenges of caring for ageing parents and coping with illness.  We are ‘Mary’s Girls’ and proud to have sustained this mutual care for fifty years!

Durham is quite a magical place. It is dominated by the cathedral and castle which date back to Norman times and sit on a peninsular around which winds the River Wear. It is impossible to escape its history and that sense of time and place seem to root you in a deeper context. The delightful Prebends Bridge affords a famous view of the cathedral and a plaque in the wall displays the words of a poem by Walter Scott. I can’t imagine any student leaving Durham not having these words somewhere deep in their heart.

Grey towers of Durham

Yet well I love thy mixed and massive piles

Half church of God, half castle ’gainst the Scot

And long to roam these venerable aisles

With records stored of deeds long since forgot.

My memories of those years are rich. I know that not everything was perfect and, like the rest of life, there were times of challenge and upset. But it was wonderful to live in such a beautiful place. It was a time of growing up, of changing, a time of love and romance of new ideas and discoveries. It was a time when the most exciting thing we drank was Pomagne ( a kind of fizzy cider produced by Bulmers - cheaper than champagne), a time of formal and informal balls, hearing the dawn piper at Castle summer ball,  Mary’s folk club, walking down The Bailey, coffee in The Bishop's Mint tea room, services in the cathedral, studying, engaging in community action and dreaming……………so much dreaming……………

 I remain truly grateful.

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