Sussex Uni

At the lovely sunny wedding of our friends Cath & Mike. Piers has subsequently sloped off to America to write episodes of Star Trek and Penny is researching things in Germany with her Bulgarian. Or something close to that.

Always liked this shot. I had it scanned to a greyscale image for ages (which I probably ought to upload for comparison) but I've been scanning some old prints lately and rediscovered that it was actually a colour original. So here it is. I love the shapes of Sir Brian Spence's Sussex University campus, and here Hazel's hat fits rather nicely with the Meeting House behind her. But the real design classic is that lamp-post. Since I've added this to the Sussex Uni campus group, I'd better be helpful by saying we were standing at the top of the steps at the entrance to what was then COGS, with the MAPS stores behind us. I think they're called Pevensey now, or something new-fangled like that. (Boo.)

Accidental but cool. The colours are real; Sussex's Meeting House by Basil Spence is a drum with wonderful 60s colours in the glass breeze-blocks which are spaced all around. The room itself is clever and can be easily transformed into a meeting space for any (or no) religion. Pretty much all I did was edge detection when trying to sharpen it a bit, and wow, what an effect. (Probably) taken with a Pentax ME-Super, 50mm on Fuji 400 print.

Toby serenades me as I move out of Brighton for the very last time. Pentax Super-A, yellow filter, Ilford XP2

Winter of 1990/91, and I'd just arrived at a new university (for the first but not the last time...) And it was pretty! Back then it snowed in the winter. These days it doesn't seem to in Brighton. But then, we played with snowballs. And I gained my almost-first girlfriend thanks to accepting an invitation to go "sledding" in the middle of the night. I did point out it was "sledging" in British English. She dated me anyway ;) We made the sledges from old vegetable boxes (donated by the "Crumbs" café in York House) wrapped in bin-liners. They didn't work well...

Actually, it's okay, those glasses of port look well filled! Preparing for the Sussex University summer ball, 1991. (On the roof of York House.) This photo is really here to show that I did once have short hair. If you know me, can you spot me?

Preparing for the Sussex University summer ball, 1991. Matt Ward ("of the F.O."), Simon Lambourne, Me, and Kristen Hallahan. The location is the roof of York House, with the refectory in the background.

Ah, what can I say, really? Alix Courtney, now Macfarlane. Once the Vice-President (Communications) at the Sussex students' union, once the guardian of Claymore the white rat, and once my girlfriend, all too briefly. *goes all wistful*

In the kitchen at the house so many of us lived in over the years. It was in this room that (ridiculous and sublime list coming up) : + I discovered the joy of reading the Saturday papers at the table with my flatmates + We heard the first ever broadcast of Virgin Radio + I had many battles about the clear superiority of peanut butter over marmite + I told Mike something he dealt with very very well + Ruth locked me and Rob out, in very few clothes, in the hailstorm + Joe first described to me his theory of a new mathematics + Ruth inspired me to think about "the third world" seriously and do something Blimey. Student life.