MY FIRST DAY AT UNIVERSIY 1967

I'ts 1967. I am 18. My first day at the Victoria University of Manchester (before its union with the Poly) The Architecture Department is in the red brick pseudo-Georgian Humanities building. We are shown our desks, and take possession of the double elephant drawing boards, T square, case of drawing instruments and two Rotring technical pens (0.2 and 0.4mm) bought for us by our Education Authority. We were warned to “Mind the ebony edge” Where the two bricks on which the drawing board was propped came from I can't remember. I doubt we actually did anything on that first day.

At 4pm we wandered out into the Campus to explore – the new Architecture building was still being constructed and we would take up residence next year. Most improbably I found myself with the girls – I had never had a girlfriend and never had anything to do with girls. We discovered the University Arts Theatre just behind the Humanities building. This was a rather interesting octagon, and it had a cafe on the first floor into which we went for coffee and cake.

So there I was, never having said more that 10 words to a girl on my own, with Gillian McCaw; Anne Treloar; Ben Teng Goh; Judy Rashbrook and  Ruth Johnson in a cafe. It seemed unreal and most improbable, but I embraced it eagerly as the beginning of  real life and being normal. A node in one's time line.

When I went back to Manchester in 2015 I intended to have a nostalgic coffee and cake in the cafe, but to my distress the University Arts Theatre wasn't marked on the Campus map, and I had trouble finding it. When eventually I did, it turned out there had been a fire about 5 years after I left, and it had been converted into departmental offices. The bronze letters spelling the name on the stone facia had been removed, but the fixing holes  could just be joined up if you knew what had been there.

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