‘Working hard doesn’t mean you’re some kind of goody-twoshoes in a Laura Ashley dress.’
THE BEST... PUB IN CAMBRIDGE Joseph Bates is reading Music at Caius The pub is central to Cambridge life. Our few clubs are all-or-nothing affairs, their sticky carpets and sweatslick walls unendurable for the even slightly sober. And evenings in College bars, despite the obvious appeal of cheap pints, tend to feel less like a welcome escape from work and more like a house party in your sixthform common room. By contrast, our pubs are numerous, comfortable, and unlike everything else about Cambridge’s nightlife, actually quite good. So while the choice may be a forced one, it is in pubs that I invariably choose to squander my student loan. The most famous among them is the Eagle, with its historic demeanour, good ales and Crick-and-Watson derived intellectualism. Yet, for me, its fame is its downfall: it doesn’t feel like a pub you could get to know. Centuries of history and dozens of tourists lie between you and its real character. Instead, almost every time I venture out I seem to end up in the same place: the Maypole. By many measures, the Maypole is not Cambridge’s best pub. It isn’t its
oldest. It isn’t its cheapest. And it isn’t its prettiest. But the Maypole (the ’Pole to its friends) offers something else. It is the people of the Maypole – its friendly bar staff and its loyal regulars – that make it a grower. I went once in freshers’ week and from there on in my Cambridge experience has been one of increasing Maypole addiction. And like most addictions, going clean just seems like more effort than it’s worth. Most of the people that go to the Maypole rarely go to any other pub. Why would they? Their friends are at the Maypole. Of course, no addiction is complete without substance abuse. And the excellent beers of the Maypole are my substance of choice. Not only do they maintain a wide variety in good condition, they also have Löwenbräu on tap – the highest recommendation for any beer lover. The Maypole has its fair share of detractors, who mock the price of its beer and the pretensions of its clientele. But while it’s expensive, and despite the fact I always seem to end up sitting outside, my heart, my wallet and my liver belong to the Maypole. David Yeo. We are grateful for the help of the Maypole public house.
She remembers a gas fire (“It was before we worried about energy saving and sustainability – so wickedly, on a day like this, the best thing was putting the fire on and then throwing open the windows”), a wardrobe on the landing, lots of books and a very loud sound system. “I was always getting into trouble for playing music too loudly – mostly Janis Joplin,” she says. “I had Burne-Jones’s King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid Blu-Tacked up. Well, it was the Seventies! We all fancied ourselves as Pre-Raphaelite characters. I always imagined myself as the beggar maid, but really I had no idea who they were. It just looked very glam to me.” She may have had a keen eye for fun, but Beard took her work seriously. “I was a real swot,” she says. “I remember being told by my director of studies that the taxpayer was paying us, like a salary, and so we should be working eight hours a day, five days a week. But I never saw a contradiction between being hardworking and being naughty. It’s one of the things that is so liberating about being here: everybody’s a swot, so working hard doesn’t mean you’re some kind of goody-two-shoes in a Laura Ashley dress.” Sadly, Beard declares most of her misdeeds unsuitable for publication, although she does admit to a prank involving cross-dressing with her male peers and then parading around the Classics Faculty (apparently, no one noticed). And while James sensibly declines to be drawn on the subject of naughty behaviour, she too believes in working and playing hard. As well as completing a dissertation on the role of Muslim characters in Conde Lucanor, the medieval Spanish text, she has managed to squeeze in a proliferation of other activities including singing in a choir, playing in an orchestra and at least occasionally, the Union Society. “I’ve decided this year it’s too much!” she says. Both Beard and James agree that Newnham is a very special place to be an undergraduate. “When I came up, there were only three mixed Colleges, and they had very few women in them – very, very few. So Cambridge was really a bloke’s place,” Beard says. “But there was a fantastic feminist thrust to Newnham, every imaginable variety of feminism – all the body politics, ‘know your bits’ evenings, which now seems unbelievably naff, and the rest!” James says that although Newnham continues to have a strong feminist tradition, the very fact of being at a women’s College can – paradoxically – reduce feminism’s relevance to its students’ lives. “Because the hierarchy here is all women, that’s what’s normal for me, and so feminism doesn’t seem so critical. If I were at another College, that might be different.” Beard agrees. “In 100 years’ time, places like Newnham might not be necessary. Right now, Cambridge is a wonderful place to be, but you can’t turn a blokes’ monastery into a 21st-century mixed institution in 50 years. So this is a place for women – it’s about women. It’s brilliant!”
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