onionbagblog

And so for all the bluster about moving back to Wivenhoe, and *not* back to @Uni_of_Essex, come Saturday afternoon and @AnnaJCowen and I found ourselves… back on campus.

Cripes.

But first the disclaimer: this wasn’t five pints for breakfast in the Union bar, followed by a lost lunchtime spent travelling on the legendary library paternoster, and then back to the bar for some underpants on our heads action with the rugby crowd. Nope - we did all of that back in the day.

The reason for our rather windy walk around Wivenhoe Park was simply because we haven’t really experienced the true beauty of what was once Constable country.

Three years as cocky undergrads on campus covered the five pints / paternoster / underpants action - sometimes all in one morning. Sadly the folly of youth kept us away from the wonderful wildlife that can be found around the edges of Wivenhoe Park. With my chesty man flu also in need of being chased away, a walk around the Lakes was the perfect prescription.

I genuinely have little memories of the green and good of Wivenhoe Park. At a push, and I probably didn’t even know that there was three lakes. I do remember the regular rabbit shoots of the early 90′s. Judging by the trail of warrens spreading all the way from the library up towards Colchester Road, Thumper and his pals seem to have has the last laugh.

And then there’s the frisbee golf. Oh Lordy. Um, it’s a North Essex thing…

So yeah, we wandered around for just over an hour, poking around where we probably shouldn’t have been, and keeping the North Towers as a constant backdrop and homing device for whenever we got lost.

A quick cut through the Sports Centre on route back to Wivenhoe, and we watched for a short while a men’s hockey match in full flow. The game was coming to a conclusion, and you could also smell the booze and Y-front on yer forehead action that would inevitably follow.

Time is a great healer. Afternoon tea back at base in my favourite rocking chair, and then a snooze before Final Score came on the radio.

Youth - wasted on the young.

Middle age - overrated.