Minnie’s Musings

The city of Oxford in term time with the city of Oxford in the Summer.

Do you prefer being mown down by student cyclists and failing to find a seat in any coffee shop because someone is writing a 2000 word essay on their laptop so is ensconced for the duration.

Or streets teaming with tourists and groups of foreign teenagers half of whom are paying more attention to their phones than the dreaming spires.

St Andrew was a bit like this. It morphed into a quaint seaside town over the Summer from its term time manifestation of cold, damp hallowed halls of learning and noisy, boozy pubs.

I am all for any university filling its coffers courtesy of ambitious parents paying a lot of money for Summer school filled with students from around the globe. These young people will absorb something of the beauty that surrounds them and remember it fondly decades later. They might even learn something new.

However the induction session should include guidance on how not to block an entire street with your large waiting around for the next instruction groups (when you proceed to not listen to said instruction when it’s given), how to queue properly (when in Rome ) and a specific direction to speak your native tongue to any and every Brit you come across with the specific purpose of showing them how irritating it is when visitors to you land do not even bother with basic courtesies I the local lingo (learning is a two way process ).