Record

CollectionGB 0231 University of Aberdeen, Special Collections
LevelFile
Ref NoMS 3620/1/170
TitleInterview with Mary W. Rae (nee Gardiner), (1922-), (M.A. 1943)
Date12 September 2003
Extent1 tape and 1 transcript
Administrative HistoryMary W. Rae was a former Aberdeen University of Aberdeen student
DescriptionInterview with Mary W. Rae (nee Gardiner) (M.A. 1943), on 12 September 2003 and the interviewer is Jennifer Carter.
Transcription:
JC Well this interview is taking place at the reunion of the MA class of 1943 and we have met in the house of one of Mary's contemporaries, Ethel Davidson, in Aberdeen. Thank you very much for waiting so long to talk to me, Mary, that was kind.

MR That's all right.

JC Tell me a little bit about your earliest memories of the university. Were you an Aberdeen girl, or did you come from somewhere outside Aberdeen?

MR Well I came from Turriff. Well my father was the head gardener at Hatton Castle Estate, just outside Turriff. I went to Turriff Secondary School, as it was called in those days, but now I think it is called Turriff Academy and I think it is a new building as well.

JC A rather ugly white building!

MR Yes. The other one was beautiful, Victorian. Well anyway that .. we weren't native. I was born in Elgin, my parents were also Morayshire, so Aberdeenshire was a new venture for all of us and on .. My brother had sat the Civil Service exam and I was going to sit the Civil Service exam in 1939 but due to the war that examination was cancelled and my father in discussion with Mr. Lessells, the Latin teacher at Turriff, decided that I should go to university and that was how I came to go to Aberdeen. I don't think we would have ever at any time considered going anywhere else.

JC It was the automatic choice.

MR It was near and that was it.

JC Would finance have been a consideration? I mean you father could not have been that well off.

MR My father was dedicated. He was one of the old Victorian gardeners that trained very well and he didn't think about money. I think, we think, but luckily these things usually happen that you can manage these things. There was of course Andrew Carnegie. If you were not absolutely poverty stricken, but not very rich, your were entitled to £9, half the £18 of the university fees. The County Council allocated £30 a year to students, so that was pound a week for the university term and the university digs in those days were actually a pound a week, well most of them. At least all of them weren't but the ones I went into were a pound a week. That was three meals a day and a fire in your bedroom, all sorts of things. How they did it I don't know.

JC How the landladies made a profit on a pound a week I have no idea!

MR Absolutely not and if we went home for the weekend they would give you the bus fare to go home, you know, out of your digs money, so they really did a very splendid job, but like most women they don't get much credit for it, did they?

JC They were wonderful people from all I have heard of them.

MR They were very sort of dedicated and I think they probably looked after our welfare much better really than students in a hall of residence. I never had any difficulty with them.

JC Probably a lot stricter than halls of residence!

MR Yes, in a quiet sort of way, I think, over the years a lot of them had had so much experience of students that they knew when to, you know, sort of put their foot down and when to let something go which was not terribly sort of, you know, a bit of a nuisance, but that was it. They took it in their stride and you know I think, yes, I think they were a wonderful body of women and didn't make a lot of money out of what they did.

JC Were you always in the same digs, all through your three years?

MR No, I started off in a top floor flat in King Street with a DS (Do. School i.e. Domestic Science School) student sharing a room with her. My mother knew her aunt and I got the digs because of that. But she was coming, she was only there for two terms. She had failed some exam at the Do. School, she was actually older than I was.

JC She was resitting.

MR She was resitting that and at the end of the second term the landlady, who was rather elderly herself, decided that she really wanted to stop. Which I quite understood, I mean, she was, they were a retired couple. They had a shop down on the very bottom, a sweet and tobacco shop, and really they had enough to do without us. And then I went to mixed digs actually in the corner of University Avenue and King Street, which was just along from the University and I shared there with a girl called Bunty Brown, who is now sadly gone and we had a big attic room with a gas fire. We had single beds so that was very nice.

JC When you say mixed - there were other students who were men?

MR Yes and that I think, looking ..

JC That was pretty unusual, wasn't it. Didn't landladies tend to specialise in either girls or boys?

MR Yes, I don't really know whether they actually did, I never found that out, but I often, talking to English students in Oxford and Cambridge at that time and they were in women's colleges and a lot of the time didn't even get a degree, did they, if they sat all the exams. I think things there were much more sexist and much more and of course you didn't have any sort of coloured students at Oxford or Cambridge did you, in those days. But you did in Aberdeen. We had two coloured students.

JC Really. In your year?

MR I don't think .. One was called Victor Sutherland. He was the one I knew best. He was I think the year before me and he … They were both medical students, but I don't remember the name of the other one, but I don't think he was in the same chronological year, but they were both medical students and they were both, I think, from Trinidad, but I don't know.

JC I was going to say I bet they were West Indians.

MR Yes, West Indians. They were very…I have often looked at that and thought that was quite an interesting sort of difference, because there was no religious bias in Aberdeen at all, there were no sexists, men were treated exactly the same as women, and there was no racial discrimination, so they were well ahead of their time.

JC It was a very open university in that sense.

MR It was indeed. I think that … I don't think there was a lot of state interference either, I think they were … I suppose there must have been state funding of some sort..

JC There was, but not state controlled, which is true nowadays, sadly. But coming back to your digs for a moment, so you moved into these dashing mixed digs, and what then?

MR And after about three terms, I think we got very fed up of it.

JC Why was that?

MR I think it was the landlady mostly. The cooking was pretty awful and she got more sort of miserable as time went on and although the boys were lovely, you know, there was three men, I think one of them left, but there were two there when we left and I think both of them came through the war. One was a science student and one was a very clever arts student, a very good classical scholar, Mike, and he used to wonder round saying "I don't want to die for my country". We used to sort of think this was funny! They all went away in 1941, I think, wasn't it or thereabouts and we didn't see them until after the war again and some of them of course didn't come back, but I think that was .. we left and the digs we got into one on Sunnybank Terrace were very, very nice and there was only one other lodger and she was a teacher so the two of us had a very quiet for the final two terms, the last two terms of university.

JC How did you find these digs? Because the very first ones you got through a family connection. The others did you get on a sort of student grapevine or adverts in the papers, or was there some central office that issued landladies addresses?

MR I think there might have been, but I never came across it at the University. I think it was word of mouth that somebody said they knew people who had a vacancy, and I can't now remember who it was. I think the last one we might have got came through a friend of my brother, who was a medical student, who knew that the girl who had been in those digs had left in the middle of the year and there was a vacancy there. So we .. and although she had only one we said that we didn't mind sharing, so she had the two of us, which was very nice of her. They were a lovely couple. They had a shop down on the road, between the two universities as it was in those days.

JC And did you used to stay up for weekends mostly? Or did you go home to Turriff?

MR It would vary quite a bit I would think probably about once a month we would go home for a weekend, it just depended and sometimes I used to go climbing, well I didn't go climbing but I went with a party who went climbing and I used to study on the banks… somewhere up near Braemar, The Linn of Dee, which was gorgeous, really. We used to cycle from Braemar station to Linn of Dee and it was really quite good fun. I wasn't awful keen on the climbing but I didn't mind the cycling and the scenery!

JC You were happy with your books while the others went up the hills!

MR Yes, that was good. Those sort of times.

JC And these digs you have told me were incredibly cheap.

MR Yes, they were.

JC A pound a week!

MR Yes, I think in the last year they did go up about five bob or something I think they became 25 shillings! But that was understandable it was sort of ..

JC By what you told me about your financial background you must have had very little spending money apart from what you needed to live. Did you earn money for yourself by working in the holidays or anything?

MR Yes I worked in .. I worked with my father one year, sort of like a land girl and got paid for that. He allowed me to wear trousers, he was very good!

JC Very dashing!

MR Yes. I worked in a hotel at Nethybridge which was a very superior one actually, kept by a Mrs. Fothringay, whose daughter was actually at St. Andrews the same time and I worked there for about 6 weeks during one vacation. I didn't get paid very much but made awfully good tips! And quite a lot of fun, I mean, really good fun doing it and pleasant surroundings and they were very nice people, the people who came there, who were very pleasant and good to us. And the last one I didn't earn any money, we went right through Grandholme Mill for experience for our course in social work. Bunty and I asked around and Grandholme people said they would have us for a month and we went right through the process of wool winding and the idea was that we got to know what working girls did and enjoyed working with them.

JC It must have socially been quite awkward was it? Or were you, you know doing it for fun and they were doing it for wages?

MR Oh, know, they were extremely kind to us.

JC They were very kind, were they?

MR Yes, they were very kind and they, you know, when the big machines are going they pick up the bits of waste wool and rub the metal and they would say "Don't you do that because you will get us into trouble!". It was almost like an obsession, because it so boring watching the machine doing something you tend to see these bits of metal you want to clean, but there you are. It was good fun and I really enjoyed it. I don't think I quite finished the month because I was called down to a settlement, the woman who did the invalid children's aid association, had gone on leave and the warden asked if I could come in before the term started so that they had someone in the office to answer the telephones. I had to go early, but I didn't mind that at all it was good.

JC I missed the name of the settlement? Corra Leven ? Did you say?

MR No the settlement in Glasgow was called.. it is now called the University Settlement, but in those days, …..

JC I thought you said Corra Leven, was that the name?

MR The University Settlement … I don't know if it is still in existence actually.

JC But the lady who called you down early was?

MR Warden and Tutor, Isabella Miller, yes.

JC It is sometimes difficult to pick up names afterwards when you don't know them.

MR Yes, if you don't know the people at the time.

JC But coming back to your University experiences you have described how you arrived from Turriff and all that and settling into your digs, did you have much idea of what you wanted to study at university and how did you make up your mind about that?

MR I did actually want to study, to take a degree which would not be a teaching degree but would be helpful if I was to do Social Work, which I had already more or less decided…..

JC As a child you had decided that?

MR Well yes, I wouldn't say as a child, I would say I was a teenager really and I thought this was, you know, as way of saving the world. All that sort of rubbish!

JC Very idealistic! Excellent.

MR Yes. So anyway I .. you had to sort of keep the basics, so I did sort of with Biology, English, Latin, French, I don't know how I ever passed that! I did Economic History, which I enjoyed very much and Moral Philosophy and Logic and I must have done something else, musn't I?

JC It is a fair range of things, isn't it!

MR That is only 7, oh, Psychology. You had to do English, you had to do a Science, which was Biology, Modern Language was the French, Latin was compulsory and the rest… there must have been another compulsory one. There was 5. English, French, Latin……

JC One of the Philosophies, probably?

MR Ah, yes. Philosophy. Logic I took first and then I got quite interested, and oh I did Poly Con - Political Economy (i.e. Economics) and Economic History as well, so I thought that might give me an idea.

JC It must have been rather nice to plan your degree in a way which was both broad but also professionally relevant as it were?

MR Yes, I think Economics was a bit beyond me. I never really been.. and yet in some ways you do think back to you know some of the economic sort of things that you did and you apply it to what is happening in the politics of today. So I suppose it did a little bit of sort of good! I don't know.

JC Do you remember much about the people who taught you? Are there any who stand in your memory still?

MR Henry Hamilton in the Economic History. I remember him very well as I think he was a very… pretty good at his subject and he was always very keen to lend you books from his own personal library if you were interested in something, he would, you know, be very helpful. And I loved Professor Noble. I think everybody did. He was…

JC He was the Latinist and Humanist.

MR Yes. The English Professor was Bickerstaffe. He was a rather curious character. He was sort of … I liked his lectures and I remembered them a long time afterwards because he chose love as a subject. All the different types of love in relation to literature and illustrated them all.

JC But he was a fairly theatrical lecturer was he?

MR Something like that. I remember him fire-watching …. He wouldn't sleep in the dorm with the student men, he went into the hall itself, and one of the men got a sheet from somewhere, a sleeping bag or something, and appeared in balcony after he had gone to bed, sort of saying "Romeo, Romeo, my Romeo"! We all thought this was hilarious. I don't know if he did! It was inevitable in the situation I suppose that we were in at that time.

JC And I think I heard you say that you didn't terrible care for Rex Knight, is that right?

MR No, I didn't.

JC That was unusual, as apparently he was a very charismatic teacher.

MR He used to stalk along, he had a wonderful profile, just stalk along, so everybody could see this …

JC Walk sideways …

MR Sideways! I think that …I don't know that I always agreed with … you see Psychology is not an exact science and I didn't always agree with his interpretations about behaviour and things like that. He was quite keen on endocrinal influences, glandular influences on behaviour and things like that. I don't know if I entirely… I think that the trouble with human behaviour, trying to understand it, is that we have spent a whole century debating whether it is, you know, it is inherited or whether it is environmental, or .. I think that I wasn't probably fair to Rex Knight, on the other hand he may not have been very fair to me when he marked my paper!

JC Why? Did you do badly?

MR I failed! It is the only one I ever failed. I got it in the resit, because I sort of padded it out. I sort of got it in the end. I wasn't terribly .. I don't know, I think I have learnt more about psychology from working than I ever did from books really in those days. I think you learn more from studying people.

JC Sure. No I was just intrigued, because nearly everybody else says, "Oh Rex Knight, wow", but you didn't like him. It is very nice to meet an individual that has a different view.

MR I think the Poly Con people were very vague and Moral Philosophy.. Logic.. I can't remember his name. Now what was his name? He was so like a professor, he would forget that he had a lecture. We had to ring him up at a quarter-past ten in the morning….

JC This wasn't Mackinnon, was it
MR No, do you know, I can't remember.

JC Don't worry. ? (Stewart Fergusson was actually Professor of Logic 1926 - 1953)

MR But he … and his wife would say "He has just left" and you knew he hadn't, she was just pushing him out the door! And Moral Philosophy, Baird, I think was his name. He was rather inclined to have a short fuse if you didn't sort of …

JC Agree with him or understand …


MR Yes that was right. But he was alright, it was quite an interesting subject so..

JC Did you know any of these people socially or was it purely a classroom relationship?

MR It was purely a classroom relationship……

JC Even with Henry Hamilton, whose subject you so much enjoyed ?

MR Yes it was just more or less you borrowed a book and had a chat with him.

JC You were never invited home for tea or anything?

MR No, no. I don't think that happened very much.

JC No I don't think so either.

MR No there was not very much interchange between …

JC I think that came after World War II when there seems to have been an influx of younger academics and there was much more socialisation.

MR Yes, I think there probably was. I think some of the men probably… now who was the great Scottish Nationalist with the beard? He was in the thick of it, I think.. young. I think some of the chaps were friendly with him, but I didn't know him. I don't know what happened to him. Probably went to war, I don't know.

JC The relationship between men and women in the University, you have already said that it was entirely equal, but it was presumably not equal in number. Because I suppose a lot of men were called up during ….

MR A lot of men were called up during the first of it, so they were left with the Medical students and the Science students, a lot of Science students were left because they had grants and things from the Ministries and the Divinity students were left. I don't know why, but they were.

JC But otherwise the MA class was virtually all women I suppose?

MR Yes it finished up with, I think, there was two people who came back. One was invalided out and one was a conscientious objector. So we didn't really have any men.
But we had a wonderful lot of cadets, who came up from somewhere in England, I don't know. Army cadets they were who took over the Pavilion at King's while we were there and coming down in the bus one day, I never forgot that, there was one of them, sort of shouted out "Humanity Manse, what is that? A home for fallen women?"! We all hooted. That was very sort of telling.

JC So these cadets, did they join you in classes or were they just billeted there?

MR I think they had classes in the University, but they weren't part of our, but whatever they were doing, it wasn't anything to do with us, except that they came into the Pavilion and had mid-morning coffee and you know, or whatever was serving, because that Pavilion was opened when we were there.

JC Yes, 1939 I think it was built wasn't it?

MR Yes. I don't think it was opened until later, in 1940, because when we first came we used to meet in the Cromwell Tower. I don't know if that is still there is it?

JC Yes it is. Although it is all classrooms now.

MR Well we had a sort of common-room there.

JC So presumably you went back to your digs for lunch you got the odd cup of coffee on campus at the Pavilion or at the Cromwell Tower?

MR We did sort of .. we did go into the city and have coffee or tea, in one of the places on Union Street. The Cally. I think we were in the Cally with a crowd of people on the night it was bombed in 1940..It must have been 1943 I think, the Spring of 1943. We used to sit drinking coffee in the Caledonian Hotel lounge and we were all sitting there, there was about a dozen of us around the table, and a little page-boy came round saying something. We thought he was saying "Make less noise", as it was quite usual for him to be saying that and nobody listened. The orchestra still went on playing and we got up to go about ten o'clock and when we got onto the steps of the Cally the whole of the street was on fire, all the way up Market Street and Bunty and I were .. at the that time we did some street-watch duty if there was a raid, so we saw this and somebody said that the all-clear was just sounding, so we hot-footed it up Market Street and they hadn't even cordoned off the craters and we were walking around all this and we got up to the digs. Our digs were all right. Our bedroom window had been blown out and the landlady and her husband had had a bit of a shock and apart from that that was alright, but two students not far from us, up the Kittybrewster way, had been killed in the raids. It was quite sad in its way. But usually you know if we had a raid we didn't have very much happen, you just went into the shelter and …

JC Where was the shelter? The University one I mean?

MR Under the Elphinstone Hall, I think.

JC Where the Compactus is?

MR It had two entrances, one at the back and one at the front and the Sacrist and somebody from the University used to stand at one end. There was a member of staff at both ends and you know, the wretched boys used to sort of go walking in one end and come out the other. Do this tour round, just to confuse ….

JC A miscount of numbers!

MR I know! It is dreadful when you look back, but in a way …

JC So what things did you do socially? You went out for coffees, you went to dances. Did you join student societies?

MR No not a lot. Occasionally we went to some of the student drama things. We went to the theatre. My friend's father was working.. he had an job over at the egg distribution at Kittybrewster, and we used to wander over there, because he had a farm in the country and he used to stay in a hotel in Aberdeen during the week. He stayed at the Douglas where most of the theatre people stayed, so if we went up to him, to see him, he would either give us the complimentary tickets which he had got from the people at His Majesty's, or he would give us the money to go to the theatre. That was the "Gods" which didn't cost a lot. Or if he felt like it and he was short of work we would grade eggs for a few hours and earn a few bob and that's how we got on. We saw lots of plays and things at His Majesty's.

JC So that was your main sort of outside interest, the theatre.

MR Theatre or pictures and drama groups and reading, and we worked in the library in latter years, we got one and sixpence an hour and that was just… not the University Library, the Public Library. So we used to do a couple of hours between lectures and well three shillings was worth its weight in gold! I don't know what it would be worth now, but it was quite a lot of money.

JC Where did you mostly do your own study? In the University Library?

MR Yes.

JC So you have very fond memories with that building, no doubt?

MR Beautiful building, and King's College Chapel is too. I think when I first came to the University and saw the buildings I think that was something I shall never forget because in Scotland generally we didn't travel around an awful lot and you didn't see any beautiful churches because they were all sort of Scottish Presbyterian.

JC Very plain …

MR Very plain and then you come into this wonderful chapel with its, you know with all the things, the carving, everything about it and you go in there and it is such a wonderful atmosphere.

(Pause)

JC Right, so we are just resuming on the second side of this tape and I was just hearing about the University Chapel and how wonderful you thought it was. Were you a regular attendee? Did you attend most Sundays or not?

MR I didn't go often on a Sunday, but I did go… at that time the Divinity students who I told you were not called up, they used to have a service every morning, between about five to eleven to about ten minutes past, just a quarter of an hour service.

JC Between lectures.

MR Between lectures which was absolutely wonderful and they took the service, there was no minister or anything else there. It was all done by the Divinity students themselves. So we attended that almost all the time they did it, but again you know, I have always thought of it, even when I have been back after the war and I look at the Roll of Honour, and I think the University… If you go to the universities in England or here, that were there during the war, and if you look at the names, there is a tremendous number of university students who lost their lives because universities were the places where they had the units of OTCs and they went of course to the Battle of Britain so a lot of them did not return.

JC Sad. What else about your university days that you think that we ought to have talked about that we haven't in fact touched on. Anything that we have missed?

MR I don't know, I think, probably I wasn't so involved with the University as I might have been. I enjoyed the work, tried to do it and was quite social with lots of students but not joining any sort activities or debating societies. I don't know if we had a debating society, I can't remember now. We didn't join in anything like that, but we did have lots of social… and of course with fire-watching in the University, you met a lot of students at that. And I can remember great discussions going on. I remember one where people in that particular group were tracing their Jewish ancestry back and finding out how many of them had Jewish blood in their veins, and it was quite surprising. Yes. And that stayed with me for quite a long time.

JC Well that was a very striking experience!

MR Apart from that, I think it was a time when money doesn't matter all that much, because you don't have it, and I think probably being there in war-time was quite good for that because nobody else had it.

JC Everyone was poor!

MR Well even if they did have money they couldn't buy anything with it. There was really nothing to buy. So it was a time of sort of doing what you could do voluntarily for the services or anything connected with the war, but I don't think we were at all cynical about the war. I think cynicism has now crept in where there was none really. We were whole-heartedly behind this idea…

JC You were patriotic.

MR Yes and everybody would do anything for … I mean the number of different nationalities who came across here in the war was very striking. A lot of people from Canada, New Zealand, Australia and other places, who came up to Scotland to look for their, you know, from where their,…you know, from where their antecedents had come. So we met an awful lot of these people and quite literally used to, I used to, invite them to come back to my home. My parents were quite happy to welcome people from abroad. So we met quite a number of people and when I went to Glasgow of course I met even more because Glasgow was very cosmopolitan in those days. We had Poles, Free-French, Norwegians …

JC All sorts.

MR All sorts, from Austria, everywhere. All over the world and of course they had the Americans. They came in the 1943-44.

JC While you were still in Aberdeen were you and your contemporaries fairly politicised in the sense were you thinking politically about the post war period when it was to come or that sort of thing. Or were you not that. You mostly focused on the war effort?

MR Well I was .. We started at school I think, we were quite sort of interested in politics in Turriff at the Academy there and it was actually Labour politics because the Classics teacher there was …. didn't influence us but that was his, you know, and everybody knew ..he had Labour feelings. So yes, I was interested and we had a youth group in Turriff of the League of Nations so I belonged to that and I remember thinking that there wouldn't be a war because the League of Nations would stop it.

JC But alas!

MR And it was really rather sad. And we had two votes.

JC Votes as graduates, of course.

MR When we graduated we had a vote, so you did feel political. I remember my father at the time voting Conservative for the first time in his life, he had always voted Liberal, he told me. He had never told me that before, but he did. And he said "But I am going to vote Conservative, because I really do think that we owe it to Sir Winston Churchill because he has done such a wonderful job". And of course he was, you know, .. I think rather alone in that feeling!

JC And you voted Labour if you had a vote ….

MR Yes, yes. I think we did because … I don't know, I have only just recently joined a political party and I did join the Labour Party when John Smith was in charge of it.

JC So you weren't a party member as a student?

MR No.

JC Although you had these leftish views?

MR No, I wasn't a party member. I don't think… Would we have been allowed to join?

JC I don't know.

MR I am not sure if you would have been allowed to join until you were 21, as 21 was the age, wasn't it, as the voting age in those days, wasn't it, so I think you probably had to be 21. I never felt really, I always felt that I would like to vote for the person, no matter what his party, rather than the party political thing, because I think that… I think that would be a much better parliament myself if people voted for a good man whatever his politics, rather than voting for somebody rotten because they are Conservative or Labour, you know, you get a much better mix, but I don't know.

JC That is a very idealistic idea anyway, isn't it?

MR Call it that! I am sorry.

JC Anything that we have not covered that you would have liked to put on record, before we stop?

MR Do you know I think I can't have given you the impression of a really sort of good student, really ..

JC Where as actually you were a very wicked one! Is that what you were going to say? No!

MR I think we did have a lot of fun, I do think what I would like to say is that I think, in those days you felt far safer on the streets of this country, you didn't.. the university of life was you know very much sort of the University, you weren't sort of cut off in a separate body. I often feel that the young people of today, they are in a university and they think that is the world. We were very much of the world outside. Maybe that was because of the war and because you had brothers and friends and people who were going off and you had that to think about, but I do think that academia isn't everything and I would like to see students maybe not doing so well academically but finding out what is going on around them and taking more interests in what is going on.

JC And you, of course as students, lead a very abstemious life in the sense that I imagine that very few of the women smoked. No drugs, little alcohol?

MR We didn't know… alcohol wasn't a thing ..smoking, yes, but you couldn't get cigarettes!

JC Women on the whole probably didn't, or did they?

MR A lot of women did smoke, yes. There wasn't the … I don't know what they would have done elsewhere, but here in Aberdeen they did. But you couldn't get a lot of cigarettes, I mean, because they were rationed.

JC Did you smoke yourself?

MR Oh yes, yes, I smoked.

JC As a student?

MR Yes. But we had to find the money, so you had to earn it. We didn't.. the thing we never could do was .. you had to put your home fare aside at the beginning of term so that you knew that you could get home and everything else ..

JC You never dipped into that?

MR No and everything else was negotiable. You couldn't borrow money. The bank would never lend you money in those days, so you had to actually sort of survive and you couldn't buy anything you couldn't afford. You didn't spend any money you didn't have. That was the philosophy and we stuck to it and I think we had a lot of fun. I think it was very enjoyable, but I do think you come out, especially with an Ordinary Degree, thinking you know everything about everything and finding out that you know nothing at all, or very little!

JC A nice note to end on. Thank you very much indeed.


End of Interview.
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