The Pravda Guide to the Common Campus, part six
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Right, this is positively the last of these guides to the campus which we
know and love, that of Rending Unversity. The Unversity here is ancient
and modern, and like the hymnbook is beginning to get a little worn. But
not to worry, since like all great institutions set up by people who have
made their fortunes selling dry goods, Rending's fabric is far from, well,
rending.
On the contrary in fact. This month we look at at a few more features of Rending's campus and attempt to sum up what, if anything, this six-part guide to the Common Campus has achieved. 1. The Library The Library is full of books. This comes as a shock to some, but not to most. Apart from boring books about social welfare and protophilosophy, |
the Library has a superb collection of tables and chairs, the Eustace
collection, which is displayed around the spacious corridors. The tables
and chairs of the Eustace collection are distinguished by the fact that
they are perfectly normal examples of library furniture, but by giving
them a fancy name the Library attracts flocks of foreign visitors each
year.
The Library also has a particularly fine collection of staircases, in the Rending tradition. A secret inner staircase runs through the heart of the building, achieving this by means of a twisted, two flight per floor solution. This stairwell also contains lifts. Then there is the showy Grand Staircase, rising like a pencil-thin girder (which it is) from the main entrance hall of the Library. This staircase dominates the library's main concourse, |
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making a graceful junction with the first floor just before bending back and onwards to Science and Technology on the second.
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Thirdly there is the rarely-used but nevertheless well-proportioned Third
Staircase, which is folded against the west wall of the library. This too
has a twist to it: instead of remaining quiet and subdued, it has a
daringly cutaway wall to lean against, faced with plate glass so that the
passing crowds can gaze in at its (not inconsiderable) splendour from
outside.
Thus, the Library is much more than a repository for books: far from it. In fact, were it not for the great need felt at Rending for a further three varieties on the staircase theme, it is doubtful that the books would have anywhere to go. 2. Brudges': We touched on this cultural outrage in issue 29. I have to say that it is a remarkable creation, fashioned entirely (with loving care I should add) from those stalwarts of the medieval building trade, Wattle and Daub.
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Now I have no problems with Wattle and Daub, in fact they are good mates
of mine, but really - to expect a four-storey Wattle and Daub building to
stay up is like expecting to be able to run a hall of residence in which
every single door is locked. The whole place is like a gulag filled
with Russian intellectuals (well, maybe not Russian intellectuals).
Anyway, at least now that the bath's been cleaned out we can concentrate on the good features of Brudges: its own library filled with improving literature (like the best wine, literature improves if left undisturbed for many years) and a thriving IT centre where only five hundred inmates battle to use four antiquated (not to say slow as valium-injected snails with drag anchors) computers. |
Brudges Hall on a very nice day with the sun out and the birds singing |
the famous Grimy Bath - clean now, but for how long? |
This is to leave undisclosed the delights of
the laundry, a room which contains four washing machines which gobble 70p
per wash and three driers which, as the name does not imply, merely heat.
It's also to go without mentioning the wonderful JCR Shop which is open for
approximately three minutes every seventeen days between the hours of
three and four o'clock in the morning (except on leap years when due to
special regulations it must close if there are any customers present).
In fact I've decided to leave the summing-up to the next issue of Pravda. |