TRAVEL | Arrival - Exeter College (Part I)

My inner GPS was well out of sync. But I made it.

There was a craft market in the Kassem Stadium car park and not one Oxford United scarf to be seen. It wasn't that I was distracted. The fullness of the carpark threw me and I missed the scrubby track through to the kiddies playground that would take me to The Last Stop At Pegasus Street.

I found the stop for Bus 12, but who wants to wait for an hour. So I turned a corner and spied a woman with her hair dyed red sucking on a fag and doing the best impersonation of Magda Szubanski I have ever seen....complete wiv Brr-Itsh accent.

"Nah - ya see pet i say luv I say darl. I'll tell the short way. Y'see luv I said pet I said luv, ya need ....*cough* *hack *spit* ya need ta take the lane. Then go down the lane. Then go up the lane. Then around the lane. And you'll *cough* *hack *spit**cough**cough*....then you'll find a lane and thats the bus stop".

It was all a little Enid Blyton for me but sure enough that's the way it panned out an I didn't get soaked by washing water coming down a tree.

Turns out that Exeter College is behind all of the Blackwells stores. Score one me.

I met the Porter and for the rest of the day kept falling into Vicar of Dibley gibbersih 'cos "'is Dad, roight was a porter, as was 'is dad. Me grate-gran' dad was a porter, like 'is dad and the dad before 'im and 'is uncle before 'im"

"His uncle, not his dad?"

"Oh no, he was a rebel. Black Sheep y'know. 'E ran off to be a gate-keeper".

I found my key read "Staircase Nine - 42" which turned out to be at the top on the 4th floor.

And it's bloody brilliant.....