Dating my tutor

Also, bad hips, a good book, and a little reminder about airplane etiquette...

It’s probably a good idea that Cambridge has banned personal relationships between staff and students. A new set of rules is coming into force at the university in a couple of weeks which forbids any hanky panky between them, or anything that looks or sounds like hanky panky (‘My my, professor, is that a large ruler in your pocket or are you simply pleased…’ etc etc, said no student ever).

This, most people would agree, is sensible. A clear, judicious new set of guidelines to protect students and staff from a situation where anyone could be accused of abusing their power. Apparently, there have been cases of staff matching with students on dating apps, and these new rules make it absolutely clear that, in such a scenario, you should swipe over the handsome poetry professor and not even entertain the idea of a little flirt over Sonnet 116. The new rules bring Cambridge into line with various other British universities, including Oxford, UCL and Exeter, which already forbid such relationships outright. Like I said, sensible. Responsible. A safeguard.

At the same time…maybe the tiniest bit unromantic?

Almost exactly 20 years ago, I embarked on my first year at university and fell wildly in love with one of my tutors. He taught political philosophy (of course he did), and I would sit in his lectures thinking things like ‘Is there anything more attractive than a man who knows his Rousseau?’ (I was 19. We can all be unbearable at 19.)

He wore three-piece suits and polished shoes. He had a perfectly dry sense of humour. Towards the end of the year, I emailed him about having screwed up the date of our mock exam (all correspondence and essays were sent by email), in which I made a terrible and questionable joke about being blonde and essentially challenged him to a drink. I’ll spare you the details because they’re not dignified but, long story short, we went out for a drink, and that drink turned into a two-year relationship.

Two years? Maybe two and a half years. I can’t quite remember because it was literal decades ago but they were very wonderful. I was in love for the first time, having been raised on an almost exclusive diet of Jane Austen books and adaptations, and giddy with it. If there was any imbalance it was on my side, because I went after him with all the grit and determination of a woman who’d recently released from seven years at a single-sex boarding school.

I sent him sunflowers early on in the belief that women could just as easily send men flowers as they could us; I burned him a James Blunt CD (lol); we sent one another long, sweet emails that first summer while we were both travelling; he bought me a book of Edgar Allan Poe poetry. Finally I knew what it was like to have a person, my person, to go to sleep with and wake up beside. To message. To talk to. To hold hands with in a restaurant. To go away with at the weekends (until we went away for our final weekend, two years or so later in Amsterdam, where we broke up shortly before going around the Anne Frank museum, and I spent the entire tour walking through those cramped rooms audibly sobbing. ‘Jeez, that poor girl is really affected by this museum,’ I could see other tourists thinking).

He wasn’t teaching me by the time we started dating because I’d graduated to my second year and finished his course. But we still kept it a secret on the basis that this was probably wise, ignoring one another in the library or the place where everyone went to get noodles at lunchtime. This used to drive my friend Emily mad, because she knew I was dating a tutor but she didn’t know which one. ‘You just missed him,’ I’d tell her, if she and I were getting lunch together in the café and he came in to grab a coffee. It was fun, and sexy, and the age gap wasn’t so pronounced. I tell people this story sometimes and they imagine a crusty old don, but I was 20 by the time we went on our first date, and he was 34.

He was and remains one of the kindest, brilliant and most thoughtful people I know, with a brain the size of the moon, and I learned a good deal from our relationship - communication skills, quite a bit about American football, and why not to break up with someone mere minutes before going round Anne Frank’s house. He was certainly more grown-up and thoughtful than the men I could have dated who were my age. Thanks to him, I also improved music taste. Happiest of all, he’s stayed so close to my family (after our disastrous break-up weekend in Amsterdam) that, a few years ago, he married a subsequent girlfriend at my dad and step-mother’s home in Spain. How about that for a modern relationship?

I’m proud of it and fond of the memories. I look back at photos of that period now and my heart clenches a bit for how devotedly and uncomplicatedly I loved him, how easy it was compared to some of my subsequent relationships, when more baggage made things trickier, less trusting. When there was more angst.

So it’s probably good that Cambridge have changed the rules because I’m sure plenty of campus fumbles are quite different and the power imbalance more pronounced. I’m just saying it doesn’t always have to be the case, because it wasn’t that way for me.

Picture of the week

Phwoarrrrrrrrr. Tremendous excitement last Wednesday when I went off to hospital for a steroid injection in my right hip. This was the culmination of roughly 18 months of grumbling. A slight niggle towards the end of 2022 turned into a daily ache, bad at night, worse at my desk. I stopped running, took up pilates, became the sort of person who started sentences with ‘My osteo says…’, bought a standing desk, bought more supportive trainers, knocked back ibuprofen like Smarties, took up swimming (until I swam past an *actual turd* in my local pool), was told I had arthritis, spent a week swallowing lumpy homemade turmeric lattes because apparently they’re anti-inflammatory, chowed down fish oil (capsules AND liquid format), and pestered and pestered and PESTERED my GP for someone to take it seriously.

The upshot of all of that is that, last week, I had a 15cm needle of steroid stuck into my right thigh and up into the hip socket to try and reduce the inflammation in the area. The jury’s still out as to what exactly the problem is. One consultant suggested that it’s something called a labral tear which GRATIFYINGLY only athletes or the elderly usually suffer from, and I’m not the latter yet, am I??? (‘Goodness, how did you get that?’ my mother asked nervously when I told her, because she thought I’d said I had a labial tear).

But then yet another consultant said it probably a labral tear, so in the meantime they’ve given me the jab, which was a particularly thrilling experience because the X-ray machine wasn’t working and I had to lie on a cold table in theatre for 20 minutes trying not to look at the size of the thing they were about to slide into my thigh. Apparently lots of people scream and I didn’t, which is why I’ve included my report above like a four-year-old showing you its school report (‘you withstood the procedure very well’). Although I did feel quite shaky afterwards and was wheeled back to recovery where I ate custard creams as if I was gunning for first place in a custard cream eating competition before being discharged (TERRIBLE word).

The upshot is that the jab gave me a blissful 24 hours of no pain and I could stand on my right leg to put my knickers the following morning, but boringly it already seems to have come back. So what I’m wondering is: do I need a new hip aged 39? I’m taking a hefty scoop of collagen every morning as someone told me that helps lubricate (another bad word) the joints, and I think it’s helping a bit, although I worry it’s also making the single beard hair under my chin grow like Japanese knotweed. But is there ANYTHING else that’s good for dodgy hips or is this simply the beginning of the end and should I start casing Facebook marketplace for a mobility scooter? ALL suggestions welcome.

Recommendation of the week

This came out on Thursday and I had it on preorder, which meant it would land on my doormat as soon as it was published and I could start reading IMMEDIATELY. I loved Catherine Newman’s last novel so much. You can see a tiny thumbnail of the cover on this pic. You see the lemon tart? That book was called We All Want Impossible Things and it’s about two best friends, one who has terminal cancer, and I know that doesn’t make it sound a laugh a minute but it is truly one of the most life-affirming (and funny!) novels I’ve ever read. I’ve pressed it into so many people’s hands as a present since, and I don’t think there’s any higher compliment (to a writer) than giving someone a book you’ve loved and you think they might love too. Katherine Heiny’s the other author I often give to pals, fyi.

This is Newman’s new novel, Sandwich, about an American family on holiday in Cape Cod. They’ve been going to the same place for 20 years so it’s full of memories and nostalgia and the smell of suncream. The protagonist, Rocky, is a mother (mom) of grown-up children and torn between her immense pride at what her babies have become, and the longing for when their hot little sandy hands slipped into hers. It covers some Big Themes - ageing, ageing parents, the menopause (it’s very menopausey, if that’s not your thing), babies, marriage, family life and so on - but it does so with Newman’s magnificently wry sense of humour. She’s one of those rare and magical writers who can make your BARK on one page and cry the next. There’s also a particularly good joke about old vaginas being put out to pasture like retired police horses and if that doesn’t sell it for you then frankly I don’t know what will. Perfect perfect thing for a holiday.

Nonsense Bad behaviour of the week

A little reminder, as it’s the summer holidays, about airline seat etiquette. I wrote some of the above on a flight to Sardinia last night where I’m on holiday with my mum for a few days. But as I wrote, I was catapulted back and forth in my seat by whoever was sitting in the row behind me. Every time any of them got up, and they got up a lot, they would clasp the back of my seat as if climbing a very high wall and my headrest was the top of it. Every time they returned, they lowered themselves back into their seats by doing the same and I would fling backwards again. A couple of times, their fingers caught my hair. Because I’m English, and woefully non-confrontational, I obviously said nothing. But I did sit there quite crossly, thinking ‘It is entirely capable to get into and out of an airline seat, even an EasyJet seat, without causing the person in front of you whiplash.’

It reminded me of the time my brother and I were small, coming back from a family holiday in Majorca, and I merrily swung my legs back and forth for the entire flight. When we landed and were all waiting to disembark, an elderly lady turned around and fixed me with an icy stare. ‘Was that you kicking my seat all journey?’

I panicked. ‘No!’ I squeaked quickly, and pointed to my brother. ‘It was him!’ Whereupon this elderly lady, quite a grand elderly lady, clipped my brother round the ear.

Wouldn’t happen these days, although I quite wanted to have a go last night.