Purple on the Green

The jewels of Cambridge are often hidden; but, they are here.  Most are secreted amid the bustle and over-crowding of the city centre.  All lay within the walls of the colleges.  When spring comes, they will be at their most beautiful.  And, for their beauty, they will be flooded with tourists.  I can live with tourists for the jewels beyond the drab gates and self-deprecating doors of Cambridge colleges.  

I passed St. John’s College recently.  In the stark light of late afternoon, the sand-coloured walls seemed stolid.  City life flowed past them like a river passes through a canyon good for fishing.  

Just as I stood opposite its entry, making my own passage over the cobblestones, the College door swung open.  Keening with the pressure of an opened sluice that held back, even protected, fresh waters, the door revealed an emerald court, and another beyond.  Each pooled amidst the same sand-coloured walls as those facing the street.  The hour was that sliver of day when sunlight crests the College roofs and cascades down upon the lawns.  

The door had been opened by a pair of professors in their flowing black robes for the singular purpose of leaving the College.  It seemed, selfishly in my mind’s eye however, as though the doors were opened simply to release the light.  Tourists on the street with me stopped to memorialise the moment.  The flashing of their cameras’ lights, then, seemed the movement of white-water.  And, their excitement vocalized as gasps and exclamations: white-water’s rising din.

But, I paint the scene purple.  

The doors closed almost as quickly as they had opened.  Saint John’s was again a reservoir, closed to the passing of the city’s turbid stream.