Autumn in England is even grander. But autumn in the gardens of the University of Exeter Campus on a quiet Sunday morning touches the Sublime.
"and then she found herself at last in the beautiful garden, among the bright flower-beds and the cool fountains."
Our slogan - "Exeter: probably the best university in the world" (as R was one of the first to discover)- may rightfully have been put in such hesitant terms, the same is true for the confidence of the statement that we have the privilege to live on England's most beautiful campus (at least, so I assume, but of course I haven't seen Oxbridge yet).
This morning the sun was shining as if October Rains are a meaningless concept - and it was not even cold, as if also the rule that "Cloudless Days in Winter are the Coldest" has been declared unvalid for the day. So I decided to take a walk, and finally execute my resolution to take some brillant pictures of the place I live (which, by the way, you won't get to see until after I've returned, as I still dislike the narcissist type of camera you are supposed to look
at, instead of
through).
Over the past weeks I had already seen a large deal of my new campus: today I linked up some of these shorter walks, to cover the North Half of Streatham Campus. (Other campuses are the tiny one in the centre of Exeter and the one in Cornwall, called Tremough [Tre'mow].)
Streatham campus is a bizarre mixture of English architecture covering all twentieth century-styles and levels of decay, set in a sloping landscape of subtropical vegetation. Cascades lead to mysterious pools shaded by palmtrees and giant leaved plants. When you're inside, you know you're in England. When you're outside, you might find yourself in a Hortus Botanicus greenhouse (on purpose leaving undecided the choice between the UvA's and the VU's...). Never in my life have I seen such botanical diversity. And even now, halfway autumn, many, many plants still blossom. And I have seen hardly any bare trees; instead, the colours of autumn are beginning to take over only now.
However, when I say grand, of course I do not only mean lovely colours and sweet sunshine: I also mean sweeping rains (yesterday) and winds that blow you from the cliffs (dito).
When we now have a look at the area's fauna, most noticable, apart from the usual
Felix Domestica and of course the Gemene Houtduif as well, is an astonishing number of squirrels. I remember being very excited while staring at the tip of the tail of my first-ever real life squirrel in a forest near Rousillon, sixty feet above my cramped neck. Here you have to ford through a pool of wriggling, nibbling orange-grey creatures. Never more will I be able to call squirrels 'sweet'. This is why:
Of course somebody in our unit had to ignore the self-catering accommodation non-smoking policy. And of course someone else had to ignore the sign on the kitchen window stating to "Keep Windows Closed. Squirrels Get in and Eat your Food". No need to tell whose fascinating feeding habits could be observed the following morning, live, in our very own kitchen. An animal ethologist would have been thrilled. A geographer and a historian evidently not.
