High and Lowlands

This image is a view of Lowlands University from “A Very Peculiar Practice” by Andrew Davies. The show is now on the BBC iPlayer to mark 40 years since its first transmission, which means it’s also four decades since I used to sit so very unhappily while facing exactly that view. For while the show actually filmed in two different universities, the main one and the one with this view, was Birmingham University. I didn’t attend Birmingham University and while I’ve spoken there, I’ve presented panels there, that was all inconceivable on those cold days in the 1980s when I’d spend half an hour staring across at those buildings. I suddenly think this sounds a bit Jude the Obscure, that I was sitting there longing to be in the university but that didn’t enter my head then, it didn’t enter my mind until this second. I sat there for the very deep reason that there was a bench. Just behind the bench, so just behind where the camera was for that shot, there’s a road which one beat later…