After visiting the Cherwell Boathouse, I might spare Oxford from burning

It is now two decades since I lived in Oxford. I was then a drunk and lonely puddle of a person, with only a gift for screaming; but no matter how low I sank, to paraphrase Alcoholics Anonymous literature, I never sank quite as low as to consider eating at the ’bab van (kebab van) outside Univ (University College) on the High (High Street); I preferred to dine in Hall (a hall). Oxford, you see, has its own native dialect, a sort of pidgin posh best worn with a depressed carnation and a giant inedible chip made of class terror. Perhaps the roots of my eventual redemption were in that tiny grunt of gastronomic self-esteem; who knows? Or was it just another thing I dreamt and actually I ate ’babs constantly? Maybe I really was a ’bab? I wasn’t a horrible teenage alcoholic, after all — just a ’bab. (Forgive me. Oxford is a city for peculiarly self-hating hallucinations, in the way that Market Harborough is not. Sometimes they last for years.)

I once wrote an article for the Guardian saying I wished Oxford would burn down, but I was on deadline, and ashamed. Not that it is just me. Many people hate Oxford. The only people who don’t feel chippy about Oxford are probably too thick to get past the porters (guards) and into the arms of the scouts (cleaning ladies and gentlemen who exist to protect the dead stones from the anxious flesh children), with or without an interpreter. That is why Colin Dexter had a career. He murdered Oxford students and dons in his head, marvellously; his vision was so universally adored that it is currently on its second spin-off TV series.