Lost in Translation

This is a version of the story that I told for the Lost in Translation event in North Quad, November 9, 2012.

It’s 1984 and my wife and I have moved to England.  This is the year that the IRA tried to assassinate Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher by blowing up the entire Grand Hotel in Brighton.  It’s also the year of the great British coal strike, when miners from Cornwall and Wales struck for the right to have their sons work in the mines like their fathers had, and electricity was somewhat scarce in Cambridge.

The year we arrived was the year that Peterhouse, the oldest College at Cambridge, first agreed to admit women.  And brave women they were too, because the Master of the College – that’s what they call a Dean – said, and this is a quote, “they had let the scrubbers in.”

The reason we moved to England was so I could do a study abroad year in the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics at Cambridge.  Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics.  D – A –M – P – T.   Dampt.  The word captures perfectly the English climate.  Dampt.  Snuggled at the wrong end of the Gulf Stream the British Isles are blessed with rain.  Rain, and chill.  It don’t get any better than that. 

My wife and I lived in a place called the Wolfson Flats at Churchill College.   Churchill College was named after Winston Churchill, who apparently had something to do with World War II.  He was a man after whom whole colleges are named.  Wolfson, on the other hand, seemed to be man after whom flats are named.   Kinda like CC Little, a man after whom, it seems, UM bus stops are named.

Now you may wonder why they call these places flats in England, rather than using the proper English word, “apartment.”   The reason, apparently, is because the roof is dead flat.

So the roof is flat, but also with a low parapet surrounding it.  And did I mention the rain?  Flat roof, with a parapet, in the rain --- what could go wrong?

Our flat was on the top floor, and we had a wonderful skylight right over the card table – excuse me over the dining table.

Skylight.  Flat roof.  Low parapet.  Rain.  What could go wrong?  The amazing thing was that it did not drip.  It did not ooze.  It did not even spot.  It simply opened up one day like someone was pouring a pitcher of water from the roof of the Wolfson Flats right down onto our card table.

Now next to the card table was a large metal box.  Inside that box were several hundred bricks.   These bricks had but one purpose: to get hot.  Also in the box was a 220 volt high current electric heater.   This sounds like a great place to pour water.  

Fortunately, because of the coal strike, we could only run electricity through the heater in the morning, the theory being that the bricks would get hot and radiate heat for the rest of the afternoon.  And evening.  And through the night.   Like evolution, it’s only a theory.  

In reality the first thing we did in Cambridge was retreat to London, go to Harrods, and buy sleeping bags.  These served as our bed linens for the entire year in the Wolfson Flats.

The meal that was on the table had been bought and prepared that very day.  This was possible because we had a full kitchen – which is to say we had a two-burner camp stove and a dorm room fridge.  You can’t store food.  And you can’t cook much because you only have a two-burner camp stove in your flat.  So in Cambridge you hunt up what you will eat that day, and skin and cook it on your camp stove that night.  Then you clean the dishes by putting them under the skylight and letting the Wolfson Flats pour water on them.

But the camp stove had a vital purpose: the flat had a bathtub too.  Did I mention that the British Isles are at the wrong end of the Gulf Stream, and it is cold and DAMPT?   Fortunately the flat came with a tea kettle, and the kettle fit nicely on the camp stove.  So with the bath tub, the camp stove, and the tea kettle, you could take a hot bath in the Wolfson Flats.

So let’s face it, Wolfson had his name on a kinda cruddy set of flats. 

Sir Issac Wolfson made his money through a company called Great Universal Stores – or GUS.  GUS sold clothes mail order, also owned furniture stores and, ironically, do-it-yourself stores. 

But Isaac Wolsfon said “No man should have more than 100,000 pounds.  The rest he should give to charity.”   He made lots more than 100,000 pounds, and give it away he did.  He gave to found a hospital in Israel.  He gave to New Hall, one of the first women’s colleges at Cambridge. He gave to the Waterford School in Swaziland, where Nelson Mandela’s children and grand children went to school.  He gave to University College, the first co-ed college at Cambridge.   And University College is now called Wolfson College, so I guess that, like Winston Churchill, Isaac Wolfson is the kind of person who has colleges named after him.

I lived in Cambridge nearly 30 years ago, and did not know until this year what good Isaac Wolfson had done.   To me he was just the name on a crappy set of flats where I lived.  His contributions had been lost in translation.

And CC Little? He was the 6^th president of the University of Michigan.