Last week I wrote a tweet which said something along the lines of “now a fully matriculated student at Cambridge university, only 20 years after I first tried” and along with a few congratulatory comments was one that said moreorless well done, perseverance pays off. I haven’t really thought that – whilst I was devastated not to eventually get a place at Cambridge in 1989 after being pooled, I soon realised I would probably not have enjoyed it with the intellectual effort it would have cost me. I thoroughly loved my years in Hull and the opportunities and friendships it offered me. So there hasn’t been any triumphalism in coming back, or much irony in being here, and I have no doubt that the intellectual effort required of me now will be little less than back then! I have no recollection of how I got here back then (presumably by train) or how from the station to Queen’s. But the first time I walked past Queen’s it triggered one or two remembrances of the visit. It seems – and was – a lifetime ago – at least one lifetime, but whereas then I felt an outsider even before i was interviewed about the finer points of the imperfect subjunctive which in our AEB syllabus we had not at that point covered, now I feel this is where I should be. Right here, right now, with this group of people in this context, just as many of the opening welcomes suggested. The icon in Westcott chapel says “you did not choose me, but I chose you”. And that is how it feels. The training period here is moreorless half the time that the discernment process has taken to get here, so patience was obviously involved. Now I just have to do it, and God, justice.

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