I must have been one of the first students there when I moved into my little room – C3 – in 1970. 

Recently, I went back and they showed me my old room. 

Nothing had changed. 

Lying on the single bed you see the same pattern of glued fibres on the ceiling. 

How many times did I try to count them?

Outside the college, on the corner, all the trees are now large and mature, but I watched them being planted 45 years ago.

Out of my window I see my fellow student, Terry, arrive in his battered old car along with a cloud of dust, as he parks unerringly between the wire fence and a metal post, with not an inch to spare. 

He has come back from lectures.

Next to Drummond used to be a boiler house and Terry wanted to crab his way up the inside of the boiler chimney. 

Thankfully, he never did (to my knowledge, anyway). 

When I was at Drummond there lived two large pine trees in the quadrangle. 

Terry and another student took my old motorbike tyre all the way up to the top of one of the trees and hung it from a branch. I still have the photos. 

Out my old window, I can also see the old cottage which we named “Gill’s Cottage”, after a fellow student who died in a car accident coming back from one of our out-of-town parties. 

Gill was a studious young man and it was probably the first time he had ever had an alcoholic drink. It was certainly his last. 

The cottage is now used for university security.

I’m sure I’m not the only one with fond (and other) memories of Drummond College. 

It only seems like yesterday.

 My, how time goes by. 

Tempus fugit.

Greg Gosson

Tamworth