Visiting Cambridge (UK) with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Visiting Cambridge (UK) with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Laurent’s colleague’s wife picked Florence and me up for a trip out to Cambridge University and the town of Cambridge on one of our trips to London.

Cambridge lies just an hour away from Epping.  The landscape becomes flatter as you leave London and drive towards Cambridge.

I knew I would like Cambridge University when we drove into town and I saw Chinese cloisonné vases in office windows around campus and at the Fitzwillem Museum.  Young women in mini skirts dashed around on bicycles.  Bookstores were everywhere.

I love university book towns no matter where they are.  They tend to have:

-many bookstores

-lectures open to the public on many topics which professors and graduate students alike do to learn how to deal with question and answer sessions and to hone their presentation skills in front of potential donors, who could fund their research

-great public libraries with wonderful children’s and teen book collections and skills development collections for all ages (up-to-date tech books are hideously important in an environment where skills become obsolete quickly)

-museums and parks for strolling, so families can do the Italian “paseo” where the entire family goes out for walks.  (At one time, CSUMB's Kinesiology Department supported research for campus walks and the amount of calories you would burn for each walk to help with weight loss programs.  They might be able to do consulting on how to set this up for other communities.)

-places to learn about nature and buy books about animals like zoos, botanical gardens, and outings in nature

-cafés for discussion

-great grocery stores with a variety of American and ethnic foods, so you can prepare foods from scratch and have a choice of good “microwave” food

-broadband access at both libraries and chamber of commerce locations.  Each community should have 10 high-quality, mass-produced items that they can sell all over the country to assure good sales tax income for the community.  The West could have Cowboy Scarves.  (See this Savvy Mom Website for how to use these items.)  

-very high educational standards that are listed for everyone in the community to see along with self-study books you can use to obtain these skills in addition to textbooks.  All of the self-study books should be available at public libraries in multiple copies and on e-readers such as Kindle.

-public transit with local and express options

In 2018, I would add that great university towns should offer the ability to gain many certifications for entry-level jobs or just for organizing a home later in life:

-early childhood education

-touch typing for Silicon Valley jobs

-software engineering (especially in Excel and Access to do databases, mail merges, and personalized mass mailings)

-headset skills for sales and/or radio shows

-H and R Block training for personal and corporate taxation issues

-business plan training for fundraising purposes and to analyze whether or not your idea could turn a profit  – see SBA.gov – small business administration website of the US government

-driving classes for both automatic and stick shift cars

-car buying and maintenance classes

-driving classes for various types of vehicles, driving classes for various kinds of trucks, boat pilot classes, and plane piloting classes for private planes and package delivery companies

-sales training – maybe through doing the Toastmasters organization’s course

-public access television with production equipment training

-film clubs for contemporary and historic films by country

-certification classes to sell products such as:

- wine (Sommelier 1 and 2)

- beer (Cicerone 1 - 4)

- fashion (Western Wear)

-cultural tourism (religious tourism for the Missions, Monterey's Spanish adobe homes, the Dali Museum in Monterey, ethnic festivals on the Monterey Wharf - Turkish, Greek, and Italian - and Cowboy Poetry)

-catering

-restaurant

-hotel

-art sales (Sotheby's courses) 

Subject knowledge alone is not enough to do sales in many industries, because you need to know taxation, insurance, shipping, invoicing, negotiation, prior ownership for right-to-sell purposes, and import/export regulations.  Stolen goods are a problem in art sales, decorative arts, and antiques sales.  Online certifications should be offered.


Books should be sold at many outlets on topics relevant to the outlet.  Zoos should have animal and environment books, for example.

Cambridge and Cambridge University certainly provided many places to chat.  The Jesus Field by the Granta and Cam Rivers with their various canals was a mini homage spot for me; one of the favorite books I read in high school was Daniel Martin by John Fowles, who wrote about a rich movie producer and director, reflecting on his college days in this book.

That situation might describe John Fowles as well.  He wrote the French Lieutenant’s Woman, which starred Meryl Streep.  Then, he wrote the creepy book The Collector, which scared women away and finally the warped book The Magus to keep everyone away. 

All of these Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games might have their ultimate origin in Fowles’ book The Magus along with the Italian film L’Avventura, directed by Michelangelo Antonioni.

I finally visited the bookstore chain whose book bags I had seen all over London – Dillons.  I bought two great books in this store:

-Catalonia: A Self-Portrait edited by Josep Miguel Sobrer

-Among the Cities by Jan Morris – my favorite travel writer, who wrote a great chapter on Australia in this book

After the bookstore, we visited Kings’ College and the beautiful gardens at Clare College.  Having to negotiate steps with Florence’s stroller throne was hard, which prevented us from visiting all the quads.

At Trinity College, we walked through the quad and admired the Gothic architecture.  Each college is its own little world complete with a chapel.

After our visit to Cambridge University, I returned to Epping with my husband’s colleague’s wife for a “cuppa” of tea.  The cold weather made the tea taste delicious, and I had to drink it with two lumps of sugar.

Laurent picked me up after work.  We went back to the hotel and ate a soup, salad, and some bread for dinner.  I drank a cuppa of tea and slept soundly until the next day.

By Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France


Click here for:  Ruth Paget's Amazon Books

Ruth Paget Selfie