Summmer is here, and so are the dreaded summer schools. As a guide, it’s a lottery; we get booked on a tour without knowing who the tour group will be. The tour gods keep it to themselves because they know if we were told we would have to guide a bunch of teenagers around for two hours, we would probably pull a sickie. (Anna, ‘The Cool Guide’, was less than impressed when she thought she was meeting Steve for a tour, only to find 40 Italian teenagers approaching her on Broad Street.)
Teenagers care as much about Oxford as I care about the Grand Prix. The teachers know we are lambs to the slaughters, but they are fully prepared to sacrifice us for a moment of peace. And so my guiding friends and I are left to the torture of entertaining sixteen-year-olds with the history of Oxford.
So here are my summer school reviews:
★ ★ ★ ★ ★ – The lovely Swedish school from London. The girls, although towering over me, listened to every word I said.
★ ★ ★ ★ ★ – The boy from China who said quietly to me on Radcliffe Square that he is in love with the city.
★ ★ ★ ★ – The Christian School who kept quiet and polite all the way through my two hour tour. I then discover afterwards that they were expecting to be on a Harry Potter tour. (I wondered why the teacher kept asking me about Hogwarts).
★ ★ ★ – The teacher who cut the tour short by the Narnia Door so that the kids could get bubble tea. I was appreciative but slightly offended.
★ ★ ★ – The girls who were visibly disappointed when they misheard me and thought I was taking them to a shop when, in fact, I was taking them to the Sheldonian.
★ The kid who just wouldn’t quit it. When I say you can ask questions, I don’t mean every fucking second.
★ Same kid as above who kept pulling faces behind my back and making his friends laugh.
★The American teenagers who flirted throughout my story of the burning of Thomas Cranmer. If you don’t want to learn about one of the most important stories in Oxford’s history, then that is your loss, pals…your loss.
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On a side note, I have managed to make my ugly green jacket into an ugly green bum bag, which I’m quite impressed by.
THE QUACK 