Tuesday Drinks

As the weather outside is getting warmer again, I am reminded of going out in Middelburg. Do mind that this post concerns memories that might be slightly rosy-tinted.

Going out in Middelburg was completely different from the way we go out here in Leicester. It did often include a pub - Seventy Seven, De Mug, or, before it was demolished, Barrel - but usually ended in a Koestraat common room or Bagijnhof living room..

Actually, on warm spring and autumn evenings, going out in Middelburg would often be punctuated by lying down on the Market Square, gazing up at the stars, and discussing life, the universe and everything. Actually, every place in Middelburg attended by RA/UCR students was a place to discuss life, the universe and everything.

One of my favourite traditions of the time was Tuesday Drinks, a fairly random and small collection of people, and we would gather on Tuesdays (but not every Tuesday) around 9, 10-ish, as Wednesday was our traditional day off (though over my six semesters at RA, I've only had three in which I didn't actually have class on Wednesdays). There would inevitably be six-packs of whatever brand of beer was cheap that week - 'but not the really cheap stuff because that's like flavoured water' - crisps, chocolate, a stack of plastic cups and a deck of cards. We'd start out discussing the latest gossip - inevitable in a university college of 600 - but quickly moved on to discuss politics. I vividly remember having a discussion on whether Mubarak's reign in Egypt around the end of my first year - mind, this was way before the Arab spring - was democratically valid, and whether he'd last much longer. Politics often led to philosophy and theology, while the deck of cards and the plastic cups led to games of King's Cup and, once bored of it, Never Have I Ever.

What strikes me in retrospect is the ease with which we switched from topic to topic, and the respect we had for each other's points. We had markedly different political views, and of course our discussions turned quite heavy and a bit shouty every once in a while, but it was all done in good fun. Some of the discussions touched on topics that might have solicited very different reactions from different people - for instance, though our little collection was half female, half male, there was no rudeness from anyone with regards to sexuality, whether we discussed pornography (it was easily taken for fact that yes, women like porn too), experiences (no slut-shaming) or anything else of the sort. Everything was up for debate, whether we should put the fake goldfish floating in a half-empty Bagijnhof fish bowl into the King's Cup which at that moment held a particularly awful mixture of beer and Bailey's, or whether Plato or Aristotle's model of the perfect government would be better suited to deal with the global economic crisis.

We even put forward Quidditch practice once as something to try out - which we did, even trying to set up a team, before our efforts fizzled as graduation approached.

Going out in Leicester's good fun, and I'm sure that everything is still up for debate and I'm sure that my fellow Criminologists would approach such topics with the same kind of respect and sensitivity. Actually, I know they will, as similar things have been discussed here, both at parties and, for instance, in the library.
But in Tuesday Drinks we had a forum, and if there is one desire I have for the next room or flat I rent, it's that it needs to have enough space to invite people over for dinner parties and drinks.

To Tuesday Drinks.