At Oxford University, I walked the gardens, that summer I was newly graduated.  I noted the neat freshly cut lawns and the sweet scent of the immaculate flower beds. Then my eyes fell on the sign: Only Fellows may use the lawns.

I was a graduate, so I was going to use that grass. I stepped onto that emerald square, I walked boldly to the centre. Ignoring the gasps, I looked around, took a deep breath, and began to dance.

I did the one-step, the two-step, and the three. On that beautifully tended green: I lifted up my knees, I kicked back my heels, and I threw out my feet.

The sod flew; I caroused, I cavorted, I pirouetted upon that square of mud.

I’m a graduate, I thought, from Sheffield…Polytechnic.

‘You fools!’ I cried in my ecstasy.

In Hindsight I was the fool.

A Fellow is a senior member of the academic staff; far above any lowly Honours degree. I now go back to that 10x10 square, the scene of my shame, every year for eight hours of unpaid tending. I will do so for the next one hundred and seventy-two years; or until I die.

Whichever comes first.