"We're Keele and we're different. Founded 75 years ago to meet the demands of a new kind of society, economy and world, our principles resonate now more than ever." Keele Home Page

Today, over there at my university - The University of Keele - they are celebrating 75 years of existence. I thought I couldn't let it pass, as the four years I spent there played such an important part of my life. They turned me from a child to an adult, and gave me the best friends I have ever had and a husband too. Not to mention a degree I guess. It was a beautiful place too - still is as you can see from the photo above, 620 acres of grounds - centred around Sneyd Hall home of the Sneyd family from 1540-1948 it seems and before that the Knights Templar and the Knights Hospitallers - an order of military Catholics - the hospitaller bit is for hospital not hospitality. The Sneyds had their ups and downs and the version of Sneyd Hall that you see in the picture dates from the 19th century when a series of lakes and woods were incorporated into the beautiful landscaping that still exists. Where is Keele? Well it's a small village just outside the five towns + Newcastle-under-Lyme which centre on Stoke-on-Trent home of all the big British potteries - Wedgewood and co.

I could, of course say a lot more about my years there, and I have here and there, but today I'm going to focus on a few things associated with food. Bear in mind that this was a fully residential university with a very small number of students - somewhere between 1 and 2 thousand I think. There was therefore a huge amount of social interaction - which is pertinent because of the large number of articles I have seen recently about student life in Australia where there seems to be virtually no student interaction. I was appalled to discover for example that there are no bars on at least Melbourne, Monash and Deakin campuses. Of course there are cafés - well maybe they are just snack bars, but no bars. Now I am in no way encouraging drinking binges, but nevertheless the bar on our campus was a meeting place, in the student's union - centrally placed, with lounges, a ballroom, café, billiards room and other places in which to gather, having acquired one's drink at the bar.

It was also a time when tertiary education was free to all. In addition the living costs were also covered by the government - means tested. Our accommodation (a room and a shared bathroom and kitchenette) and three meals a day were covered and in addition we had a small money grant to cover 'extras' - like those drinks in the bar, and possibly more importantly, text books. I believe the education part was free here in Australia too for a brief moment in time. No longer of course, either here or there which is tragic. Why not?

Of course it's expensive and you could say that only 2% of the potential student population back then, went to university - but the government also paid for all those other further education institutions that are now universities. Medicine was free too and we certainly spent a lot of money on defence - this was, after all, not long post-war and in the middle of the Cold War. I'm sure there are reasons, but nevertheless you would think it was worth the investment - it enabled the brilliant poor to become affluent and successful in life. They don't have that opportunity now.

But food is the topic of today. This is one of the refectories in which those three meals a day were eaten. This photograph was taken in the 60s - when I was there, although I can't see anyone I know. But can you see anybody sitting alone? You didn't have to fill up the seats in order. You either came in in groups or found a friend when you had gathered your meal on your tray. You might just have been sitting with fellow students from a tutorial or lecture, you might have met up with friends, or you might have just looked for a friend when you got there. And OK the food wasn't great, but it was eatable and it was sustenance.

Breakfast was a particularly interesting meal from a gossip point of view - who came in with who, who didn't come in with who - and so on. Although this kind of speculation was also a hot topic at other meals. Was that a girlfriend from home - for guests were allowed in - or was it a sister? Trivial student gossip I know, although from the couple point of view it was also an opportunity to discover how serious this relationship might be. Did your current boyfriend ignore you in the refectory or did he join you at your table? And on it goes. Social interaction, with your friends, and/or loves, however temporary they might be. For me, a very green (not in a greenie sense) late teenager/young adult, these meals taught me so much about conversation, about finding a place in a group, and about people watching.

There were other ways of getting food however. This is the campus shop - also attached to the Union building. Here we would have bought supplies for our Sunday evening meal. The refectories were closed on Sunday evenings. Not that our 'kitchens' had very sophisticated cooking facilities - I think food such as scrambled eggs, or baked beans on toast would have been the norm. Although I do remember David having a speciality of making chocolate cake for he and his friends. The other thing I remember about the shop and food was that the bread was delivered straight from the bakery and was often still warm, so if I entered the shop and the smell of bread was in the air, I would sometimes treat myself to a loaf of bread (they were small), a block of cheese and some butter and greedily consume cheese sandwiches back in my room.

There was also a café in the Union, and sometimes I would indulge myself in a sticky bun after a session in the library just across the road. A sticky bun being what I have just discovered is known as an iced bun and is a long sweet bun with a thickish layer of icing on top. I probably particularly indulged in these in the half term in which I tried to put on weight. I was skinny back then in spite of having a very healthy appetitite, and I think one boyfriend may have commented that I had skinny legs, and so I tried to put on weight. I would have one meal at one refectory and then go to another to repeat the experience. Carole would watch me in shock and mild horror as I did so. I would also eat all the wrong foods like lots of chips and indulge in those sticky buns - and - the ultimate crime - sugar sandwiches. I cringe in embarrassment at this. However, over several weeks of this I found I had put on a minimal amount of weight - half a stone I seem to remember - so I gave up. How much damage did that do to my future health I wonder?

In 1962 the M6 was built and in 1963 the Services area was opened which provided different opportunities on a Sunday night. The motorway borders the far reaches of the university grounds and so a group of us would walk there - quite a long walk I seem to remember and have a meal in the transport caff - that part at the front left of the photograph. This was not a place for a romantic tryst - but it was a great place for a cheap plate of sausages, eggs and baked beans with a rowdy group of friends - yet more social interaction. Maybe the trip would include a stop at the Keele village pub The Sneyd Arms on the way there or back, because it was sort of on the way. Slightly more difficult for we females because those were the days when females were not really welcome in the cheap public bar.

As well as the refectories, the lecture halls and the tutorials, the union and the sporting fields if you were into sport (not me), the most usual places for social interaction were our rooms. In the first year we had to share a room - a very good way to meet people of course - and I hit the jackpot by being paired with Carole who is still a very geographically distant but wonderful friend. This first room was at the end of a corridor of around six or eight rooms and on our first night some of the older students invited us to their room for an introduction to student life. And they served coffee - well Nescafé. I'm pretty sure that I had never tasted coffee before, but I guess I never looked back. For years it was instant coffee - well into my thirties indeed and I have the jars to show for it in my pantry still. There are lots of them. I haven't drunk Nescafé for decades and so I guess they could be described as vintage. But they match and they are a good size. There are small ones too which are particularly useful for some of the bulkier spices.

It wasn't the coffee though - it was the social interaction - some of it of the boy/girl kind. There was never an invitation to "see my etchings" but often an invitation to a cup of coffee. More often than not however, it was groups of friends meeting together at the end of a long day discussing life, the universe and everything - and boyfriends/girlfriends - one's own and those which were the hot topic of the day.

Alcohol too was new to me, and this of course led to a few fairly disastrous episodes but I won't go there. Gradually - and probably with the help of David who was never into alcohol - I grew to understand when too much was too much. Just to add to this particular part of social mixing, the drink of choice was beer - because it was cheap and the alternatives were dreadful. No Chateau Mouton Rothschild there. If you did drink wine - very rare - it was what we called funeral wine - Graves - a low end version of the French sweet wine. The bar, however was a good meeting place, and also provided me with a bit of extra cash when I worked occasionally gathering and washing empty glasses, at balls to which I had not been invited.

My last foodie memory? The best of all really. As part of the French part of my double honours degree I had to spend a minimum of three months in France at the end of my third year. And so I found myself in Grenoble and the Jura, as an au pair to a young family. Of course I had had all those years with my french exchange friends, and in a wonderful coincidence one of these families now lived in Grenoble and so I was able to catch up every weekend on my day off. There are two particular things I remember however. In Grenoble it was Madame's ratatouille. I had never encountered ratatouille which she always served with rice and an apology that she had forgotten to salt it. It was a very new taste to me - my previous French encounters had been with the cooking of the parts of France around Paris and they didn't do ratatouille - or much with the vegetables contained therein. In the Jura, it was, of course, the wonderful Provençale cook Madame Perruque. Every meal was a wonder, but I remember in particular her Gratin Dauphinois. That three months, not only improved my French to almost fluency but also made me determined to build on what I had already learnt about that wonderful cuisine and introduced me to the food of the south and the Alps.

I almost forgot America. At the end of my first year, my friend Carole and I, as the result of encouragement from a friend, travelled to America for the summer vacation. On food - we had so little money that we existed on hamburgers, baked beans, baked potatoes, and other such cheap food. But that cheap food introduced us to such things as hash browns, rye bread, crackers, waffles and maple syrup, clam chowder, banana splits and milk shakes.

And then generous Americans invited us into their homes and gave us corn on the cob, huge steaks at barbecues - a new thing - and took us to expensive French restaurants in New Orleans. It also showed us that all those big food companies like Heinz and Kelloggs which, in our ignorance we had thought were British, were in fact American.

Of course there have been other periods in my life that have been equally life-changing, also with foodie effect. For food is indeed one of the major ways in which we interact with our fellowmen. A British writer, Fliss Freeborn, writing about the modern student experience talked about one particular slightly crazy student occasion involving mackerel as

"one example of the ways we used food as an excuse for a social event during my student days. In fact, meeting and eating seemed to be my peer group’s preference"

Today, sadly it seems, you have to make an effort to do this, and actually cook yourself. We were lucky - the occasions for eating together were presented to us on a plate - no pun intended. Three times a day. To which we added the drinking and the snacking and local excursions. And gradually we learnt from our early missteps and mistakes and grew into adults able to live our own lives - and not alone. For this I shall always be grateful to Keele - for many years voted Britain's most student friendly university - as well as a whole lot of other things - greenest being one of them. The students may not all live on campus all of the time, and they may not have free education anymore or free accommodation either, but nevertheless the opportunity to meet and make friends over a meal or a drink - even if it's only Nescafé is still there. Long may it prosper.

Happy birthday Keele.