Professor Julia Gog OBE (1994) proposed the health of the College at the Commemoration Feast, 12 March 2021
Lionel D’Souza
Master, Fellows, scholars and guests: It is wonderful that we can still mark the Commemoration of Benefactors, even if it must be online. And of course there are silver linings to this as well. I know there are some of you out there joining today who would not have been able to come to Cambridge in person – I am delighted to be sharing this event with you, via internet magic. I am sure at an event like this we are all thinking back to when we were able to gather together in large numbers for special evenings in Trinity’s marvellous dining hall. And maybe also thinking of the first such occasion, which for many of us of course was our matriculation dinner.
Thinking about matriculation, my thoughts turn to the current students during these times, and particularly to all the new undergraduates and graduates who must be missing out on special events in person. And as well as the big milestones, of course, so many day-to-day things that make up College life cannot currently happen in the same way that they did for us. But, we can hope that, like every generation of new members of Trinity, new students take the situation in which they find themselves and make it their own. So we can expect the Trinity student community will find new ways to connect and maintain a thriving society. Maybe it will not be anything like how those of us who matriculated last century would ever have imagined, yet alone being anything that Trinity members from centuries further past would outwardly have recognised at all. But maybe some of the new ways, borne out of necessity T R I N I T Y A N N UA L R ECOR D 2021 17
COM MEMOR AT ION
Though my own matriculation was 27 years ago now, I remember the dinner well, as I was seated next to the wonderful Lady Atiyah. For me, the prospect of the dinner was both exciting and frightening. Arriving at the dinner, all scrubbed up and struggling with my gown; honestly, I was terrified: so much cutlery and so many glasses! But Lady Atiyah looked after the freshers around her. She explained to us in her straightforward way that for cutlery it is start on the outside and work inwards, and everything else was mostly obvious. I was then able to relax, take it all in and thoroughly enjoy a very special evening indeed.
