Chaperoning wildlife, retrieving lost rugby posts and handling enquiries about 14th century Cambridgeshire – if you thought the life of a porter amounted to little more than offering polite directions, think again. Here are a selection of some of the...
“Two American students called us at half-past two in the morning to ask us to remove a spider from their room.”
“Several years ago, a part-time porter – who has since moved on to pastures new – put up our college flag. The only problem was that he hoisted it upside down. It then got stuck and we had to call the fire service to get it down.”
“We had a strange memo not so long ago: ‘Please put ducks on pond at 9.30am’.”
“Our old Master had two cats – Jemima and Geoffrey. Every Sunday we had to babysit one of them because he would run into the chapel and start miaowing at the top of his voice. It drowned out the choir.”
“Last year a student asked us if he could hang a brace of partridges in his room.”
“I was once asked to come and catch a pheasant that was running around on the second floor of one of our staircases. I went up and, sure enough, there was a large male pheasant causing havoc. I got a large bath towel, caught him and released him downstairs.”
“Late one evening we had a thrush trapped in the Porters’ Lodge. It was playing dead so I turned all the lights out, and opened the window in the hope that it would fly out. People did ask why we were sitting in complete darkness.”
“We occasionally enter into the following exchange:
‘I have a room booked here today.’
‘Sorry, sir, we have no record of that.’
‘No, I definitely have a room booked.’
‘I’m really sorry sir, your name isn’t in the book.’
‘There must be a mistake. I have a room booked here, today, at St Catherine’s College, Oxford.’
“A few year’s ago an elderly alumnus of the college came to stay. Some time during the afternoon, he came down to the Porters’ Lodge to explain that his phone wasn’t working. I asked him whether it was connected to the socket. A quizzical look came across his face so I went up to his room. Sure enough the phone was out of its socket and I showed him how to fix the problem. He then turned to me and said: “Crikey, I didn’t realise you had to plug those things in.”
“A long time ago we had someone, a bit worse for wear, who decided to climb over the college wall. Unfortunately he slipped and impaled his leg on the Master’s gate. We called an ambulance, and then the fire service, who cut the man free and took him and the offending railing to Addenbrooke’s Hospital. The following day I had a call asking me to retrieve the metalwork from the hospital so the Master’s gate could be mended. He made a speedy recovery.”
“Once a year we have to walk the college ducks across the road and towards the river. They choose to breed in the Master’s garden. We get them ready and in line, and the Head Porter and Head Gardener walk them across the road. The Head Porter at the college opposite then takes over until they arrive safely at the river.”
“We found some rugby posts in our college court one morning.”
“I was asked to donate my body to scientific research.”
“Last weekend I got a call from a lady helping her grand-daughter with her homework who wanted to know the population of Cambridgeshire in 1300.”