To me, Rose Crescent is reduced to a single practice: my friend pointing at the seasonal Le Creuset window display while we wait for the materialisation of our saving grace, Gardies’ cheesy chips. But in a much more civilised, and less freezing pursuit, I pick my way across the cobblestones to interview Varsity’s current Editor-in-Chief, Alice Mainwood.
“I’m exactly the same at home, I like to have a lot of things”
Arguing, “objectively I think I have the best room on Rose Crescent”, Alice pops her head out of a door – concealed by the bright exterior of La Raza and overlooked in the single-mindedness of midnight food acquisitions – before inviting me into the winding staircase of the obscured accommodation. She gushes over the luxury of her space, providing the elusive work-life balance Cambridge usually prohibits, with the miniature staircase between her workspace and bed offering the separation we all so desperately crave.
Acutely aware of the perk, Alice explains how she hopes to retain the same room next year, not least because she has “so much stuff in here, it won’t fit in my car anymore”. This university persona of collector and curator is no great shift, as she admits “I’m exactly the same at home, I like to have a lot of things”. These ‘things’ include the miraculous houseplant with a fighting spirit – having endured a full 7 years – homed by the “sentimental shelf”. It finds company with a watering can gifted by her sister, along with the compulsory Varsity paraphernalia: the Vulture cover from her time as Magazine Editor that she is most proud of and congratulatory prosecco from her parents to celebrate her current role, with a set of shot glasses to keep the party going.
The warm commemoration swelling the shelf is interrupted by a vase, interjecting on the unrivalled nostalgia. A post-Michaelmas term break-up-fuelled expedition to Mill Road fated Alice to find a vase, its bulbous form reminiscent of an urn, bulging with sadness but bursting with the potential for peace. Compelled by the sad irony, Alice carried it all the way home, forging a new iteration of both herself and the vase. Now, nestled amid her extraordinary achievements, it is the corner of the room she is “most proud of”.
Alice’s bookshelves are laden with eighteenth-century tomes and her “secret manuals to an English degree”, a truly terrifying sight for someone like me who is chronically behind on the very same paper. A dish housing multitudes of gifted earrings shelters below her mini library, as she “like[s] to have things, but I don’t like just buying things, I like them to mean something”. This makes her a self-proclaimed “easy person to buy for – vases and earrings mainly”, with these being the two collections she is currently nurturing.
“Beautifully unconscious sentimentalism”
The stack of handwritten letters adorning her desk, next to post-dissertation flowers housed in the uni student staple of a stolen pint glass, hold off the accusations of sterile productivity. Alice explains her newfound infatuation with letter writing: “I don’t really text anymore, I just send postcards”. Collections of postcards, congratulation cards for making Editor-in-Chief, and get well soon cards from university-induced influenza accumulate on top of the wardrobe, on the notice board, and pretty much any other flat surface that can house mementoes of unfettered love and devotion. While they provide a calm stasis, what adorns Alice’s walls is seasonal due to her “rotating out” the picture rail’s occupants.
“I always keep little things that people give me without really thinking about it”. It is this beautifully unconscious sentimentalism that underpins her pinboard, despite Alice believing “I don’t think it’s anything particularly special compared to most uni students’ pinboards”. In a past life – or Cambridge term, which are essentially the same thing – The Normal Heart was the first show she gave five stars, keeping the ticket stub as a reminder, perched by a sketch of the Caius crest salvaged from a library book. Evidence of post-A-Level interrailing neighbours the note from her partner after being struck down by a chest infection, and a written vote of confidence from a friend who visited in first year when Alice was struggling with the all-too-familiar freshers imposter syndrome. Beneath her collation of memories rests Alice’s glorious shoe collection –all slip-on to accommodate the perpetual rush of a degree. Echoing the sentiments of many Sidge frequenters, Alice believes unequivocally in the beauty of the cowboy boot: “some people say leopard print is a neutral, I say cowboy boots are an everyday shoe”.
The curve of Rose Crescent makes the cream walls lopsided, giving way to a sloping ceiling and indented floors, all adding a certain wonky charm – “it makes everything feel chaotic, but in a good way”. Filled with lots of things that will “never fit in the car”, Alice’s room is a collection of masses of vases, stolen pint glasses and uninhibited adoration. Very little is purposeful in its procurement – maybe except the notable exception of western-themed footwear. Instead, Alice gathers into herself and her room the happy coincidences of Mill Road vases, and the adoration of her friends and partner, to grow like her enduring houseplant the necessary items that collect to form her, in all her brilliance.
