Postcard from Winchester - the town (and the gowns)

Zoom! What's that? Zoom! There goes another! Looking out of the window of the pub as I wonder if my headache might be eased with the ingestion of a cheeky breakfast pint, I am occasionally distracted by a flitting figure charging past. The third such blur in motion gives a better chance of examination and the sprinting forms reveal themselves to be schoolboys, rushing either from or, given their haste, to, a lesson. Not to be outdone, the last of them is followed some minutes later by a loping master, his gown billowing out behind him in his wake.

Schoolboys and masters abound in Winchester, home of course of the famous school. I marvelled from my breakfast table that the boys seemed to have lessons on Saturdays and Sundays as well as no doubt in the week. Still, at around six grand a term, I'd bloody we'll expect a seven day a week timetable as well. The academics lend Winchester a certain chalky charm. The boys are typical public school types, tall, with good teeth and hair just short of the maximum permitted by the school rules. They seem to exist in a constant state of rush, with either a folder or some sort of sporting item under their arm. The masters, the loping one excepted, make much more stately progress along the street. Shaped by rather too many rather good dinners, with their gowns on they look like Batman after he has really, really let himself go.

There were schoolboys too in the shop across the road from the pub. An odd place. It was the sort of shop that you would expect to see in a small village where the posh second home owners arrive with their own shopping and only need to shop for either wine or recreation, and where the locals only do a top up shop occasionally, getting most of their stuff in the nearby big town. Thus it has one of everything when it comes to vegetables, a goodish selection of canned stuff and a whole room dedicated to very posh wines. Because of the schoolboys, it also has a selection of the sort of stuff that schoolboys love, sweets and pop and porn. OK, it doesn't have porn, but it has lots of sweets and pop and pot noodle.

The town itself is lovely. Lots of tourists mean a big tourist information centre, where you can get a map of the town in case you get lost on its one high street. The tourist information centre also sells books about the area and I was tempted by 'Haunted Winchester'. However, flipping through I saw that the Wykeham Arms wasn't mentioned. This is probably a good thing as, while of course I love a good ghost story, the only spirits I want to see when I'm staying in a pub are the ones sloshing about in my glass. Poltergeist activity does not make for a restful night, and when one tries to explain away snoring and trumping in the dark, or the loo seat being left up as paranormal activity, one tends to run into the sort of scepticism that would make Richard Dawkins blink.