on my twenty-first birthday i was depressed. apart from a pair of gold cuff-links, bought for me in belfast (that northern anti-athens), there was no celebration, and there was another month to go before i could escape from the puritanism and mud of my ulster surroundings to the honey-coloured finials and gilded understatements of oxford, where i was still in statu pupillari. the long vacation of 1928 had seemed a waste of time. i had been made to acccompany my father, hten a church of ireland archdeacon, on a cook's tour in and out of the fjords of norway on a liner where one had to dress for dinner - and in a stiff shirt at that..."qu'allais-je faire dans cette galere?"

from "when i was twenty-one: 1928" in the selected prose of louis macneice.