Constantly, by his side,
I just want to hold you,
I just want your eyes on me,
On me.

My conscience weeps,
As ego sleeps,
Her hands on his thigh,
Unattainable prize to me,
To me.

You’ve won and you don’t even know you have,
I’ve gone and you don’t even realise,
I’m moving away, Im moving away from this place
I can’t stand your face, you’re a fucking disgrace,
A fucking disgrace.
Leave me alone and I will wake you when they have gone.
Leave me alone and I will wake you when they have gone.
The race has run,
And she is gone,
Falling statues of old,
Falling statues of old,
They used to stand so tall,
Falling statues of old.

“I’ve been a porter for 17 years, and no one has asked me something like this before.” The porter at Trinity paused. “Multiple flower delivery. I don’t know what to say. My mind’s gone blank”.

This encounter was the end of a long morning, starting at 7.30am, as myself and a select few volunteers delivered hundreds and hundreds of flowers to porters lodges and pigeon holes across Cambridge. I thought that it would be an easy sell: around 20 or 30 flowers delivered to each college, for grads, fellows and students, all with a positive message attached. How wrong I was. Though a number of porters and staff were incredibly kind and helpful, offering water and glasses for the quickly fading flowers, the vast majority weren’t. And it was the final straw in a pattern that, I believe, is all too familiar in Cambridge.

The pattern, which I have seen again and again in every aspect of Cambridge life, is the hatred and immediate suspicion of innovation. As I entered each porter’s lodge, grasping 20 flowers, the faces of both students and porters immediately fell. The worst, a woman in Homerton, upon my description of the Beginning, Middle, End project (‘just a way to make people smile’), simply said: “that seems pointless, you can’t deliver them here.” After my pleas to be able to just leave them there for the day, on a table in the corner of the main building, she reluctantly agreed.

Sending a flower to someone isn’t a particularly revolutionary idea, but in a university town baron of any sort of innovation apart from the sort that occurs in libraries, the other volunteers and I were treated as if we were distributing dissent. Which is fine. But it is indicative of a wider issue. In a university full of the brightest and best minds, where is the exploration of ideas? Where are people trying different things out? Maybe the whole world is like that, but you’d hope that in such a safe and stimulating environment people would try new things. So please, please, please- try something new today. Even if it doesn’t work. Because it is better to try and fail than not try at all, despite what the porters in Homerton & St.Catz will try to make you believe. And if you can, rescue the hundreds of flowers dying in your porter’s lodges right now.

The Final stage of the Beginning, Middle, End project will be revealed on the 2^nd of November at beginningmiddleend.co.uk