100 Thing That Make Cambridge What It Is...

So this month's explorer magazine is not only their Christmas issue but also the 100th edition they have published. Explorer is a freebie lifestyle magazine for Cambridge and the surrounding area, the usual kind of fluff, but distinguished from similar competitors by the fact they usually have nice high quality arty photos of the local area. As a 100th edition special they have put together a list of 100 things that make Cambridge what it is, a fairly daring undertaking on any ones part as no matter how you slice it you are probably going to wind someone up. Not such a good move when you're livelihood is based on other people advertising with you.

The magazine is usually well worth a browse through and has filled many idle moments for me as I have sat waiting in one the city's many watering holes for friends to arrive. The "one hundred things that make Cambridge" list however is a slightly baffling, surreal, idiosyncratic and amusing collections. I can only assume they were trying so hard to find things that wouldn't fall too strongly either side of the town V's gown divide that they found themselves walking some kind of weird alternate twilight tightrope Cambridge that lives between the two.

Anyway number one in their list of things in no particular order is "cows" not the first thing I would imagine that springs to mind for many people when they think of this ancient university town. I shouldn't be so hard though as you work your way through the rest of the list all of our favourites get a mention from Mill Road to Mitchams Corner. I particularly liked #64 "Cambridge eccentrics - There’s a lot of them about. And they’re probably mostly Nobel-prize winning physicists or something...". I suspect there may well be more "or somethings" than nobel prize winners, though with the city's ratio of mad scientists and absent minded professors you do get fairly good value on the nobel prize winner front. Still you can't help but wish they had grasped whimsy with both hands and embraced a few more of the off kilter things that make life around here so great, but it is the season of good will, so to all you somethings out there, enjoy everything Cambridge has to offer this happy inoffensive non-denominational capitalist winter solstice gift giving holiday and have a great new year.