When I first was in England I lived in a tiny room up a narrow winding staircase at the very top of an 18th century stone building, across from me the spires and turrets of Oxford and below a pretty quadrangle, right in the middle of the city. There was no central heating in my building, though I had a little electric fire (heater) built into the wall, also useful for making toast and drying socks.

A “scout” came every weekday morning to make my bed, empty my bin, and do a general dust round. She also washed my coffee cups, though I was generally informed that only nice scouts washed cups. In Cambridge the work is done by “bedders”, but I am not going to think very hard about what extra services a nice bedder might perform.

It seems impossible to me now, almost 30 years later, that I ever could have lived in such a place or could have had such a fairy godmother as a scout.

But one thing has not changed. If you walk through the centre of Oxford between five and six on a Sunday in term time you won’t be able to hear yourself think, because everywhere there is the sound of bells, as the changes ring from the thirteen towers within half a mile of the city centre.

Hearing them again, going up and down the scales, repeating and changing, I see myself over those three decades:

The naive American graduate student impossibly excited at having landed in this most exalted of cities, flinging open her window and welcoming across the rooftops the sound of bells.

The irritable, distracted student wishing they would shut the hell up because she was trying to work.

The young mother racing with her husband, man and wife both throwing on academic gowns as they ran, because that was the traditional dress for Chapel, and the fast up and down rising of the bells had changed to a slow peal, calling everyone to Evensong, and, as usual, they were late. After Evensong would be sherry with the Principal, and not just dinner with grownups, dinner at High Table with Bishops or sometimes the odd Archbishop, member of Cabinet, or ex Prime Minister thrown in, and hence the young mother’s hurry, because mostly, though not always, your average Member of Parliament has something more interesting to say than your local toddler.

Then, finally, a long time later, the American who’s become a Brit too, happens to be walking up the street on a Sunday evening in Oxford, hears the bells and remembers. And remembering, all at once feels home again.

I’ve pasted a link (not mine!) that is not only good for neck exercise, it captures a few moments of the sound. Then you must imagine it repeated for an hour — though no repeat is quite the same. (That’s why it is called ringing the changes.)

Turn your head and listen to the bells.