Alexander Ewing is now free to do research and think up pub names

Fresh from a three-week ‘working holiday’ in the New England woods, I am happy to report that any sort of quad talk in September registers at little more than a murmur.

With Michaelmas term still a few weeks away, these are halcyon weeks of tranquillity.

The ‘conference season’, what used to be called summer, is basically finished. The flood of summer-schooling international pubescents is now a trickle of well-mannered hermits.

Soon they will be off too.

Of course, like all year-round residents of college, I welcome these ‘clients’ warmly. We know that so-called market forces necessitate that universities are open for business, of any sort, 12 months a year.

In other words, they subsidise my wine bill.

September, though, is bad for business, which I think directly correlates with scholarly output.

In peace, I can start working on the article I had planned to do on my ‘working holiday’.

Yet this will also be a month of mourning, at least at Oriel College. This is because our lodge ‘team leader’, which is the nouveau contractual name for ‘head porter’, has decided to hang up his boots to work full-time for some upstart political party. Apparently, he has ambitions to work in Brussels.

Poor sod. As someone who spends his days reading political theory, I would never contemplate actually playing that wretched game. At ground level, democracy is almost worse than academia.

He will be sorely missed. Many outside (and a few inside) colleges fail to recognise the importance of the role.

Any dean will tell you that porters are the most important hire — a valuable ‘human resource’, to use fashionable marketised language.

In short, porters know the students best — and unlike deans, they interact with most of them.

Colleges can invest in legions of well-trained nurses, deans, welfare officers, counselling centres and peer support tea ladies; but without a properly functioning lodge, they will often fail to respond to problems in time.

Like many in his line of work, our head porter is an ex-army man. I like to share with new students that he brings valuable experience to the college from serving in a mobile interrogation unit in Afghanistan. That keeps most of them in line.

Otherwise, he is as soft as a lamb.

Unfortunately, his untimely departure has left my career plans in tatters. We have been pestering the bursar about opening a pub called ‘The Blake and Bird’ (my middle name and his surname) to replace the now shuttered Baby Love Bar on King Edward Street.

The plan has potential. Letting students do free bar work in lieu of decanal fines could make this a money-spinning venture for the college.

We could brew our own beer — an idea popular with William Poole, another Quad Talk columnist — and similar to St John’s ownership of Lamb and Flag on St Giles, all profits could go towards student scholarships.

I may go it alone.

A boozer with his name on it may tempt our porter back.

Alexander Ewing is a junior dean at Oriel College and Politics Tutor at St Catherine’s.