For the 1998 matriculating cohort, 2024 marked eight years since our last Gaudy. This time around, we were attending alongside the 1999 and 2000 matriculation groups.

Since 2016 we had all turned 40 and many have had children or married – but the reassuring thing about a Gaudy is that when you rock up back at college it’s not really so different from the last time you saw everyone, and it’s easy to fall back into the same dynamics you had all those years ago.

I was late to arrive, rushing from coaching at Henley Women’s Regatta to throw on a dress in my overnight room in the same Peckwater staircase where I had spent a very happy second year. Over in  a sunny Tom Quad it was time to start saying hi to old friends and working out where we were all sitting for dinner.

A group of my year were given the prime seats on High Table and it was wonderful to look across Hall at everyone gathered in their Gaudy best enjoying themselves. We were treated to a beautiful sung Grace by the Cathedral choir before sitting down to a delicious dinner, which certainly made everyone wonder if food had been that good back in the late 1990s. (We did fondly recall the choux swans we used to have regularly for pudding.)

It was great to catch up with what everyone is doing these days and discover everyone’s successes in life and work, many of them incredibly inspiring, as well as finding out about current Christ Church life from the Dean and other tutors attending the dinner. There was also plenty of reminiscing about our years in college, particularly with some Harry Potter-related memories as they had been filming the early films back when we were all finalists.

After dinner we clustered in the Buttery and ante-Hall for more drinks and chat until the long-suffering (and amazing) staff persuaded us we really ought to leave. But the reunion continued after that and over breakfast in the morning.

I dashed off again after breakfast to head back to Henley – after picking up an oar on the Isis all those years ago, volunteer rowing coaching now consumes a large portion of my life – but I know many people hung around for the morning to continue basking in memories of those formative years at the House.

I think we’re all very much looking forward to our next Gaudy in a few years’ time!