Twenty years on we might ask: where are these fine lovers and poets now?
Well, Danny is still delaying graduation, possibly forever. He and his wife Karen are settled in Zurich - I see them a few times a year - mostly when they come to England. As for me, I have long since given up nuclear physics to serve the illustrious god Mammon, now at Canary Wharf in London. As for the "relationship" that "didn't work" - one only regrets things one didn't do (too late now). Gilly got her Ph.D. this year (2007) from Cranfield (page 4 of this newsletter) and runs a Cattery in Northamptonshire with her husband (I have not seen her for over four years: Danny stopped by relatively recently and the news comes from him). Simon Grinstead is now a big noise in the executive search/recruitment business. Another Simon, alluded to with the term "jerk", and who had severed relations with Gilly at the time that the poem was written, was living with her in London for a while, but she did not end up marrying him. Anthony Mellors , also now a Dr., is a lecturer in English at Birmingham University, but, I think, lives in Islip, near Oxford. This looks like Mother of all Commutes to me, and even worse than my 100 minute journey to Canary Wharf. He edits a literary journal called Fragmente. David Balding is now Professor of Statistical Genetics at Imperial College in London. I doubt very much that, slide rule in hand, he abuses his position of responsibility vis a vis female students. I will not elaborate here. Vlahoplus is married and working for a Swiss fund in New York. I don't know whether he still plays Lacrosse. Steve Hoey has packed in management consultancy and, like Gilly, recently got a Ph.D., this time in Music Composition, from the Music Faculty at UCSD.
With the exception of Danny, the dedication to the work ethic makes it unreasonable to classify any of us as "Byronic". I'm afraid that we're mostly rather boringly nice people, and will probably have to leave it to future generations to, Byronically speaking, blaze a trail. Still, if someone we know of the next generation exercises Byronism in a suitably spectacular way, there is a definite possibility that Danny, Steve or I may record the sordid details in verse (CH).