Space Invaders: the “unbalanced charm” of Alice Mainwood’s bedroom

For me, Rose Crescent comes down to a single practice: my friend showing off Le Creuset’s seasonal window while waiting for our saving grace, Gardies cheese crisps, to materialize. But in a much more civilized and less frosty pursuit, I make my way across the cobbles to interview UniversityYes‘The current editor, Alice Mainwood.

“I’m exactly the same at home, I like to have a lot of things”

Arguing: “Objectively, I think I have the best room in Rose Crescent,” Alice pokes her head through a door – concealed by La Raza’s bright exterior and overlooked in determining midnight food acquisitions – before m ‘invite into the room. spiral staircase of dark accommodation. She gushes over the luxury of her space, offering the elusive work-life balance that Cambridge usually forbids, with the miniature staircase between her workspace and bed providing the separation we all so desperately crave.

Aware of this advantage, Alice explains that she hopes to keep the same room next year, partly because she has “so much stuff here that it won’t fit in my car.” This university character of collector and curator is not a big change, since she admits: “I am exactly the same at home, I like to have a lot of things”. These “things” include the miraculous houseplant with fighting spirit – having endured 7 full years – hosted by the “Sentimental Shelf”. She finds company with a watering can given to her by her sister, as well as the obligation University paraphernalia: the Vulture cover from her tenure as editor of the magazine she is most proud of and her parents’ congratulatory prosecco to celebrate her current role, with a set of shot glasses to keep the party going.

“A magnificently unconscious sentimentalism”

The warm commemoration that swells the shelf is interrupted by a vase, intervening on unparalleled nostalgia. An expedition to Mill Road after Michaelmas’s breakup led Alice to find a vase, its bulbous shape reminiscent of an urn, bulging with sadness but brimming with the potential for peace. Compelled by the sad irony, Alice carried it home, forging a new iteration of herself and the vase. Today, nestled among her extraordinary accomplishments, it’s the corner of the room she’s “most proud of.”

Alice’s shelves are filled with 18th century volumes and her “secret manuals to the English degree”, a truly terrifying sight for someone like me who is chronically behind on the same journal. A dish housing a multitude of gifted earrings hides beneath her mini-bookcase, because she “likes to have things, but I don’t like to just buy things, I like for them to mean something.” This makes her a self-proclaimed “easy person to shop for” – mostly vases and earrings,” these are the two collections she currently maintains.

The stack of handwritten letters that adorn her desk, alongside the post-thesis flowers lodged in a student’s clip of a stolen pint glass, fend off accusations of sterile productivity. Alice explains her newfound love of letter-writing: “I don’t really text anymore, I just send postcards.” Collections of postcards, editor-in-chief congratulations cards, and get-well-from-college-flu cards pile up above the closet, on the bulletin board, and on almost any other flat surface that can house unfettered memories of love and devotion. While they provide a calm stasis, what adorns Alice’s walls is seasonal due to the “rotation” of the occupant of the picture rail.

“I always keep little things that people give me without really thinking about it.” It’s this beautifully unconscious sentimentality that underpins his notice board, although Alice reckons: “I don’t think it’s anything particularly special compared to the notice boards of most university students.” In a past life – or a Cambridge term, which is essentially the same thing – The normal heart It’s the first show she’s given five stars to, keeping the ticket stub as a souvenir, perched next to a sketch of Caius’s coat of arms from a library book. Evidence of cross-rail travel after A-Level, his girlfriend’s grade after she was struck down with a lung infection, and a written vote of confidence from a friend who visited him in first year when Alice was struggling the all-too-familiar freshmen imposter syndrome. Beneath her collection of memorabilia lies Alice’s glorious shoe collection – all slip-on shoes to accommodate the perpetual rush to a degree. Echoing the sentiments of many Sidge regulars, Alice unequivocally believes in the beauty of cowboy boots: “Some say leopard print is neutral, I say cowboy boots are a shoe of all days “.

The curve of Rose Crescent makes the cream walls unbalanced, giving way to a sloping ceiling and recessed floors, all adding a certain wonky charm – “it makes everything chaotic, but in a good way”. Filled with lots of things that “will never fit in the car,” Alice’s room is a collection of massed vases, stolen pint glasses, and uninhibited adoration. Very few things are helpful in purchasing them – perhaps with the notable exception of Western-themed shoes. Instead, Alice gathers within herself and her room the happy coincidences of the Mill Road vases and the adoration of her friends and girlfriend, to grow, like her sustainable houseplant, the elements necessary which come together to form it, in all its brilliance.