The bookshelf is piled with CDs by Oasis, The Cure, David Bowie, The Cranberries and Red Hot Chilli Peppers (not to mention some actual books). A CD player sits on the table, along with a handwritten dissertation plan, and the walls are festooned with old photos. It may be 2025, but F1’s current inhabitant, Grace Brookes (Human Geography, Third Year), has created a little corner of Sidney Sussex that is forever 1995.

“In my family we always just listen to CDs,” she says. “So they’re a reminder of home.” Perhaps that’s why Gen X-er Alex Horne (Classics 1997) still feels so at home here. In fact, he’s a little taken aback by how little things have changed.

“The historic Sidney Street Sainsbury’s is still on the corner!” he says. “Coming here, I walked past the Maypole where we all used to hang out and the ADC where I used to do theatre and comedy, and it didn’t feel like I was ‘coming back’. 

It just felt… normal.” F1 was full of music in Horne’s time, too. “One of those crappy hi-fi systems that fell apart. I don’t think I had any other possessions.” And he covered his walls in photos from his gap year in China. “But we weren’t allowed to use Blu Tack,” he says, looking ruefully at Brookes’ walls.

“There might still be a no Blu Tack rule…” admits Brookes. Indeed, traces of Horne’s era can still be found if you know where to look. Brookes’ fellow JCR committee members were recently clearing out a cupboard in the depths of Sidney Sussex when they found a mysterious document left over from Horne’s days as Ents Officer: the ‘Alex Horne Manifesto’. Sadly, its finders did not appreciate its worth and the manifesto has been lost for ever to posterity.

“I’m not sure what they did with it,” says Brookes diplomatically, now Ents Officer herself. “Straight in the bin,” says Horne cheerfully. Luckily, Horne bears no ill will to this shocking disrespect towards his work (which he claims to have no memory of: if anyone can shed some light, please feel free to let us know).

“I loved this room,” he says. “It’s so central, right above the porter’s lodge and under the flagpole. I’m still friends with lots of the people I met here. Oh, and I met my wife Rachel here, too. Though she had a much better room, because she was JCR President. She had a whole suite, so hers was the party room. Mine was more of a chillout space.”

Brookes studies in the library, leaving F1 free for fun. “We’ve had a few gatherings here. I brought my brother’s poker set for poker nights. And it’s the perfect place to run up and have another drink after the bar closes and before you go to the club.” And they both love the view, straight down to bustling Sidney Street.

“I don’t mind the noise – in fact, I find it quite comforting,” says Brookes. “My favourite bit is being able to sit and look out for people you vaguely know. It’s a brilliant way to procrastinate.” For Horne, who lived in F1 during his final year, the room represented the end of one journey and the beginning of something else.

“In the first years, it’s all about making friends and trying to work out who you are, it’s a bit chaotic. In the last year, it’s about closure. I’m reminded of the day of my last exam. It was beautiful and sunny, and we all drank champagne or prosecco or whatever, and went to the pub by the river. It was just the best day. I felt like I knew who I was.”