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I had no idea that there could be such a beautiful city, or places like the colleges, with quadrangles and lawns, and that sense of energetic quiet that I still find so seductive.

I had been given overnight accommodation, and meals were provided in college, but I was too intimidated by the confidence of the other candidates to go in and eat with them.

I was unable to speak clearly during my interviews because for the first time in my life I felt that I looked wrong and sounded wrong. Everybody else seemed relaxed, though I am sure that was not true. They certainly had better clothes and different accents. I knew I was not being myself, but I didn’t know how to be myself there. I hid the self that I was and had no persona to put in its place. A few weeks later I heard that I had not been given a place.

I was in despair. Mrs Ratlow said we must look at other options; to me, there were no other options. I was not interested in options; I was interested in Oxford.

So I came up with a plan.

I had passed my driving test at last, sold the Mini I didn’t really own, and bought a road-legal Hillman Imp that cost me £40. The doors didn’t work, but it had a good engine. As long you were prepared to wriggle in through the glass flap at the back, you could go quite a long way.

Janey said she would come with me, so we took my tent and set off to Oxford, travelling at 50 mph, the Imp’s maximum speed, with frequent stops to add petrol, oil, water and brake fluid. We had two eggs with us in case the radiator leaked. In those days you could easily repair a radiator by dropping a broken egg into it, just as a fan belt could be replaced with a nylon stocking, and a snapped clutch cable with two bolts and a can of Tizer (holes in either end of can, bolts tied either end of snapped cable, bolts plus cable dropped into each end of can – you will find that with a bit of clunking, you can now depress the clutch).

Janey’s family had a camp-site book and we looked up cheap camping at a golf club outside Oxford.

It took us about nine hours to get there but we had our bacon and beans and we were happy.

The next day I had an appointment to see the senior tutor and one of the English fellows – the other, fortunately for me, was away.

I had the usual problem of not being able to speak at all and then babbling like … Under stress I am a cross between Billy Budd and the Donkey in Shrek.

I spread my hands in despair and saw that the palms were covered in oil. The Imp had a leak.

So there was nothing for it but to explain at Shrek-speed about the Hillman Imp, and the tent, and the market stall where I worked, and a little bit about the Apocalypse and Mrs Winterson, and English Literature in Prose A – Z …

They already had a letter from Mrs Ratlow open on the desk. I don’t know what she said, but Mrs Oliphant was mentioned.

‘I want to be a better writer than her.’

‘That shouldn’t be too hard – though she did write a very good ghost story called –’

‘The Open Door. I’ve read that. It’s scary.’

For some reason Mrs Oliphant was on my side.

The senior tutor explained that St Catherine’s was a progressive college, only founded in 1962, committed to bringing in pupils from state schools, and one of the few mixed colleges.

‘Benazir Bhutto is here. Margaret Thatcher studied Chemistry at Somerville, you know.’

I didn’t know and I didn’t know who Benazir Bhutto was either.

‘Would you like there to be a woman prime minister?’

Yes … In Accrington women couldn’t be anything except wives or teachers or hairdressers or secretaries or do shop work. ‘Well, they can be librarians, and I thought of doing that, but I want to write my own books.’

‘What kind of books?’

‘I don’t know. I write all the time.’

‘Most young people do.’

‘Not in Accrington they don’t.’

There was a pause. Then the English fellow asked me if I thought that women could be great writers. I was baffled by the question. It had never occurred to me.

‘It’s true they mostly come at the beginning of the alphabet – Austen, Brontës, Eliot …’

‘We study those writers of course.