In December of 1985, I had my first winter vacation in Bath. Since almost all local and euro-continental students went home, only some overseas students from Asia, Africa or Latin America had left.
For management convenience, the University authority integrated all students scattered around the whole campus into one dormitory, Wessex House, where Mr. Fang living in.
He got a thrifty idea. He asked me to hand back my room in Eastwood and move to Wessex to share his room．It was a real economical way, because the accommodation expense was so high that almost cost half of our scholarship.
As decent visiting scholars, we didn’t want to damage our dignity by illegal laboring; such as served as restaurant waiters, station porters etc. Therefore, to cut down our daily expenditure as much as possible was our only means to save money.
Thank to his help, I completed all necessary procedures and moved to his room successfully. In this way, we not only had saved a considerable amount of money, but also had pulled out the loneliness and homesick crisis during the Chinese New Year period.
It was the late morning of Christmas Eve in 1985. Mr. Fang and I went down the campus hill for Christmas shopping. After about one and a half hours’ shopping, we dropped in a famous electronic shop, Gatwick, to see my favorable cameras.
For unknown reason, the shop assistant did not allow us to bring our grocery bag in. We had to leave it beside the display windows.
To our surprise, when we returned, the bag had already disappeared! “Oh, dear!” we shouted with intensive dismay. “I have never imagined thieves in England would be interested in vegetables!” Mr. Fang kept complaining.
It was true; not even one theft case had been reported by local media since we settled down in Bath.
In that evening, a horrible TV broadcast spoiled the joyful fete of Christmas Eve. A live report was shown on TV , which snatched thousands of people’s hearts.
There were a dozen of heavily armed policemen lying on snow ground. They seemed to be besieging a strange subject beside a steel bridge nearby Bath Railway Station.
