More Pride and Delight

I suppose Oxford has a reputation for being hard to get into. Indeed, the admissions policy of the university is an indelible obsession of the British media, and a process about which almost mythical speculation hangs like a pall and generates a hysteria which would lead the casual reader of your average article on this subject to suppose that the commodity to which the poor slighted teenager du jour was being denied access was life-saving surgery or freedom of speech or clean water. Rather than, say, admission to one of many good establishments of higher education in the British Isles, all the rest of which remain open to them and at any of which they could obtain a perfectly good degree and the three or four years of drunken irresponsibility which are the birthright of those fortunate enough to be born clever, or at least middle class.
Well, admission to Oxford (undergraduate admission at any rate) is indeed competitive. Since this knowledge is so hard for the press to cope with, it is doubtless good if they don't look too hard at the tiers of competition which exist within the university itself. Having already loaded words such as "privilege" and "elitism" with such insupportable (though essentially meaningless) weight, I can't imagine what terminology they would have left for the institution of All Souls College. This is the Oxford-within-Oxford, a fellows-only college which generates among Oxonians the same class of myth that the University generates in the wider world. Perhaps among Fellows of All Souls there is a particular committee or something which evokes the same kind of legends and mystique. Members of that committee would I imagine spend their nights dreaming of the elusive and exclusive position of Chair. The Chair probably knows of a committee of Exclusive Academic Committee Chairs and wonders what cruel prejudice keeps him off it.
Anyway, at the inappropriately named All Souls, two fortunate souls per year are given a set of rooms and a stipend tenable for seven years, during which time they are obliged to do nothing but exactly as they please. The Prize Fellowship is awarded by exam, the focal point of much of the mythologizing, not least for the question which consists of a single word. This year it was "Water," for anyone who cares. The range of privileges which accompanies success in this competition is, I need hardly add, extensive, as is the associated cachet. It is also very pretty, though the website is a bit coy about photos so this is the best I could do.
My interest in all this is that earlier in the week one of my oldest friends was awarded one of these incredibly prestigious fellowships, to my enormous pride and delight. I have known him since school, when he was quite a little boy and I a worldly-wise 6th former, and subsequently adopted the approach of a terribly neglectful but very fond big sister who offers the well-meant but sporadic and probably useless voice of experience in such matters as debating competitions, Oxford admissions, finals, etc. Indeed, we have numerous endeavours in commmon, in which I as the elder am ostensibly better-versed but in fact a bit hopeless, and in every single case have been immediately, gracefully and very convincingly upstaged by my vastly more talented young friend as he graduates to each rite de passage in turn. Since in addition to his formidable intellect he is the nicest and most gracious and modest man in the entire world, it is not only right and proper that he should be the recipient of the richest academic honours, it is also a matter of genuine pleasure. How often can you say that?