My predecessors here at Oxford, from the university's beginnings until around 1550, spent their first year among these dreaming spires studying the "trivium."
"With clues filmed in the city and local students playing the parts, anyone taking part will get an alternative slant on the dreaming spires."
It is not about the beginning of something - as the 1960s are so often portrayed - but the end of the postwar dream that a good free education would be available to all, leading to the storming of the dreaming spires.
Trains leave New Street at three and thirty three minutes past the hour and take just over an hour to reach the currently overcast dreaming spires.
These words glared out at me form behind a four by seven piece of perspex suspended at eye level, next to which was a photograph of the Dreaming Spires by night.
Because the legendary land of Dreaming Spires and towers is an irresistible, cerebral magnet for writers and film-makers.
It extends from the dreaming spires through the judiciary and civil service, by way of liberal establishments, right through to the Cabinet, one-third of whom are Oxbridge graduates.
"If he thinks it will be a triumphant homecoming then he is deluding himself," whispers my man in the city of dreaming spires.
In 1958, country singing Rhodes Scholar Kris Kristofferson completed his education in the city of dreaming spires.
This is the politics of the checkout, a far cry from dreaming spires.
Like certain bloggers with a professional interest in the academy, she laments the difficulties involved in obtaining taxpayer dollars for the worthy work she insists is going on beneath the dreaming spires.
The college electrician appearing at my door was not in order to make my remaining fortnight here any more comfortable but in order to plan what they're going to do with my room the minute that I wave goodbye to the dreaming spires.
Grounding these vague ideas in reality before they float past the dreaming spires themselves will be Simpson's hardest task.
Fish oils may sound like a miracle but, for those parents dreaming of sending their bright sparks off to study among the Dreaming Spires, the reality is that, to children, fish is about as appealing as liver.
The recent sojourn among the dreaming spires included book-shopping, general admiration of the architecture and a long-anticipated visit to the Pitt Rivers Museum.
We simply don't know, not even the inhabitants of the dreaming spires.
Not that the Edinburgh University-educated Chancellor is frightened to take on the dreaming spires on his own.
It was a typically cloudless morning in the town of dreaming spires where the mists gently rise from the river Leith.
I spent the time being guided around the dreaming spires (yes, tourism literature does colour your view) by Catherine.
When I met him, Llosa seemed to fit in perfectly against a backdrop of dreaming spires.