I was in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, last week, nosing around a sarcophagus, when a man with a beard asked if I was who he thought I was. It turns out I was – and we had a lot in common. We’d both been at Cambridge 10 years ago; we were both visiting for a day; and we both decided that the only thing we really wanted to see was the Fitz. “Nothing changes,” I said, waving my arms about, encompassing the whole university. “Well, there is one thing,” he replied, and I knew what he meant. “Gender neutral toilets?” “Oh, yes.” Except that all the Fitz had really done was stick a “gender neutral” sign on the disabled lavatory door, which was cheating because disabled restrooms have always been open to all – and used by everyone. I’ll pop in if there’s a queue for the gents and savour the enormous space: it’s like relieving yourself in Versailles. I only went to the Fitz a few times when I was a student, but I’m convinced its Renaissance collection had an impact on my conversion to Catholicism. Here was a different way of seeing God and man: beautiful but slightly alien figures on a fantastical landscape. Cities of continuous stairs. Green concentric hills. The little Renaissance room offered some of the few splashes of colour in Cambridge, a spectacularly cold and lonely place that retains the monastic style of living without the joy of faith. Catholic art stood out for its magnificence. Our faith is, or should be, red blood, wine, mystery. Why, in the Sixties, the Church become so obsessed with copying the brutal style of Protestantism I cannot comprehend. After I converted, I found everyday Catholicism could be drab. The chaplaincy chapel was decorated like a school gym with – does my memory deceive me? – a fold-out table for an altar. Yuck. There is good news though: the slow restoration of glory is proceeding through the Church. The chaplaincy appears to have been dramatically upgraded, and I dropped by Our Lady and the English Martyrs, the town church, to find that Gothic is enjoying a second revival. Back in my day, Confessions were heard out in the open; you and the priest knelt either side of a temporary wooden partition. This reminded me of the sliding wall on ITV’s Blind Date. I could hear Cilla Black saying, “Here’s our Graham with a quick recap of tonight’s sins!” But now proper, pleasing confessional boxes line the walls. The next step must be to remove the hideous altar plopped down in no man’s land, which is draped in a gaudy cloth and looks like a magician’s table. If everyone could only turn the other way for a moment, I would gladly make it disappear.