Oxford revisited

Susie, Mom and I went up to Oxford in Susie’s purple Nissan Micra this past weekend to spend the day with the Itens. As the disstupid amongst you will have surmised from the title, it was not the first time I had visited.*

*I’m reading Nicholas Nickleby at the moment. Has anyone else noticed how round-about Dickens’s style is? Instead of saying “he was thinking about Smike”, Dickens writes: “[h]e sat in a musing attitude for some time, regarding Smike occasionally with an anxious and doubtful glance, which sufficiently showed that he was not very remotely connected with his thoughts”.




Remarkably, for me, I remembered to take (and use) my camera. I had intended to post my photos in this blog, but I am prevented from doing so by my own manifest disintelligence: Tired of carrying my camera around all day like a Wally, I thought I would be Clever and slip the camera into Susie’s bag, unnoticed. But at the end of the day, I forgot to retrieve the camera. Like a Wally. By now Susie’s probably flogged it on the grimy streets of Tower Hamlets. But fear not. I’ve plundered some photos my mother posted on Facebook, so the less verbally-inclined amongst you can still follow our adventures in narrative pictorial form.

We started off with a tour of Ben’s and Jaime’s place at Wolfson College. The flat is surrounded by family-friendly facilities (including safety gates for families with small children) and beautiful gardens. And the River Cherwell meanders along the borders of it all. Inside, the flat is spacious, with a large and functional kitchen, a light, airy sitting room and roomy sleeping quarters (with a view!). (I can’t help sounding like an estate agent right now. Sorry.)

I was particularly delighted by the signs everywhere reading “RIVER DANGER”. Given that Oxford is spiritual home of mediaeval English literature, this presumably refers to the threat posed by Grendel’s mother or similar.

For lunch we walked to the King’s Arms, one of the better pubs for food in the centre of town. I wasn’t about to repeat the mistake of a fortnight ago, when I marched everyone into the wilderness but failed to produce the fish and loaves. The King’s Arms proved a good choice, although curiously everything was served with salad on top. Including the pizzas.

While hovering outside the pub before continuing our tour of Oxford someone spotted a 20 pence piece on the ground beneath one of the picnic tables. An ingrained sense of social decency prevented any of us from collecting it for the Found Fund, as this would have involved crawling on hands and knees beneath a table full of revellers and physically lifting someone’s shoe out of the way. In anticipatory compensation for this failure, the Itens had produced a 10 Euro cent piece. (This has been noted in this week’s draft report to head office.)

We toured Oxford, stopping in at the Turf Tavern and the Bodleian library (pictured), and going round Merton College, where we saw Mob Quad (pictured), Fellows Quad (site of the annual Merton Time Ceremony), and the gardens. After this we visited the Covered Market for coffee, and then made our way back to Wolfson to crown our visit with a game of Pooh sticks and a tour of Wolfson’s grounds.

Flat for sale + I'm up to date

No, it's not snowing here at the moment, though it is pretty cold. But it's a nice picture.

I'm selling my flat. Or at least listing it. If you want to see the most perfect flat. In the world. Ever. You'd better see it soon. I know I've uploaded this photo before.

In other news, I read everyone's most recent blog entries. I can particularly recommend Brad's last two, and Jaime's, too. What's up with Jennie and Ben and Ben? At least post a couple of amusing pictures.

Found

Those of you who have any regular contact with Julie’s father, Barry, will be aware of the significance of the Found Fund. Instituted some nine years ago, the Found Fund is the brainchild of Barry and his friend, Ian, and it is dedicated to putting ‘found’ money to good use. Each Wednesday Barry and Ian meet to compare their findings for the week, and once or twice a year they select one or more charities to donate their cache to.

The rules are simple, but rigid. Only money which is genuinely ‘found’ may be accepted. ‘Found’ money may include coins (and smaller notes) found on the pavement or in the road, pennies at points of sale (in shops), money which has fallen behind the seat on an Underground carriage and any other money where the owner genuinely cannot be traced. Donations cannot be accepted. Money which falls from the pocket of the person in front of you in the queue is not ‘found’. And £10 notes found in the back of a taxi, alas, should be given to the taxi driver.

Over the past nine years, Barry and Ian have raised (literally) over £900 ($1,800) for various charities through the Found Fund.

This last month I was admitted to associate membership of the Found Fund, London branch (I would scan a picture of my certificate, but I don’t have it handy). In the past four weeks, I have found over £9.49, as well as $0.01 (Canadian), €0.05 (Euro) and 0.20 Mauritian rupees. I’ve done this with the help, increasingly, of two colleagues at work who have joined in the effort.

Finding money is addictive. It is also competitive. I walked out at lunch on Tuesday with one of my colleagues, looking for coins. I spotted a 5p. She didn’t.

So, if you would like to join the ranks of the shameless filthy street grubbers, let me know, and I’ll funnel your legitimately found money to HQ in Bangor. I always credit my sources.

In response to Jaime and Mandy

It’s not just the Canadians who are outcasts, Jaime. You'll discover that you will be deprived of US sites when in the UK, too, not surprisingly. But on the other hand you’ll have the BBC iPlayer, which is super cool, and not available outside of the UK!!

Mandy, the only other pictures in my workplace are shown here. I just liked that picture of you.

For Jaime

If we have the same calendar, Jaime, I don't know what that says about your veggie credentials...

For Mandy

Ok, I probably missed the reason why we're all being so nice to Mandy. Not that we shouldn't be nice anyway. But not to be left behind, here's a photo of my desk at work.

Four great reasons to move to England

Re my previous entry - Megan and Annie: if you want to come along at Christmas, you're more than welcome. It would be great to have you!

And now today's topic - Four great reasons to move to England.

This country still has the power to surprise me and make me smile. On my walk home the other day, I happened across a notice on the brick wall of a vaulted railway overpass next to the Thames (pictured). The sign said, in essence, that busking (performing live music for money without a valid licence) is prohibited. But it said it in such a quintessentially English way that I laughed out loud.





I then continued my walk. Hopton’s Almshouse, pictured in winter (I nicked this off the internet), is one of hundreds if not thousands of almshouses or ‘hospitals’ established in England from the Middle Ages onwards. This one, located in the heart of London near the Thames, was established in the eighteenth century. It is a horse shoe shaped estate of low buildings and gardens, dwarfed by the surrounding by large office buildings, such as IBM (across the street). Almshouses or hospitals were established as charities, usually to house the poor who could no longer work (at a time when there was no such thing as retirement). I can recommend a brilliant novel about one of these.





The next wonder I came across was the inscription over the door to the Kirkaldy’s Testing and Experimenting Works: “Fact Not Opinion”, a testament to the empiricism which underpinned the Industrial Revolution. From publicly available information, I learned that Kirkaldy’s works primarily involved the use of a giant machine 'which could test materials by putting the materials "under various stresses, namely, Pulling, Thrusting, Bending, Twisting, Shearing, Punching and Bulging"'. It was built in 1864-65 by Greenwood & Batley of Leeds, and measures 47 ft long and weighs almost 116 tons. The machine's hydraulic ram can produce a maximum force of 1 million lbs. "Kirkaldy's works attained a world-wide reputation in materials testing. Among its achievements, the machine performed tests for Blackfriars Bridge, which opened in 1869, the St. Louis Bridge over the Mississippi (built 1867-74), Hammersmith Suspension Bridge (opened 1887), Sydney Harbour Bridge, and the cables used to suspend the Skylon at the Festival of Britain in 1951. It was also used in accident investigations, including the 1879 Tay Bridge disaster and aircraft crashes."





Finally, just down the street from Kirkaldy’s works, I came upon a new Marks & Spencer Simply Food, which had just opened last week. I went in to have a look around and ended up spending way too much money on things I don’t need, like vanilla pods. Ben and Jaime, you will come to realise just how nice M&S is (and Waitrose, too).