Oxford, Oh Oxford: What Niceties Have You Given Us Low These Many, Many Centuries….

Mary and I have quickly become ensconced in the city and have found a few favorites in our two days here. Other than Mary finishing some of her notes a couple hours ago (returning to bed around midnight after consuming a short, jet lagged couple hours’ sleep) and I now manning the computer at 2:30 AM on my own jet lag trip, slightly shifted from hers, we have settled in quite nicely.

In coming here we did some research, but also left much to the city to unfold to us in a serendipidous manner. We had researched, with the help of our Home Away exchange buddy, Graeme, how to navigate the airport, bus connections and travel to his home and had a bucket list assembled to shift through on foot. The line that Google Maps offered us as the route when we looked some weeks ago was blissfully easy once those lines on the maps and in the airport were navigated. Never have we found entering a country so easy, quick and uneventful. To exit the bus in Oxford at the Gloucester Square market and imbibe the scents of various cultures wafting out of the stalls, then to easily catch that black cab and take off our layered airport clothing of sweater and coat to greet the mild English morning pleasantly full of the sun’s rays was a bonus. A short cab ride later we were in our new home.

Mary’s blog perfectly portrays Graeme, who is a fast new friend. He’s already setting up a dinner appointment with his sister and his and her besties next week. He ginned us up on all the paths, favorite pubs and shopping spots, passes for this and that, how to navigate the local buses if needed, and how his lovely home works. Even though the cupboards leaned heavily towards tea, there was accommodation for one’s needs for coffee. Now we need only figure out the best place to find selections beyond what Tesco offers for coffee. So far it is Marks and Sparks that is giving us the morning jolt (or midnight boost).

Our first day was truly a surface visit. We poked in a couple of doors, but mostly breezed along the main routes taking in the sights that we’ve enjoyed through our viewing of so many films and series. Think Lewis, Endeavour and Inspector Morse over the years in their imagining of what crime is like in the city from just after World War II up into the sixties. Then the films. Then the authors and their books. We’ve all drooled over the city’s many architectural gems and they are all that they seem. It has been an all-too-long forty-some-odd years since the two of us were here together.

One of the places Graeme suggested is just around the corner; the local family pub, The Rusty Bicycle. We’ve quickly visited with the publican, was stopped in the street as we peaked in the window in between food hours by a passer by who claimed it was the best pub in Oxford (to be authenticated we would need more than the month we are spending here, but it is a worthwhile boast to prompt a sampling). Later, upon returning for said food options,

that’s our table to the left near the window

that same man was in the pub and sought reassurance that he hadn’t steered us wrong. We had just ordered our meal and invited him to sit with us…and he did.

Bernard is a wonderful chap, equal in the teeth of age to ours and also retired from the practice of educating youths. He had spent his career on the other side of the tracks in Oxford working with the youth of the workers from the auto plant that once drove a great deal of Oxford’s middle and lower class demographics. He also witnessed and dealt with the changing demographics of Oxford associated with failing empire and recent events. Today that same region of town has altered in its demographics to include citizens from former colonies, and more recently the Moslem lands. The languages and cultures found here have expanded since Mr. Blair’s ill-advised decision to engage with Misters Bush and Cheney in their lies about Iraq. The city has embraced the opportunity this has provided them and has added a few mosques and Halal morsels to their menus. The area where Graeme has settled has a small mosque at the end of the block and the Centre for Muslim-Christian Study is just up Iffley Road on our walk to the centre. A walk around the neighborhood this evening mixed trick or treating kids and their parents with greetings of “As-Salāmu Alaykum“. There were students sitting outside at the pubs in the cool night air, starting their weekend a bit early perhaps.

Bernard stayed for about an hour’s chat, which covered education practices, the politics of Oxford and his own, the sister pub to the Rusty Bicycle, the Rickety Press– which we certainly need to visit- a bit of his family and some history of Oxford. We have been invited to his home to meet his wife and to continue our conversation.

The morning saw us walking to our first lecture on the Collegiate Churches of England that are part of one of our courses here for the next month. We opened the lecture on the Minster of Beverley, located in the north of Yorkshire. We wondered where all of the fabulous wealth came from in the Middle Ages to finance such a spectacular edifice so far to the north. It ranks among the top third of all the churches in England in size and stature. Mary’s blog, again, gives you a wonderful selection of what is found inside and out.

We sat there before the class started taking in the center’s options in their pamphlets and dreamt of future courses and visits to Oxford. The lecture was filled with esoteric quirkiness, perfect for the two of us. An hour and a half of curvilinear gothic features, quatrefoils, stained glass and vaulted ceilings is just our stuff. We left ready to take on a walk through the city’s many colleges that make up the whole of Oxford University. Strolling past New College (founded in 1378), we committed ourselves to one of our Evensong evenings there. Next door is Edmunds College, know affectionately to its students as The Teddy. It was open and we enjoyed a stroll. On our way out of town we noticed the Magdalen was offering Evensong this evening. We returned at six to be among perhaps twenty people who made the same choice as we to savor the sounds and magic of twelve young men’s voices singing A cappella in their lovely chapel.

We are back at home, looking forward to further walks along the Thames, follow the quest to find the best pub, seek the muses of TS Eliot, Lewis Carroll, Maughm, JRR Tolkien, TE Lawrence, Oscar Wilde, Shelley, WH Auden, Allen Bennett, Vera Brittain and CS Lewis…and those other Inklings. We’re staying away from the likes of the Bollingdon Club Crew. Bernard would agree.

 

“All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes, to make it possible.” TE Lawrence