Oxford
So, last Friday and Saturday I went to Oxford. I would like to post a long elaborate essay on everything I did, but I have a feeling I would not manage to see the end of it. I visited places - especially in the Jericho/Walton Manor area - that I had not seen since I was eighteen and studying for my A-levels (and learning a much more important and painful lesson at the wholly unconscious and innocent hands of a girl called Kathy Sales). I spent the evening and night at the house of my old professor, now retired but still immensely active, discussing my research (on which he was encouraging) and my girth (on which he was legitimately concerned). And on Saturday I got to know both chthonya and kennahijja, who are two charming people. (In this kind of company, I always have a sneaking fear that I may be offensive or boring. I hope they had as good a time as they gave me.) We toured the centre of Oxford and visited the pub where CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien used to meet with a few other friends every Tuesday and discuss such trifles as Lewis' science-fiction trilogy and Tolkien's Hobbit and various mythological efforts. Well, kennahijja is indubitably a genius, chthonya is at the very least brilliant, and I hope I can hold up my end even in such company; so I dare say we were not so out of place in such historical surroundings as we might sound. Besides, the pub is just across the road from the college where I spent my Oxford year, St.John's, and a favourite of Johnnies, so I had another excuse to be there. (I always did wonder why Lewis, who was at Magdalen, and Tolkien, who was at Merton, would want to meet there. It is at the other end of Oxford city centre from both colleges. I suspect that that was its real attraction - no danger of running into a college member and get caught up in college business.)
It was a wonderful couple of days, though as exhausting as anything I have ever done. Almost at the start of my first day, I stumbled upon a lot of ultra-cheap second-hand books, and could not see my way not to buy any less than ten; so I spent much of Friday dragging along this extra weight, and I'll let you imagine what the cumulative effect was. But for the place and the company, I would do it again.
It was a wonderful couple of days, though as exhausting as anything I have ever done. Almost at the start of my first day, I stumbled upon a lot of ultra-cheap second-hand books, and could not see my way not to buy any less than ten; so I spent much of Friday dragging along this extra weight, and I'll let you imagine what the cumulative effect was. But for the place and the company, I would do it again.