Blah blah Oxford, you know the drill
It’s been a lovely week. On Friday of last week I had a slap-up cooked breakfast with Oxford Tea at the News Cafe in Ship St, wandered through town looking at stuff, then did my absolute favourite thing - got in the car with my map and a favourite book and went to find places mentioned in it! Today it was A Severe Mercy by Sheldon Vanauken (the most incredible love story ever written, of the most incredible marriage I’ve ever heard of), and I was looking for St Margaret’s church, Binsey.
Vanauken and his wife Davy and two friends had walked over the fields to Binsey one frosty morning in the 1950s for matins at the church, but no-one (including the vicar) turned up. So they read a lesson, sang a hymn accompanied by Davy on a tiny old organ, and someone preached a sermon of one minute’s duration. I wanted to do the usual - ground myself in the story, see the place in my mind’s eye as forever more I will see The Kilns in CSL’s descriptions of houses, and Shotover when traversing Narnia, and Pusey Lane when reading Vanuaken. I got to Binsey, a teensy hamlet of whitewashed thatched 300 year-old cottages just outside Oxford, and asked my way at The Perch, a legendary pub frequented by all the Inklings. (My camera battery was running low, so few photos of the outside and environs.)
After trundling the car down a dusty lane between far-reaching hayfields and wondering if I‘d ever get there, I saw it. Hidden behind curtains of trees and with a pen of goats outside its drystone wall; St Margarets. I went into the cool interior, to see a little country church so complete in its details that it couldn’t have been more perfect. No security cameras, no vicar there to watch me, nothing nailed down - even the spindly little organ was still there, the music stand sporting a brown and curling note asking anyone wishing to play the organ if they would please replace the stops once they were done, and another on the ancient bell-pull, politely asking people not to ring the bells.
I sat in the settled hush, watching the brightness of the day through the stone doorway and the way the light fell through the dingy windows on the little pulpit. Then I wandered out, threw a penny in St Margaret’s wishing well (what a nice little juxtaposition of orthodoxy and paganism!) and trundled back down the road, feeling as though I’d had a month’s rest.
On Sunday I betook myself to the legendary (for a reason) London Hammersmith Vintage Fair, and came away without buying anything (amazing!). It was incredible stuff, but beyond my budget. Lovely to see it though.
Yesterday I hopped on my bike (what a joy to get somewhere under your own steam, ignoring the vagaries of traffic) and went to the Oxfam on St Giles. After much happy browsing I bought Quo Vadis?, Hypatia (I was in an early CE mood) and a small book called Turl Street Tales. The Turl is one of my favourite streets in Oxford; it has an air of magic that is entirely undeserved. But nevertheless, every time I turn down it I feel as though anything is possible. Jesus, Lincoln and Exeter Colleges open off it, their ancient oak doors ajar and giving glimpses of smooth lawn. There’s the best coffee shop in Oxford, a great Oxfam bookshop and one of those useless yet indispensable shops that sell wax and seals and paperweights and fancy paper and blank Venetian leather journals and joy. It sells joy.
So I pedalled to The Missing Bean on the Turl and had a goats-cheese and aubergine panini and iced coffee, sitting under superb etchings of Oxford buildings, and read my short stories about the Turl by writers who lived in the area and it was BLISS. I am telling you, it’s TIME FOR CAPITALS.
Then I went to Merton College Chapel for a recital by a visiting Australian choir whose incredible voices were only made more amazing by the acoustics, which make every voice sound like four. Witness:
Then after some errands and dinner I was sitting on the couch and decided I hadn’t had enough, and wanted to go to the movies (Steve was editing papers). So I looked up the timetables, found that Agora had just started but in Bungland there’s always half an hour of ads, drove into the city, parked, ran like heck through the lazy dusky streets and only missed the first five minutes. Amazingly, it was about Hypatia, who I’d just bought a book about that very morning without ever hearing her name before. I’m pretty sure the book will be better than the movie. I’m pretty sure See Spot Run is better than that movie. But I was drunk on Oxford and in the mood to be magnanimous. So I photo-ed my way back to the car and fell into bed a happy girl.
Vanauken and his wife Davy and two friends had walked over the fields to Binsey one frosty morning in the 1950s for matins at the church, but no-one (including the vicar) turned up. So they read a lesson, sang a hymn accompanied by Davy on a tiny old organ, and someone preached a sermon of one minute’s duration. I wanted to do the usual - ground myself in the story, see the place in my mind’s eye as forever more I will see The Kilns in CSL’s descriptions of houses, and Shotover when traversing Narnia, and Pusey Lane when reading Vanuaken. I got to Binsey, a teensy hamlet of whitewashed thatched 300 year-old cottages just outside Oxford, and asked my way at The Perch, a legendary pub frequented by all the Inklings. (My camera battery was running low, so few photos of the outside and environs.)
After trundling the car down a dusty lane between far-reaching hayfields and wondering if I‘d ever get there, I saw it. Hidden behind curtains of trees and with a pen of goats outside its drystone wall; St Margarets. I went into the cool interior, to see a little country church so complete in its details that it couldn’t have been more perfect. No security cameras, no vicar there to watch me, nothing nailed down - even the spindly little organ was still there, the music stand sporting a brown and curling note asking anyone wishing to play the organ if they would please replace the stops once they were done, and another on the ancient bell-pull, politely asking people not to ring the bells.
I sat in the settled hush, watching the brightness of the day through the stone doorway and the way the light fell through the dingy windows on the little pulpit. Then I wandered out, threw a penny in St Margaret’s wishing well (what a nice little juxtaposition of orthodoxy and paganism!) and trundled back down the road, feeling as though I’d had a month’s rest.
On Sunday I betook myself to the legendary (for a reason) London Hammersmith Vintage Fair, and came away without buying anything (amazing!). It was incredible stuff, but beyond my budget. Lovely to see it though.
Yesterday I hopped on my bike (what a joy to get somewhere under your own steam, ignoring the vagaries of traffic) and went to the Oxfam on St Giles. After much happy browsing I bought Quo Vadis?, Hypatia (I was in an early CE mood) and a small book called Turl Street Tales. The Turl is one of my favourite streets in Oxford; it has an air of magic that is entirely undeserved. But nevertheless, every time I turn down it I feel as though anything is possible. Jesus, Lincoln and Exeter Colleges open off it, their ancient oak doors ajar and giving glimpses of smooth lawn. There’s the best coffee shop in Oxford, a great Oxfam bookshop and one of those useless yet indispensable shops that sell wax and seals and paperweights and fancy paper and blank Venetian leather journals and joy. It sells joy.
So I pedalled to The Missing Bean on the Turl and had a goats-cheese and aubergine panini and iced coffee, sitting under superb etchings of Oxford buildings, and read my short stories about the Turl by writers who lived in the area and it was BLISS. I am telling you, it’s TIME FOR CAPITALS.
Then I went to Merton College Chapel for a recital by a visiting Australian choir whose incredible voices were only made more amazing by the acoustics, which make every voice sound like four. Witness:
Then after some errands and dinner I was sitting on the couch and decided I hadn’t had enough, and wanted to go to the movies (Steve was editing papers). So I looked up the timetables, found that Agora had just started but in Bungland there’s always half an hour of ads, drove into the city, parked, ran like heck through the lazy dusky streets and only missed the first five minutes. Amazingly, it was about Hypatia, who I’d just bought a book about that very morning without ever hearing her name before. I’m pretty sure the book will be better than the movie. I’m pretty sure See Spot Run is better than that movie. But I was drunk on Oxford and in the mood to be magnanimous. So I photo-ed my way back to the car and fell into bed a happy girl.