Well, it was inevitable, as, like sands through the hourglass, the days of our lives must go on... (Not so oblique reference to the not insignificant amount of daytime television I have been watching lately - although, on a complete tangent, why is British television replete with cooking and property shows and absolutely no Bold and the Beautiful etc.??)
But, I digress! To cap off an absolutely brilliant year in Oxford, we had a few farewell drinks at one of our local pubs, the Royal Oak, to say goodbye and also, with fortuitous timing, celebrate getting our MSc marks back. It was great to see everyone and we really felt fortunate to have met such lovely people. So thanks everyone for making 2008/09 so special and don't forget to keep in touch!
It's the final countdown, da da da dum dum... (Sorry, the title of the post just brought that song to mind...)
In our last month in Oxford we had a flurry of visitors keen to sample the sights and sounds of rural life - well, rural for London dwellers! Amber and Rachael came up for a weekend, followed by Euan another weekend and then finally Pam came up on our very last two days in Oxford and helped me move final bits and pieces back down to London while Adrian was off cycling the approximately 135km to Cambridge just for fun...
We managed to get two more punts down the river in which was great fun - although with the girls getting the windy day and Euan getting the calm, still day, the weather didn't really match up to the brute strength required to not get forced over to the edges of the river! What's that you say about punting being a matter of skill, rather than force? Obviously one year in Oxford does not a master punter make then... Euan's weekend visit coincided with a flatwarming of some NSEP friends so it was lucky that the (extremely dodgy) spare bike hadn't yet fallen to pieces so we could all head over there for some merriment. Thanks for having us Belvedere Road!
After Pam's visit we headed to a hang drum/bass clarinet concert off Leicester Square and it was absolutely amazing! It was a duo called 'The Living Room' and here's one of them playing the hang drum - it's a new instrument from Switzerland and sounds incredible. They did some more lullaby stuff like this, but also some Nirvana, Queen etc. covers which made everyone laugh out loud.
