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.
Updating the blog has been a bit of a low priority as of late, what with HANDING IN MY DISSERTATION and other administrative matters such as finding a place to live in London and all the other joyful things that come with moving out such as getting final gas readings etc. etc.
But as the previous sentence might have alerted you to, the exciting occasion finally came around when we all handed in our dissertations and officially finished our MSc course. We get our marks back this week which is slightly nerve-wracking, but knowing that we've all passed (well, I'm assuming everyone did enough to pass!) takes the edge off the stress a bit. I took some photos of the relaxing that came afterwards - check them out here. I also made a photo album of the various bits and bobs of summer, mostly of stuff in and around Oxford, but also including a day trip that I took to Bath to see my friends Sonja and Amy. Deserving of its own album however was the afternoon that Adrian and I spent in the gardens at Blenheim Palace which was absolutely gorgeous and well worth the half hour cycle. (I'm a cycling novice, it seemed like a long way on the map!). Enjoy the photos!
You start with an extremely steep hill. Then you take a 8lb round of Double Gloucester cheese... On a count of three, an official rolls it down the steep hill... And when the count reaches four, a set of racers run down the hill chasing the cheese! The first to reach the cheese or the bottom of the hill first wins the race and the cheese.
After a lovely, peaceful, serene time in Breacon we headed in Gloucester on the way home to join the crowds for the day watching the traditional cheese roll. No one is to sure what the tradition is all about, but they have been doing it so long now they feel no need to stop.
There was a lot more people there than we thought there would be, and John and I figured out that we were not going to be able to race (only 15 people per race and they were well down the queue), the challenge was to find a spot to watch the festivities unfold.
The day was a bit of a laugh, with people dressed in all sorts of get-ups, mankinis, Spiderman, roller derby, you name it. They would have a race which would take about 2 minutes, then spend 30 minutes clearing off all the hurt and injured people so they could start another race. Of course the crowd would get bored so people would just run down the down in the mean time, giving the huge crowd a bit more of a laugh.
See if you can spot the cheese in this video:
Just to break it up a bit, they do a couple of uphill races, which was almost as funny, as people would start off at an almighty pace only to be huffing and puffing and sliding back down by about a 1/4 of the way up.
At the end of the day they had some unoffical races (read no cheese). I managed to get into one of these (even if it was by jumping the fence), and and even better managed to come out relativly unscathed with just a bunch of scratches and grazes up the legs and arms.
This video shows a different perspective on the hill - you can definitely see how steep it is from this angle.
I know posting has been a bit light as of late, but it's very nearly the end of my dissertation and I'm trying with all my might not to get too distracted and keep a semblance of concentration through to the bitter end! Adrian's being hounded to write a post about cheese roll so hopefully that appears at some point too ;)
The dissertation's due on the 1st of September, so only three weeks to go. Wish me luck!
