Bibliophilia in Oxford

It's been an absolute age (nearly six months!) since I last posted which is absolutely terrible, as I've been doing so much travelling between then and now and have so many great photos to post, but I'm going to try hard to remedy the gaps and put everything back up - if only for the purposes of helping my memory and nothing else!

But, I thought I'd start with something altogether more recent.  I recently got an email from the LSE Review of Books (who I've written for a few times so far) asking for people to write about their favourite bookshops within a particular town, and I immediately knew I had to write about Oxford.  It's one of the best places for books in the UK in my opinion, particularly because of the Last Bookshop, where they sell remainder specialty books for only £2 each!  It was very hard to restrain myself from buying too many books that's for sure...

The piece is online here, and also talks about Blackwells and the original Oxfam bookshop, so if you're ever in Oxford and in need of inspiration for a book buying mission, check it out!

(c) Peter Titmuss/Alamy

Oxford meme

Variants on this theme have been going around for a little while now, but this was the first that I thought was really good enough to share - it's so true!

Finally, the graduation photos

I know I've been extremely slack - but what with camping in the far north (as in, the faaaaaar north), Christmas, getting back to NZ, trying to finish my journal article etc. etc., it's been a busy last little while.

But, before Adrian and I head off on part deux of our 'let's see as much of the North Island as possible' camping trip, here are the graduation photos. It was an absolutely brilliant day, perfectly capping off (hahaha, geddit??) my year in Oxford. It was so lovely to share it with everyone too, including Mum and Dad and my fellow NSEPers - hopefully an NSEP reunion isn't too far off!

How did 12 months go by so fast??

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!

The rest of the photos from the night are here.

Our final visitors

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.



The photos of Amber and Rachael's visit are here, the ones of Euan's visit are here, and finally, Pam's visit photos are here.

Enjoy!

Bits and bobs

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!

Peter Pan and Wendy

One of the must-do things in any Oxford student's life is to go to a ball. Those of us with £££ to spare would obviously choose the Magdalen College ball, but at £195 for one night it's a little on the steep side! A much more reasonable choice was the Keble College ball for £70, so a whole group of us from my course decided that a fun and frivolous night out on the town was definitely in order.

The theme was Neverland and it was definitely a fantasty paradise! Entertainment on offer included a silent disco, a chocolate fountain with cream filled profiteroles to dip into it (!!), a bouncy castle, a photo booth, a casino room, shisha pipes, and even sumo suits to play with! All that and unlimited food and drinks until 5am... We most definitely got our money's worth!

Adrian was particularly enamoured with the sumo suits (at about 4 in the morning) - see if you can tell which one he is in the video! I got into them as well after this scene was shot, man, are they heavy! I could hardly lift myself up again once I'd fallen over. Enjoy the video and the rest of the photos here.



The luxury of a taxi (for the mammoth one kilometre walk home...) at 5am was well worth it, as was the greasy fried chicken in bed the next day - so classy.

A brilliant night out!

Cotswolds invasion

To celebrate the prettiness that is England in the springtime, it was only right that a small Easter excursion was planned to see (arguably) one of the prettiest regions of them all - the Cotswolds. Jeff, Sara and I hired a car and used Oxford as a base to head out into the myriad of impossibly cute villages and windy country roads that make up the Cotswolds.

It's basically an amalagam of Oxford and Gloucestershire with bits of Warwickshire and other counties thrown in for good measure. It's been designated as an 'area of outstanding natural beauty' and I'd definitely agree having seen it!

We started off with a trip to Minster Lovell via Woodstock to see the ruins of Minster Lovell hall, the still existing church and old dovecote. There's a rather eerie story about the last Lord Lovell hiding in a secret passage but no-one ever finding him and his skeleton only being discovered years later... After that we went to the picture postcard Slaughters (Lower Slaughter being especially cute with all the daffodils, lambs, river, working water mill etc.) and Chipping Campden which had a very lovely main street with lots of shops and places to have a Pimms and cream tea! I even found a brand new board game at the local op-shop for only £3 which has got to be a good end to any day!


Day two was spent mostly at Kenilworth Castle in Warwickshire which has had a very fascinating pedigree, particularly when Robert Dudley owned the castle and hosted several elaborate festivities for Elizabeth I in the late 1500s (said to be the inspiration for 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' even). There was a great amalgam of styles as the castle was built over several centuries and they're building a new Elizabethan garden too.


I got completely sucked in by the tasting of all the jams and things and came away with some lemon honey, gooseberry and elderflower jam, and honey mead! Mmmm... We also had great fun listening to the audio guide's medieval dance music, jigging our way across the castle and dressing up in the old clothes!


After Kenilworth we popped into Stratford-upon-Avon briefly, visiting the (outside of) Shakespeare's birthplace and having a drink by the river. Not much really to report from there other than that it was full of people and a nightmare finding a park! Oh, no, the church was pretty stunning but unfortunately closed... Stratford was a brief stop because we were on the way to the PUDDING CLUB! More on that in a later post...

Day three was all about getting out and about into the fresh air (and to work of the massive amount of pudding just consumed). We had lunch at a great old pub called the Falkland Arms in Great Tew and then joined in the great British tradition of going for a ramble across the bridle paths and fields, getting in tune with nature. We passed a great church there as well which had some brass pictures from 1410, pretty impressive! We rounded off the afternoon by going to see the White Horse in Uffington, south of Oxford and hanging out with some very non-plussed sheep. You can't see it fully from the ground which makes its original meaning all the more interesting, with theories ranging from an offering to the gods or a picture drawn by aliens!


The last day of Easter was spent in Oxford, visiting the hall at Christ Church (the inspiration for the hall in the Harry Potter movies), the annual literary festival, and getting an extensive tour around Oxford cathedral (also the college chapel at Christ Church) by an expat New Zealander who could definitely talk the hind legs off any animal of your choosing!

All in all, a great Easter weekend with big ups to Jeff and Sara for organising everything! Check out the rest of the photos here.

Spring babies

There are loads of spring babies in my class here at Oxford so we've been having birthday bbqs/drinks/picnics/lunches out galore. It's been a great excuse for enjoying the fact that there are actually four very defined seasons in this country - and spring is arguably the prettiest of them all!


I've also been snapping a few pictures here and there which are a bit disconnected so I've whacked them all into the one album for your viewing pleasure.

Check them out here!

The boat race

One tradition that any self-respecting Oxford student would never miss is the 'boat race'. What is this mythical boat race you ask? Particularly considering that the sea is approximately 60 miles away from here! Well, it all becomes clear when you understand the absolute mania for rowing here - which renders all other forms of 'boats' irrelevant!

So, the 'boat race' is the annual race between Oxford and Cambridge along the Thames in London. The calibre of the rowers is insane - lots of Olympians and world champions who are taking a year out from rowing full time to get some qualifications but who are also able to keep up a really high standard of racing. Not only is it a huge deal for the two universities involved, but is also a great day out for people in London because the whole place has this big party atmosphere - even though the whole thing is over in a matter of minutes! Kind of like waiting for the Tour de France to pass by in about 20 seconds after having waited for five hours...

I headed down with some friends from uni and met up with some other London-based friends who managed to brave the crowds and push through to the front where we had been patiently staking out our place for hours. But, the numb behinds from the cold wall were well worth it when we were on the front row with about 12 people deep behind us!

There are two races on the day, the first is between Isis (Oxford 2nds) and Goldie (Cambridge 2nds) which we won by miles. We were sitting at the Hammersmith Bend (at the top of this map, in front of the Dove and Old Ship pubs) which meant we had a great view of the two boats coming around the corner and then heading towards the finish. Isis were leading the whole time in their race, but in the firsts race between the Oxford 'Dark Blues' and the Cambridge 'Light Blues' it was much more neck and neck as they came around the bend. But, then apparently they clashed blades and Oxford pulled away, eventually winning by three boat lengths in a stylish time of 17 minutes flat! Go Oxford!!!!




If you're keen to watch it next year, keep the afternoon of the 3rd of April 2010 free! Lots of photos here.

Springy spring spring spring!

From snow to sunshine! We've had the most glorious weather here over the last week, although it's starting to get a bit cloudier and cooler again now - it doesn't want to trick us into thinking that we'll actually get a summer... But, while all the blossoms started appearing it was absolutely magnificent. I can't get over how it all suddenly bursts into life at exactly the same time! The clumps of daffodils everywhere are stunning, as are all the trees completely covered in flowers. We just don't have anything like it at home!

We finally discovered University Parks the other day too, making the most of the sunshine. It's a big sports fields/park/river area really close to the science part of the university where I spend my days. Here are the rest of the photos.

(Finally!) some photos of the snow

Having not yet managed to transport all my files over from my nearly dead old laptop to my bright, spanking, amazing, lovely, so fast I can't believe it, incredible in every way new laptop, I realised that I forgot to put up the photos from February online.

We had a HUGE dump of snow here in Oxford in February and I went a bit crazy taking photos of everything I could see! We made a fantastic snowman in Port Meadow, but those photos are still on Adrian's camera (which he has taken away with him on holiday obviously so I'll have to add them to the album at a later date).

The other photos are of Duncan's visit to Oxford and our excursion to Christ Church college.

Enjoy!

The Bathers come to visit

The other weekend we had Henry and Sonja come and visit us from Bath. Oxford was gracious enough to put on a good show and we were able to spend most of the weekend out and about enjoying the lovely spring weather. We’ve also been rather sneaky in attempting to spread out all the touristy things in Oxford so that we always have something new to do when visitors come. Our evil master plan has been working out just fine so this time Sonja got to go up to the top of St Mary’s Church with me and Henry got to watch the SJC MCR football team in their victorious final league-winning match (well, it was a draw but they ended up winning the league anyway...). St Mary’s is a stunning gothic church in the middle of town and it was great to head up and see the views over lots of the colleges. I had no idea that sundials were such a predominant feature so I think I will have to make a comparative study so I can actually work out how to read them all!

I took them on a tour of St John’s as well (once all the kerfuffle over the Thai Prime Minister’s visit died down – we’re in pretty good company of some illustrious personages here!). Sonja pointed out to me in the little garden to the side of the library that there was some flax, a kowhai and even a feijoa tree!! There must be a New Zealander on the gardening staff... I was very excited about the whole feijoa thing until Sonja told me that you need a boy and a girl plant to have fruit. I think I’ll have to find that NZer and see if there are any extra stocks they can plant somewhere! Henry, as a good architecture student, also pointed out all sorts of interesting architectural elements in college that I would never have noticed before, and I now know the difference between all the brick types (just don’t quiz me on it!).



Lisa’s flat had an early St Patrick’s day party which was great fun on Saturday night and we managed to find some interesting beer from the Grog Shop down the road (I kid you not, that is it’s actual name) to celebrate with. Not exactly Irish, but I think the chilli beer with a massive whole chilli inside it was my definite favourite.


The following day we met up with two of Sonja’s friends from Wellington (one of whom is in some of my classes! Small world...) and went for a big long walk in Port Meadow. I’ve talked about that before, but it’s a big common area of mainly pasture near to our house. We walked along the Thames path up to the pub at the other end and joined the throngs of Oxfordonians (or Oxfordites? I will have to find that one out) who were out enjoying the spring weather. It was even warm enough for shorts and t-shirts!


I took lots of photos, so check them out.

Blenheim Palace

In early November, Adrian's brother Dominik and his fiancee Nikki came up and visited us in Oxford for the weekend. One of the things they had on their list to do was Blenheim Palace, which is about 30 minutes on the bus north of here. Unfortunately we visited on one of the worst days we'd had in a while so most of our outdoor exploring was limited! I also realised the negatives of my extremely cheap Primarni padded coat - rather than repel water it literally sucks it in through the seams, great.



But enough about my coat! Blenheim Palace is pretty incredible. It's a World Heritage Site and unlike most of the UK's stately homes, is not managed by the National Trust which makes it pretty different inside. Rather than preserve all the rooms as they would have been previously, they've created this incredibly high-tech and interactive tour that leads you through the house and gives you a brief history of its previous inhabitants. It's most recent (and probably most famous) was Sir Winston Churchill and there was another exhibition in another part of the house detailing his life.


The gardens were absolutely stunning as well and we will definitely be heading back there during summer for some picnics and exploring. We caught the last of the Autumn colours (through the rain)
although I know that all the North American students in my class would definitely look down their noses at it compared to what they get back home!


The link above (and again here) gives a hugely detailed run-down of the history, construction etc. of the palace and is well worth a look. The rest of our photos are here, so enjoy!

Port Meadow

Before it all got completely submerged, back in late October we went and did a bit of exploring around Port Meadow which is a massive open space/common grassed area near to our house. There are some horses, allotments, completely wild areas and lots of grass. It seems quite strange to me that these type of areas exist - there's even mention of being able to graze your animals here in the Doomsday Book!


During summer the whole area is grass, but slowly (and then a lot more rapidly!) it gets wetter and wetter until now (December) it seems like there's a huge lake in the middle of it. The allotment that I'm working on with some friends from class is on the edge of it, so I've been spending more time there lately - and hopefully more when the weather gets better!

More photos here.

St John's bops

A 'bop' is one of the bizarre Oxfordisms that you have to get used to around here - not using them would be worse than trying to get people to understand the accent! A bop is basically a party at a college bar or common room and has a theme (with our without dress-ups). Each college generally has two or three bops per term, ours were 'Heaven and Hell' and 'Jungle' themed.

We were a devil and St Peter for the first one at my college (home made costumes thank you!) and as Adrian was in London for the second one, I was a bird of paradise for the second one - although maybe the beak that I made looked more like Gonzo than a bird!

Hope you enjoy the rest of the photos here.

Matriculation

We had the matriculation ceremony for the 2008/09 freshers on the 18th of October - think graduation except in reverse! We have to wear sub fusc with our gowns which made us all look like penguins (and the girls look like some sort of errant country western singers with velvet ties).

Ok, this is all sounding a bit random so I'll explain the day as it unfolded. Matriculation is the ceremony whereby you enter as an official member of your college, and thus the university. It's normally held in the Sheldonian Theatre, which looks pretty splendid, but as that's closed for renovation at the moment we had ours in the Exam Schools (which was also pretty fancy). We all met at 9am at college (my college is St John's) and then signed the register to make it all official. One of the college Fellows (senior academic members of the college) gets to use his privilege of walking on the beautifully manicured lawns - which are strictly forbidden for the rest of us mere mortals! After that there was a whole lot of waiting around for our 10.30am ceremony...

Finally we were on the move and headed off down the road to the Exam Schools. Having my own personal paparazzi was brilliant - but he wasn't alone! Apparently Oxford on matriculation day is pretty popular with tourists and we had quite a few random groups of people wanting to take our photos! Bizarre...

The actual ceremony took about five minutes. One guy says literally two sentances in Latin and that's it! But, just to pad it out a little, we had a speech in English as well to explain the point of what we were doing. Unfortunately I managed to explode into a coughing fit as a result of my 'freshers' flu' so didn't really catch most of it...

And then it was over! Hope you enjoy the photos - there are heaps more here.

Field trip to Dorset

As a way of the MSc class getting to know each other, the deparment organised for us to all go down to Dorset for the weekend (as I mentioned in the previous post). There are about 35 of us so it was good to get everyone's names sorted before we had to start debating things in class!

We went to the Isle of Purbeck and during the charming English rain, freezing cold, and horizontal wind, we visited Corfe Castle, Tyneham, and Kimmeridge Bay. It was all about how we conceptualise landscape and we spent many hours discussing things like 'what is nature' (ask yourself - it's actually pretty interesting, or that may just be the geek in me...).

It was all very quintisentially English, with lots of autumnal blackberries to munch on, and old pubs to visit. Anton Oliver is actually in another one of the MSc classes that the Geography department runs and so it was a bit of a shock to look up from my cornflakes to see him there the first morning! Tried not to be too star struck though...


The class is a good mix of people, about one third or a bit more from the UK, a decent sized group from the States and Canada, and then us odd balls, like an Australian, Russian, Indian, Irishman, and even a Mongolian! Considering that 63% of all postgrads at Oxford are from outside of the UK I think we're doing a pretty good job of sticking with the statistics.

Here are some more photos of the weekend!

One year as a student…

So, we’re here in Oxford. It’s as pretty as everyone says it is, although I have to admit my (Amelia) adventuring has only extended so far as my college (St John’s) and the supermarket! We will definitely have to go on a walking tour or something. I’m sure we’ll have all the inside knowledge before too long.

Autumn is in full swing here. The leaves are falling and swirling everywhere and are in every colour from deep greeny black through golden yellow and a rich ruby red. I’ve collected one every day so far and am hoping that they dry out and retain their colours. The lawns however are beautifully manicured and a lush, bright green. Probably because no one walks on them! These are the trees at the entrance to our flat but I'll take the camera out soon and see what other pictures I can get.
We moved into our flat with the extremely generous help of my friend Debbie who drove us up to Oxford on Sunday. It was pretty easy to find and is about 10 minutes walk from the centre of town. St John’s is on the way into town (as is our new local, the ‘Royal Oak’) so it’s perfect. The flat itself is really big, loads of storage and furniture galore. We’ll invest in an air mattress or something so come and visit! It’s a block of flats called Hart Synnot House and houses graduate students from my college. There’s a lovely communal lawn which should be great for next summer and is lovely to look out on in the meantime. It even has squirrels!

It’s funny thinking of all the things that you take for granted when you move into an established flat though – we have no chopping board, grater or sieve for example! Adrian’s all about trying to get things for free, so luckily there’s a great Freecycle group in Oxford that I’m checking out. Hopefully it has stuff we need soon! (Freecycling is basically listing what you’ve got that you don’t want and people come and collect it – and it has everything you could possibly think of!).
I got my uni ID card today too – so there’s no backing out now! I’ve also been inundated with information – only a day after thinking that I didn’t know enough about what was going on… There are all sorts of freshers events and whatnot this week and next week to keep us busy and meet some people which should be great.

I’ve also got a field trip on Fri-Sun with my class (the 29 other people who are doing the MSc in Nature, Society and Environmental Policy) down to the Isle of Purbeck on the south coast. I’m looking forward to seeing who else is in the course and meeting the lecturers etc. (how geeky does that sound…).

Adrian’s started the commute this week too – it took over three hours to get into London this morning! Yikes. Hopefully he can convince his work to let him work from home…

So there you have it, the first installment from Oxford. More reports as events warrant!