Tuesday – Saturday, 4-8 July, 2017
I am doing something a little different here by lumping 5 days at Oxford into a single Post. The reason is that with Julie studying most of the time, there are not a lot of activities. So here we go:
Tuesday – weather cool and cloudy
We are off to breakfast but on the way we try to go to the laundry room as I am just about out of clean clothes. However, the entranced is blocked off by construction. We walk around to the other side of the building but it too is blocked off. A construction guy shows Julie a way around the blockade and down to the laundry room. Julie comes back and states that it is a total mess, an absolute disgrace.
Any way, we head upstairs for breakfast which is a typical small room.
Julie goes off to school, leaving me behind. I decide I will brave the laundry and take my stuff over. She is right, it is a hopeless mess. However, the washers are commercial grade and do a good job in 31 minutes. The dryers are also commercial grade but the one that I select does not dry. So I select another one which works fine but the total drying time becomes 98 minutes. Still it is great to have a bunch of clean clothes.
There is a daily service to the rooms so it is our turn. I have a map and decide to walk into a near part of Oxford. No photos today. I make the mistake of going to a Burger King, which can be alright in Australia (generally known as Hungry Jacks) but is terrible here. The burger I order is as dry as an old chip, the fries not much better and then I spill 99% of the drink everywhere. I go to a Sainsbury to pick up a couple of bottles of wine and return to Keble. Since the Internet is not working, I do a bit of reading and snoozing.
I am to meet Julie at the Kings Arms again for dinner. I walk up there and she was there already, apparently had been outside for a while but moved in when it was too cool. We order dinner:
It was supposedly Lamb and Leek snags but I could not taste the leek. Having said that I burped up leeks for the next day.
Wednesday – weather improving
Today is Julie’s next major exam. After breakfast she “gowns up” to catch the bus to the exam place.
In the mean time, I get adventurous and take the big, for me any way, walk to the train station. The point is to pickup the train tickets I had pre-booked in Australia for our later departures around Britain. I went to the Kiosk and did very well getting 4 sets of tickets, including one expired pair that I had mis-booked. I also buy tickets to get from Oxford to Windsor on Sunday, although I got the wrong date (again) for the tickets. Julie eventually solves this problem the next day.
I go to the square where I had had the souv the first day and discover that there is a market going on which includes a number of food stalls of various cuisines. I select some Chinese chicken dumplings which are quite OK. Back to the room to fight the crap Net.
Julie believes that she did OK on the exam. They have a sumptuous lunch. The following are snacks after work.
It was agreed that we would go to Jericho Tavern this evening for the famous “horseshoe sausage”. Julie and Son Peter had been there on their last visit. We agree by email for Julie and I to meet at the Lamb and Flag pub nearby.
We walk up another 15 minutes to the Jericho, after all the walking I did earlier today, but felt alright.
We order at the front bar. The salad that Julie wanted is finished for the day and there is only one horseshoe sausage left. We go out to the back patio and it is less than salubrious. One guy there has a black tattoo over his whole head except for part of his face.
The service is quite slow but eventually things start to happen.
There was a bit of a sad story in that an older couple came in and the Wife was clearly suffering from Parkinson’s or something similar. I guess she was not allowed to drink alcohol but every time her husband left the table she took a big slurp from his beer.
Thursday – Weather Improving
Another day of study for Julie with the difference being that she is to attend a special dinner tonight. The following is some of the food available at lunch.
In the mean time, I walk out to town again. I turn down an alley way called the Friars Walk and end up in the same square as yesterday. It has a different set-up but largely the same food vendors as yesterday.
Julie goes to her dinner that evening.
In the mean time I go out to a local place called the Parsonage which Julie had pointed out the night before.
Back home, I managed to stay awake until Julie came back.
Friday, weather quite good
As per usual we have breakfast early and then Julie goes off to school.
I wait to go out until the knock from the cleaner at around 11:00. I go down the same Friars Walk but today there is no market. That is OK I grab some fried chicken from the shop that I had had the souv on the first day. We are having an early dinner tonight.
So I head out around 5:15 to walk past the Kings Arms and turn into the White Knight. Julie is already there talking with a group of Australians.
The reason for the early dinner is that we are to see some live music, an Australian group we had never heard of before called the Spooky Men Chorale. It is to be held in the Sheldonian Theatre which is across the street. This theatre was built in the 1660s which is an amazing old building.
Julie went on ahead of me because we do not have reserved seats. I am able to find her straightforwardly, up the stairs to the mid level.
There are no photos of the acts, not permitted. The warm up band was called The River and basically did Swedish harmonies, probably about 12 in the group. The main band, the Spookies, are 17 men dressed in black with various kinds of weird hats. They sing with plenty of harmony. Lead by their leader, they do a number of comedy numbers and patter. I missed a lot of it due to my poor hearing. They do a set of Georgian music, which we have had experience in the past due to our tour of Georgia two years ago. A large group of men, called the Mens Choir joined in from the seats and then at the back of the stage. Among the other types of songs they were doing was a long tribute to Jim of Jim’s Mowing etc. Then the last two were a song about 3 brothers with the last surviving being Bharria Ghibb – a take off of the Bee Gees with their version of staying alive and then a tribute to David Bowie as an encore with all the Spookies spreading out amongst the audience. It definitely was an experience.
Saturday – weather warm, near perfect
This is Julie’s last day of study at Oxford this trip. She is supposed to finish early today. After breakfast she goes off again and I make another sortie into the laundry room which seems even messier than earlier in the week. Still it is a relief to have almost no dirty clothes. I take a hike down the Friars Walk and the market is again there. Several other cuisines are represented today include Venezuelan, Ethiopian and Sri Lankan. I get a Sri Lankan chicken curry meal which was quite tasty.
Meanwhile, in Julie’s lecture, there is discussion of Richard Feynman and his involvement in the investigation of the Challenger disaster. I had indirectly studied under Feynman while at Caltech.
Julie does arrive back earlier around 5:00 because there had been shopping stops along the way. We had decided we would have a quiet night to enable suit case packing and early bed time ahead of our early departure tomorrow. So we go across the way to the Eagle and Child pub which had been recommended by a colleague at breakfast. It used to be known as the bird and baby. Apparently Tolkien and other famous authors had regularly drank there.
Although crowded, Julie managed to get a table in the back patio shared with a musicologist from Finland.
The back patio was clearly an add-on with the wall behind us a more modern building which had the bricks painted. What’s more there was air conditioning.
So that is the end of the chronicles about our times in Oxford. Tomorrow we set off on a new adventure.