Last post of the sabbatical

We walked into Oxford for lunch today and all got a bit wistful about leaving. We're ready to go but we dearly love Oxford and we'll miss it. Ally and Liv went back to school one last time to say goodbye, turn in some books. It felt good to them to reconnect briefly with these generous kids who extended themselves and made them feel part of something here. I am very thankful to those sassy and boisterous Cherwell children who took good care of my girls.

I'm posting one last picture from the memorial fountain for Princess Diana in Hyde Park. It was one of the first photos I took in England, taken before Chip's dad passed away. As our time here has been somewhat defined and shaped by this loss, it feels good to end our journey on a memorial note. Larry had a finesse for slowly extracting key information from Olivia and Allison through well appointed questions during one of their television shows or over a snack at the kitchen counter. He'd take his time, amass his facts and put all the pieces of the puzzle together for himself (and us) later. It was very reassuring to get the report card from Grandpa that all was well with the girls. I don't go much for the finesse approach because it takes patience. I'm more of a Guantanamo/Spanish Inquistion type. I am keen to know what Olivia and Ally will reflect upon when they return home, what things will stand out for them, what things they will miss, etc. But I think I'll take a lesson from the master....take a breath, give everyone some space and let things settle before trying to take everyone's emotional temperature upon wheels down in O'Hare. We'll see how I do.

Where does my blog go from here? Will I keep going? I haven't a clue. The computer cord is fried and frayed and there's no juice left so I have to sign off from England for the last time. Thanks to all who've read because it kept me good company when I was lonely, knowing you were reading.

Happy Christmas 2008

The coffee's brewed, the pastries laid out....

The darlings are into their stockings....


The sun's out and that's a gift in itself....

The vicar scurries across the quad of Christ Church for the 11am service...

This fabulous teen attended Christmas service in her fur coat and micro mini while our teens stayed home....

A game of Yahtzee and Christmas crackers during dinner....


Merry Christmas from uz all.

Christmas Pantomime

A few weeks ago, I was subjected to the English tradition of Christmas Pantomime. There is no translation into American culture except possibly regional dinner theater....without the dinner. And what is dinner in dinner theater but the only refuge and diversion from the horrible musical/comedy thing on the stage. From what I gather from the telly, "panto" as it's referred to, is generally set within a traditional nursery rhyme or story, such as Jack and the Beanstalk or Peter Pan, and made into an elaborate campy mess that includes transvestism, audience participation, drum rolls for comic effect and for adult audiences, repeated trips to the poorly cloaked penis joke well (pun intended).



Certainly don't watch more than feels right or you are likely to never want to visit England ever. I will let you in on a well kept giant secret....all washed up American actors come over here at some point to do Christmas pantos for the season, lauded by audiences and the BBC as if they are still major stars. They do nothing to dispel the myth of their relevance in interviews. Henry Winkler, Steve Guttenberg and hold onto your britches...Jimmy Osmond. All starring in their respective pantos this season. Can you believe it? They still get work, God bless 'em.

The thing is...England really does Christmas in a nice way. Every restaurant does Christmas dinners for various groupings, either work related or friends or family--ten or thirty, everybody goes out for a Christmas dinner at some point. Each dinner guest gets a Christmas cracker on his plate provided by the restaurant, and the prix fixe menu allows the party to go on with minimal interruption from the waitstaff. The tradition of hand delivered Christmas cards at these gatherings is one of the dearest things I've witnessed at a holiday. It is something quite old fashioned in the best way to see grown men and women running around a table before dinner to hand out Christmas cards like valentines, simply to wish their friends and family a very personal Merry Christmas. How wonderful it is to return home after a dinner out with your pockets or purse filled with handwritten cards. The sweatshop fashion in which cards are sent in the U.S. without even a handwritten signature, is impersonal and leaves me looking for any sign, even a ring from the bottom of a coffee cup, of some intimate touch by the senders.

So the English happily endure the panto season...where there's the requisite dude dressed up like a lady, the audience yelling "Oh no they didn't!" to which the cast yells "Oh yes they did!" (that goes back and forth about six times until you feel your fingers creeping up toward your ears to plug the bleeding from your brain) and then, there are the unceasing puns about spotted dick, melons, the financial crisis and how long Jack's beanstalk is, and finally, the all too frequent fondling of the guy in the cow costume. I can only equate it with the worst Sonny and Cher Show skit you never saw because it was too scandalous to get by the censors in 1973.

The gallant but violent prince

Audience participation

However, Christmas panto, as performed by Ella and Sammy, was an entirely different show and very enjoyable. It had a lot of violence with a foam sword, it had some singing which was operatic and tragic, and it had many laughs. We enjoyed a wonderful traditional English Christmas dinner replete with mulled wine, gammon, roast potatoes and veg, sprouts and a flaming Christmas pud. Well, it didn't really flame as Perry held back on the rum (who cares about the kids?, I yelled), but we smothered it with brandy butter and enjoyed it anyway.

A beautiful song by the princess

Serious violence with the sword

A wonderful way to usher in Christmas 2008 and a very public thank you to this wonderful family who I keep mostly anonymous to protect their privacy but to whom I want to shout a big "THANK YOU" for taking such good care of us while we've been here. It is good to have old friends who show the love.

Cast members meet with the audience members after the show

Last days of school

St Aldates

Today was Olivia’s last day of school for the semester. Tomorrow is Ally’s last day. It’s a half-day so she and her posse are headed to someone’s house to hang out for the afternoon and say their goodbyes. It’s kind of sad around here. Reflection is setting in.

My cabbie in Penzance asked where we had traveled thus far and after I told him, he said, “You haven’t seen much of England then?” I suppose if travel is just the physical act, that statement could be true. But if travel extends beyond that narrow definition, then I think we have traveled much further in our heads than was physically possible in this period of time. I think we got down to the business of just living in England and that became the travel experience itself. It was hard to picture before we left Madison, how this trip would all take shape once we were here, but in the end, we were just ourselves living in England, a lot closer to Europe than Madison. But the kids slogged off to school all week, Chip went to the office, I grocery shopped, cleaned and washed. We were tired or had errands to run on the weekends, just like everybody else. We ran out of milk just like at home. And we became obsessed with all the same things we love at home.

So what stamps would we claim as our favorites if we were in charge of the rubber stampers at immigration? For me, I’d like a stamp for my new found basic grasp of recent English history, politics and a broader perspective of the American election and the banking crisis. Another stamp for having gone green, as I don’t use plastic bags anymore and I compost. Chip gets a stamp for going green also, riding his bike to work every day, a routine he would like to continue when he gets home (forecast for Madison, 10 inches of snow tonight by report...what’s that now, Chip?). The girls get multiple stamps for having sought out and appreciated English music, comedy, fashion and pop culture and managing to figure out the bogglingly different English school system. The girls also get stamps for new vocabulary, “mocks, form tutor, maths, trousers, nang, cheers and mingin” and for friends called Imogene, Poppy and Polly.

These invisible stamps are indelibly marked in the pages of who we are. We’re actually just a bunch of media obsessed American homebodies who managed to get out of the house in between all our television, music, school commitments and reading pleasures and well done to us for that.

A river rescue

Oxford Canal

I didn't have my camera for this day and that's always the way, unless you're a photojournalist. I've been following the extraordinary events of my friend's blog, as she has witnessed two accidents and fire/rescue operations within four days. One rescue in the air and one on land. I add to that today, as I crossed the Thames, a water rescue by bystanders of a drowning person. A first for me in my 46 years.

Allison and I shopped all afternoon and she hopped the bus with her bus pass and all the bags as I made the short walk home on foot. I love crossing the river each day. It's always dynamic and radically changes day to day. The river right now is very swollen and the currents are challenging even for the resident swans and geese who maneuver constantly out of the currents just to stay close to the bridge. Hard work for the water birds this week. It was a pretty mild day today as winter goes, and I always check the river for pontoons and rowers as I cross. Generally, just to mutter to myself, "ya crazy sonsabitches..."

My friends, the tramps of Abingdon Road, are the only other daytime residents of the river banks this time of year where they can drink hassle free all day on the benches that line the path. They're a scrappy bunch of guys who mostly keep to themselves, drinking, pontificating in unintelligible garble and hugging. As per my usual routine, I cross the Folly Bridge and look downriver for my rowers and instead see a most extraordinary thing--a head bobbing in the middle of the river about two hundred yards away. Simultaneously, I see and hear two men who work on the pontoon boats below me running as I've never seen grown men run, the "man overboard" run I think, with orange life preservers up the dock stairs, across the bridge and down the tow path toward the drowning man. I then see with closer inspection there are many life preservers already in the water, floating far from the man whose head now appears to be bobbing under as much as over the water. He is smack dab in the middle of the Thames and swirling in the currents. Wait, now there are two heads. Someone's jumped in to save him.

Well, crap. I know CPR. I don't want to go, but this is England and it's possible I'm the only one who might initiate rescue breathing before putting on the kettle. When Olivia's foot was run over, they brought her a cup of tea. I better go down, I think to myself. I walk down the path and note now there is a THIRD man in the water swimming from the other side, quite athletically to the duo of rescuer and drowning man making their way slowly to shore. The rescuer reaches shore and he and another man drag the drowning man up onto the bank and begin pumping the man's belly very hard, probably breaking his ribs and injuring his spleen and liver, but I'm hoping also clearing the water from his airways. I'm still not at the scene but watching it all unfold. Someone from the opposite bank is yelling, "Breathe for him! Breathe for him!" Shut up, lady, I think. Easy for you to say, you're on the other side. I arrive. The athletic swimmer has made it across and is still standing in the water recovering from what was a fantastic but dangerous swim. Everyone's wet and I see that rescuer, rescuer's friend and drowning man are all very drunk. It's 40 degrees. I'm thinking hypothermia all around. They've turned drowning man on his side and he is definitely blue. I'm getting ready to announce my intentions of starting rescue breathing, as I'm simultaneously considering what blood tests I'll need (hepatitis and HIV surely, possibly malaria, leprosy...) once we've exchanged saliva and blood from my kiss of life....when I hear him groan.

PRAISE SWEET BABY JESUS! I do NOT have to put my mouth on his. I bend down, as the rescuers, including the pontoon boat guy, are starting to panic about what to do next. The drunk guy is screaming, "Stay with us, Woody. Don't leave us!" Can you believe it? Even tramps watch too much TV! I hear the sirens and they are close. I bend down and recap the situation for the rescuers, "Look, he's breathing. He's groaning and trying to talk so let's just keep him warm until help arrives." The rescuers call for jackets. I don't give mine. It's a little piece of nothing that would cover no part of this mountain of a man lying on the ground. This guy needs the electric warming blanket of an ICU but it's England and I'm sure they'll put on the kettle at the hospital. And so people offer up their jackets and although he's still blue, he's groaning and moving and that's fine with me.

The police have run the entire distance down the river path which is admirable and I note their fitness. I'm checking out the police? Focus, Julie.... We all start giving our stories briefly. Mine is that I don't think he was under water for very long, if at all but that I'm sure he's swallowed quite a bit during the rescue. I can't account for prior brain damage due to years of drinking at the river's edge, so it will be a challenging neurological assessment at the hospital. I don't think the water did him much harm today. His buddies bouncing on his abdomen is a different story and I hope he lives to tell about it.

I leave after admonishing the student who is not drunk and still standing sopping wet on the river bank, to get someplace warm before he becomes hypothermic. As I left, a mysterious smoking man in a Norwegian knit hat was telling the police, "He was pushed." Entrigue! Better get Inspector Lewis down here right away.

I got back out to the Abingdon Road just in time to flag down the ambulance for the police. I feel guilty for feeling relieved that I didn't have to suck face with the drunk drowning man.

As I said, Allison took the bus and I was supposedly right behind her on foot....twenty minutes later, I walk in. They thought I was still shopping.

The Business Lunch

Another scratch off for the “to-do” list--lunch in Jericho, home of the Oxford yuppie, with my number 1 blog fan. Chip and I scheduled a “business lunch” at Branca, a nouvelle Italian bistro on Walton Street. It’s a puzzle to me at this point how I continue blogging once this blog is no longer a travel/culture diary. Am I doomed to a life in nursing or can I try something new? My “hating taking care of sick people” thing is what a nurse recruiter might consider a bad fit for most health care settings. Nurse Ratched is a role model. Maybe I need to keep my finger on the pause button for a bit longer.



What better way to contemplate a fantasy alternative career than with a fantasy business lunch? Chip will confirm that I am completely out of touch with reality as regards the business world. Since my parents also worked in health care, my ideas about the business world are based largely in all I’ve carefully studied on television dramas like Dallas and Dynasty as well as the daytime soap opera, The Young and the Restless. As a business professor, Chip sees business as a complicated sociological matrix of industry, unions, technology and a dynamically changing workforce (I just made that up with words I’ve heard him use on the phone). For me, business is an office with a desk, computer and a phone and power lunches, business dinners, early morning planning sessions with coffee and pastries, and cocktail parties after work with “clients”. A parade of social gatherings with food. You are familiar with Darren Stevens and Mr. Tate on Bewitched? Then you have my vision.



I used to love meetings when I was a staff nurse. If they need a staff nurse at a meeting instead of at the bedside, it’s usually driven at an administrative level to introduce an “innovative new strategy of care” which implies cost saving measures for the hospital sure to lengthen hours, decrease staffing or cap a pay scale. They unlock your shock collar and let you leave the patient care area to go to a boardroom with a white erase board and and comfy chairs in an area of the hospital that doesn’t smell like poop, but more like flowers and leather. There I could sit for an hour without having to respond to the unrelenting universal needs of the suffering--sustenance, pain relief, oxygen, emotional support and elimination. Timed well, the inspired and experienced nurse could plan her day around coinciding unpleasant tasks, like weighing her obese patient with the bed scale or getting her post-surgical patient on the bedpan, with her meeting time.
“Right, I just put Mrs. Johnson on the bedpan, Sally. Can you check on her in about ten minutes? And grab a weight on Room 406 if you would? Thanks, you’re a peach.” I’m sure I never did that.



My power lunch started with an Island Breeze Punch or some such, a lovely drink of Campari, limoncello, cassis and lemon topped with Prosecco. We had a great luxurious two plus hour lunch as business people do, and left around 4pm. The restaurant was peaceful between the lunch and dinner crowds. We cycled home at dusk to children wondering why their unrelenting demands for tea had not yet been satisfied.



The Christmas decorations are up. Little house in Oxford is ready for Santa.

It's December already

I flipped the calendar last night for the second to the last time here in Oxford and it sort of stopped me in my tracks. It seems now that the time went by fast, when I know that in August and September the days were so long and heavy that I thought our time here would drag on and on and sadly so. My friend Natalie reassured me during those days that reaching the halfway point of any extended time away from home would signal a change in feeling. She couldn't have been more right. I clung to that thought in September and I owe her a lot of thanks for articulating that notion clearly at a time when I felt I could hear so little. Some healing time and two trips to Europe have bookended the intervening months and brought me suddenly to putting up Christmas lights.

"What do we still need to do?" Chip and I asked one another this morning. We have some "must dos" left:
1. Evensong at Christ Church
2. A Christmas dinner at a restaurant
3. Lunch at the Trout
4. Christmas shopping at Harrods, John Lewis and Carnaby Street in London
5. Ashmolean Museum
6. Lunch in one of trendy Jericho's restaurants
7. Train ride to Bath for Christmas market
8. A pint of beer during the day, in the sunshine, by myself! at the Head of the River pub---OH WAIT DID IT!



Checked off the list just hours ago, it was 12:20pm and I had about an hour of sunlight left--no kidding, the sun hugs a very shallow arc these days and a glimpse of the actual ball of fire requires a trip to elevated ground outside the hours of 10am-2pm. On my way home from the grocery store, I glanced down to the Head of the River patio--bright sunshine on the picnic tables. I made a beeline for them, rolling my little shopping trolley down the wheelchair ramps like the nutty old lady I'm becoming, grabbed the table most likely to stay in the sunshine over the next hour and ordered a pint of Fuller's and a bowl of soup. For three months I have walked by this patio and on sunny days seen people having beers in the sunshine and thought "I need to do that." After four days in a hotel with my adorably cuddly, close knit, claustrophobically (spellcheck suggested "catastrophically" which also fits) clingy children, a pint alone today sounded particularly good. Only my shopping trolley for company, I parked it across from me like a dining partner, confident that the weather would keep the raw chicken fresh. The temperature...aah, yes. 5 degrees-ish C. But when something's on the list, you have got to play through the pain. My only quick translation from Celsius to Fahrenheit is 37 to 98.6, which most health care experts like myself can tell you. But 5? Roughly, refrigerator temperature, which is why it now makes sense why the shopping trolley looked so happy. Not exactly impressive to my Wisconsin friends, but with no ski hill in sight and only wearing my fleece jacket and pashmina, I felt like quite the robust little Englishwoman. I turned my face to the sun and tried to soak up any meager UV light that might have made it through the atmosphere. By 3:30pm, it looks like this, so I feel fortunate to have grabbed that hour of sunshine today. Back to the list tomorrow. Almost time for tea, which is a good thing as I need to reinvigorate myself from my midday beer.

An Early Thanksgiving

Pumpkin pie making the night before....




Then today, an early Thanksgiving

Quiet moment in the kitchen between cooks








A long day, maybe dreaming of pie

Poppy Day

Remembering VE Day? Thinks it IS VE Day? Adorable and happy whatever she was thinking













A low key weekend in Oxford. Saturday afternoon, Chip and I cycled along the bike path south to the Isis Pub, on the banks of the Thames and only accessible by foot or bike. We watched as the light faded in the late afternoon, as families slowly began tramping into the empty pub for tea. Half an hour later, the pub was full. A group of four families sat next to us, moms, dads, toddlers, babes in arms (newborn included) and even a pregnant woman amongst the group. Wonderful and warm chaos to watch, all these friends visiting with one another at an hour when no one is yet grouchy or tired (gents even moved outside for cigs and pints as the sun dropped for good, but it appeared no one wanted to break up the party) as the kids ran around the table, hopped on and off laps, eating scones and drawing pictures in the condensation on the windows as the babies were passed in turn so everyone could enjoy their tea. Did I appreciate it and enjoy it back then? Enough to feel a twinge of sadness that it's gone when I see it. Too young to be a grandparent, too old to go through it all again. No man's land. Love my teenagers and my freedom, but miss the chaos and the babies.

Today, Remembrance Sunday, Poppy Day, Armistice Day. A very solemn ceremony at the Oxford war memorial with local politicos, citizens, veterans, soldiers and those training to become soldiers. It is the 90th anniversary of the armistice for WWI and there has been lots of press about the few veterans left from that war, including a man named Harry Patch. Harry fought in WWI and began having flashbacks of the trenches at the tender age of 100. The poet laureate, Andrew Motion wrote a moving tribute poem to him this year in honor of the armistice and Harry's life. Obviously, took a greater toll on the consciousness of England than the US, it seems. Although I didn't see anybody today old enough to have fought in that war, there looked to be many people who might have fought in or remembered WWII pretty well. It occurred to me today that although I was raised a Quaker, I don't think I am a pacifist. My adult life has been full of stupid wars which makes it confusing at first thought, so I turned to Chip for guidance. I said, "Are you a pacifist because I don't think I am." To which he replied, "Hell, no." With that sorted, we went to buy an ironing board cover and go to a craft fair. Freedom is good.

Cycling can be dangerous when carrying furniture

Blue Bess

Ok, I admit it. The coffee table was a mistake.

Chip and I cycled to the St. Giles Cafe this morning, a former haunt for us in 1986, for a good and greasy "home breakfast" of eggs, sausage AND bacon, beans and toast. And good strong coffee. Mm mm. You know when the lunch break construction workers come piling in, that you have hit the right joint.

After breakfast, I felt energized to run a number of errands and the beauty of the bike, in addition to efficient ground coverage, is its carrying capacity. As usual, my eyes and ambition much bigger than the basket. But between my shoulder bag and the bike, I shoved it all in there.
bag of apples
mittens
1 kg meat
hamburger buns
mini yum yums (crack cocaine laced donuts)
9 inch Analon stock pot
yarn
scones and clotted cream
a tomato
20 Christmas ornaments
3 books
3 cassette tapes including English Pop Hits of 1983
candle
tea cozy

I made it home although the weight distribution on the bike at times can be problematic especially with any over correction in turning. Luckily, Oxford bus drivers must know of me and give me a wide berth.

Which brings me to the coffee table. After unloading the groceries, etc. I was further motivated to continue to a used furniture store down the road. Our house is not properly outfitted for snacking in front of the TV (priority for Hunters) and I needed one small steady table to put near the sofa. I did find a good one and started away from the shop with it propped securely atop the basket. That setup should have remained the plan of the day, but it felt so inefficient to walk when the wheels go so much faster. If I could push it, surely I could ride with it up there, right? Well, I'm not a genius, that's obvious. The table sort of acted like a giant wooden windscreen and after realizing that the physics of my ride were going to require a calculator, I swung the table off the basket and began to carry it while riding one handed. I was too wide for the sidewalk so I rode out into the street. Now my balance was corrected, but the cars driving by were coming so close to the legs of the table that I was sure someone's mirror would eventually send me flying. I rode back up onto the sidewalk, and that was much better until I nearly sling shot myself around a bus stop pole with the legs of table. Some scary moments, but also thrilling.

In the end, I did avoid a third trip to the John Radcliffe Hospital and although nobody else in this family is quite as thrilled with the table, I feel euphoric, as if I went out, shot it and brought it home roped to the hood of my car. Proud and satisfied.

Finally caught in the rain

Woo hoo! FINALLY caught in the rain today. The funny thing is I thought that would have happened about a hundred times by now and I would be so bitter and hate the rain and the English weather, etc. But the weather has been really nice since we got here. England apparently had a miserable summer with lots of rain and flooding in July and when we arrived, the English were so bitter and angry about the weather, which we thought was funny. Since we've been here, however, it's really been ok although if you talk to people who lived here through July, they'll still tell you it's been non-stop raining since July.



Today, however, a stereotypical blustery, rainy English day. I left this morning on my bike destined for Borders to find a book about Pompeii. It was cloudy and dreary, but still dry. Borders completely sucked, both in selection and at the help desk where they've strangely employed a very bored, sort of listless American young woman. She asked where I was from and then had no follow up question or comment once I told her. Weird, right? Don't ask, if you aren't going to follow up with some good American banter. I recognized her accent and didn't bug her about where she was from. Yuck. Get rid of her! A boring, unfriendly American is really irksome to another American when not in America. So, I left but then decided to try Blackwells, which is well known in Oxford and back in the eighties was the only bookstore in town. Still should be, after my Borders experience. It is a great bookstore. They have got it just right. I think I have been brainwashed by the Borders/Barnes and Noble franchises and their uniform approach to display and predictable groupings of books with enticing covers. Every store looks the same. Blackwells has four or five floors in a narrow but not claustrophobic building. There are cozy low ceilings, gentle lighting, carpeting, and lots of places to find a chair and peruse the book you might buy. I got lost for 90 minutes in the ancient history section (no, that has never happened before and likely not to happen again) but did find an excellent book in the end. I also read two other books about Pompeii so feeling very prepared to delight myself and irritate my children with fun facts on the train to Pompeii. They'll be screaming at me to shut up even before we leave Rome. It'll be awesome. Anyway, I paid and stepped out onto the sidewalk to real English RAIN! Still had to get to the market, so off I went on my bike in the downpour to Sainsburys. Did my shopping and as usual, bought a little too much...almost too much to safely cycle, but I like a challenge. When I came out of Sainsburys, it was really raining but all I had to do was get the groceries home, so I put what I could in the basket and heaved the rest over my shoulder and hopped on the bike for a very wet and windy ride home. It was exhilirating and the laptop is drying my trousers as I type. Almost time for tea.

The students are back

High Street, Oxford
"The High", site of many town and gown battles, leaving hundreds dead at times... tales that no longer feel disproportionately violent to the situation at hand


We've always lived near college campuses so you would think student behavior couldn't surprise me anymore. However. As the girls and I passed over the Folly Bridge yesterday a.m., I was surprised to see two gigantic picnic tables, a smaller table and all its chairs and multiple flower pots floating below us in the Thames. A late night student piss-up likely turned to vandalizing the patio of the Head of the River Pub. As I headed back south after dropping off the kids, I peered over the bridge again to see the entire mass of furniture had congealed at a corner where the patio and the bridge meet, waiting patiently for the pub to open. The pile, which looked a bit like the battlement in Les Mis, sighed, "no, no, this isn't the first time....that's why we developed this clever strategy to cuddle up to this bit of the patio so as not to drift away..."

The American students have also arrived, and I know that not only by their accents and their herd-like meandering. It's the jogging. They're doggedly determined to maintain the set pace (cardio! cardio!) through the crowded sidewalks, the ridiculous road construction with the sidewalk closures, the bus exhaust and the ankle breaking cobbles, while the florid parks and river trails sit just off to the left and right. Poor stupid dears. While the buses (bless them) continue to make way for me on my ever decreasingly wobbly cycle (today, I led the peloton up St. Aldates; three bikes and a double decker bus), the students aimlessly wander out into the bike lanes all over the city and eventually I suppose will end up ass over teakettle from a collision with my bike. It is conceivable that a bunch of students may rise up in anger, pick up me and BlueBess and toss us into the Thames. I guess I'll just drift over to the edge of the Head of the River until somebody fishes me out. "...Pint of bitter please? And would you be kind enough to get an oar or something to help me out? Cheers."

I can say with all of the students back and all the energy and life and excitement they bring to the city, I will rise up with the townies as necessary.

Sir Roger

Sir Roger and the Americans


Today, Scott and I took a lovely bike ride along the Thames, lunched in town on a delicious baguette of goat cheese, fig chutney and rocket and then waited a brief hour to meet Sir Roger Moore at Borders bookstore in Oxford. He was gracious and patient and in a fabulous suit with his lovely wife at his side. Scott handed him the book to be signed and said, "Oh, it's upside down..." to which Sir Roger replied, "That's alright, so am I." I stood there mute with a gigantic grin on my face looking perhaps like Scott's special sister. We came home and celebrated with martinis and beef.

Shaken not stirred

The Cake Shop, Covered Market, Oxford

Draping the fondant
Beautiful tiny cakes
A whole array of treats

Fondant is a cream confection used as a filling or coating for cakes, pastries, and candies or sweets. In its simplest form, it is sugar and water cooked to the soft-ball stage, cooled slightly, and stirred or beaten until it is an opaque mass of creamy consistency. Wikipedia

I had never heard the word before today. Anne and I shopped the Oxford Covered Market and The Cake Shop is a tiny and very busy bakery within. There were at least five people working non-stop today maybe getting ready for the weekend. All stages of making and decorating cakes were represented simultaneously in the shop, from batter to box almost. The ease and speed with which they create figures and flowers and piping and layering and color coordinating the whole theme of the cake is a testament of course to their skill. Somebody could try to teach me, but it would be hopeless. I would never be that good. The man in the photo above worked so quickly and as if he was actually thinking about other things while he rolled out and applied the fondant to the cake. Truly impressive but herein lies the story.

Anne watches the Cake Network and was excited to see them using fondant. She continued to explain in great detail how the baker makes the fondant, and then rolls out the fondant and then lays the fondant on the cake and then uses a tool to smooth out the fondant to make sure there are no air bubbles underneath the fondant. You know how a word can begin to sound unreal and then hearing it becomes completely irritating once that happens? She was doing it on purpose to annoy me as I often think of most people and the things they do.

"Wow, that's awesome, now stop saying fondant, already. It's irritating. "

"You're just mad that I know something you don't know."



So, I took her to see the butcher.

Christ Church, Oxford

Old Tom

Anne, Pat and Chip view Tom Tower, aka Old Tom
Birthday boy
Dining Hall Christ Church
Head of the River
The Bear
Christ Church Chapel

The Corys visit us for a day in Oxford. The pub crawl starts at the Head of the River on the Thames. Then a trip to Christ Church to see where the Harry Potter Quidditch match was filmed and to view their Dining Hall which was the model for Hogwarts' dining hall. Pub crawl proceeds to the Bear, the Kings Arms and the Turf Tavern. We are pooped. Ends with birthday cake and presents at Kineton Road.