It’s been a lovely week. On Friday of last week I had a slap-up cooked breakfast with Oxford Tea at the News Cafe in Ship St, wandered through town looking at stuff, then did my absolute favourite thing - got in the car with my map and a favourite book and went to find places mentioned in it! Today it was A Severe Mercy by Sheldon Vanauken (the ( Read more... )

It’s been ages since I posted, and for the usual reason - so much to do, so little time! Everything I do now is tinged with sadness - even though we have five weeks to go, it feels like such an incredibly short time. I go into town almost every day now, and find myself pacing the streets as though I can soak up the essence of Oxford into my very ( Read more... )

I haven't written in forever, mainly because there's so much to do in and around Oxford at the moment that I just haven't had time to sit and write everything down. So here's a small sample of the coolness that my life is at the moment;

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I went to the CSL Society the other night to hear Walter Hooper speak about Lewis. This is the third time I’ve heard Hooper give variations of this speech, but there are always new bits. A lovely anecdote from only last week; as the literary advisor to the estate, Hooper gets all the fan mail. Thousands and thousands of letters to Lewis every year ( Read more... )

Belated Easter post, written on Easter Monday but not posted - perhaps because I was too emotionally drained.

( Easter, cults and Oxford )

It's 8:30am and I've been up for four hours - Steve and I got up early this morning, fell into yesterday's clothes and cycled to town half-asleep to see the madness that is May Day in Oxford. And I am SO GLAD we did, it was the most awesome morning.

( May madness )

It’s been a week of stupendous beauty, starting on Thursday of last week. Graham, Steve’s dad, was stuck in London because of ash, so came to stay with us for a few days and decided he wanted to go to Bristol. We spent a lovely day wandering around the city centre and along the waterfront and observing all the identikit Conservatives having their ( Read more... )

I haven’t written in forever because I’ve been madly pleasantly busy. We have delightful houseguests at the moment, a good friend of Steve’s and her husband, people so much fun to be with that it’s like having the best flatmates in the world, people that you want to hang out with as well as live with. It’s especially nice because Steve and Zoe ( Read more... )

Had a great weekend doing a temp job at St Catherine’s College. They were hosting the Centre for the Study of African Economies’ annual conference. I can’t tell you how inspiring it was, sitting on the desk doing registration and handing out badges to people from Africa, China, Europe, Australia, NZ, India, working everywhere from Oxford University ( Read more... )

Today I met my friend Shelley in London and we had a lovely day exploring the Borough Food Market (so amazing), walking the South Bank of the Thames and mooching around Portobello Rd ( Read more... )