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Published: January 10th 2007
Blenheim Palace
That's the front porch...First of all, apologies for more slackness. I think one gets very caught up in the working and the living and the day to day monotonies of coming home to the French flatties and swearing about the British and what's wrong with them....teehee. Sorry Matt D. 😊
So I've started cycling to work in what has thus far proved to be a reasonably futile effort to improve my general fitness. It's a 12km ride down to Cowley, which has been very pleasant on the frosty mornings, but the ride home, uphill (yeah, it's uphill - you only really notice on a bike!) in the dark is less fun. I've nearly been killed on several occasions, thanks mostly to Oxford's alarmingly frightening elderly population. I've also had the pleasure of taking the company VW Golf out and about around the countryside which has been rather fun.
I drove up to Fillongley, north of Coventry, to the company bottling plant and now I have learned all sorts of things that I didn't need to know about water, the process that needs to be undertaken to make ground water drinkable and frankly, if it ever came down to it
Blenheim Palace
and the back porch I could probably repair a watercooler. The highlight was really the jaunt through lanes that wouldn't have looked out of place in Postman Pat. Loverly. I wish I'd had my camera. I've also driven to Southhampton, Wimbledon (to the Royal Lawn Tennis Club), West London and the highlight of all - across Tower Bridge in the middle of a lunchhour! Driving in London is surprisingly easy thanks to Mayor Ken and his hated congestion charge. It's a great view up and down the river in the lunchtime sun.
On the downside, the British and their obsession with roundabouts has led me to become lost on more than one occasion - managing to drive from South Oxford out of the city and south to Abingdon instead of round the ring road to Kidlington in the north. Should have been home about 6, made it home about 7.30. Most amusing. Well, for the blokes at the office anyhow. I still have yet to experience the magic roundabout in Swindon, but I will. If you've never seen it, Google it. Seriously. There is nothing quite like it anywhere in the world.
Jen and I spent a day recently up at Blenheim
Blenheim Palace
Capability Brown strikes again - half the bridge (some 40 rooms) is under water! Palace, seat of the Dukes of Marlborough, birthplace of Winston Churchill and graced with gardens created by the aptly named Capability Brown. It really was (expensive! £12 each!) gorgeous. The house itself was stunning, graced with some incredible art, a library with it's own pipe organ and some of the most magnificent tapestries commemorating the first Duke's victories over the great enemy Nappy in the Peninsular War at Blenheim and other spots. The Churchill exhibit was fantastic, the highlight had to be letters to Randolph Spencer Churchill (or Dad) while Winston Jr was at Sandhurst in the late 1800s doing his officer training. He wound up in the Queens (6th) Hussars and cut quite the dashing figure in his dress uniform as a young 2nd Lieutenant. It was an incredible insight into how the other half lives - the Range Rovers and Mercedes SLK parked out front.... It also housed a small part of the British National Toy Soldier collection. Whee! I've yet to see the rest. It's in Leeds somewhere. But it was rather cool! The gardens were amazing and while we couldn't find the Haha, well, see the piccies. We're going to go back in Spring and see
Blenheim Palace
Me, having a Napoleon moment. it in it's full glory.
Like I said in my last post, so very long ago, Ruth (and her mum and sister) paid Jen and I a visit. It was Ruth's second trip to Oxford and she was obsessed with seeing the Bodleian Library, having missed it the first time. It's a truly stunning edifice - check out the photo of the ceiling in the Divinity School. It has a troubled history and took some 80 years to complete the work. Not great, considering cathedrals were built more quickly at the time! 😊 The library was built above this room and it is amazing. It's an incredible collection which I am desperate to get my hands on! Of course the bulk of the library is now across the road in a new building - necessitated by the fact that the Bodleian has a copy of every book published in England since it's construction in the 1280s. Impressive. The University has taken to buying salt mines in rural Britain to store the overflow. Apparently the temperature and humidity are ideal for storing books. They can still get titles in 24 hours too.
We spent the afternoon plodding around the
The Divination School Ceiling
One cannot help but be impressed! buildings of the historic and magnificent Christs College. The quad is as magnificent as I expected, and the church is....indescribable. It's beautiful. It also has the most impressive collection of gold and silverware I've seen in a church. However, being patronised by Henry VIII has it's advantages I'm sure. The chuckle moment came when we walked up to the dining hall - the staircase and hall itself are used in the Harry Potter flicks. Teehee. Like so much of Oxford, one is always struck by the incredible age of the place. It's incredible to think that the old fat philanderer himself strolled the same cloisters so many years ago. It must be a truly incredible experience to be an undergrad at a university like this - they make them live in College for the first year or two. I can just imagine it.
The following weekend, Jen and I made the return trip to London to do a bit of pre-Christmas shopping and some cheap entertainment. We spent Saturday shopping (and me getting dragged around Topshop and H&M). We visited Neals Yard - hippie central in London - and just stopped to admire the seriously crazy architecture and paintwork.
The Beckett Window
So few of these monuments to Thomas a Beckett exist anymore, it was a pleasure and priviledge to see one. Odd. After lunching on some seriously excellent Greek food in Drury Lane, we pottered down to Covent Garden market and tripped around amongst the crowds. It's really quite a cool spot and we'll definitely return in future. The street entertainers were incredible and the music! There's something about hearing the 3rd Autumn movement of the Four Seasons played outdoors by a string quintet that stirs the soul. We polished off the afternoon with a pleasant walk around the city, for no other reason that we felt like it. Upon finding ourselves once again in Trafalgar Square, we made the decision to wander down to the Mall and on to Buckingham Palace, where the Queen lives. It's much smaller than I expected, but by no means insignificant! The gigantic statue of Queen Victoria (complete with nose job) rather dominates the whole tableau. Mostly I went to see the men in silly hats. I shall return to see the changing of the guard, having seen it now at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington and at the Tower of London, to complete my set.... 😊
We made an evening trip to a little spot known to the world as
Neals Yard
It's a yard. But a pretty one! Brick Lane. It's a solid mile of Indian, Pakistani, Sri Lankan and Bangladeshi restaurants. We picked one almost at random and while the service was a bit dodgy, the food was fantastic. Jen wasn’t as taken with the vege curry as I was with the vindaloo. Oddly, the British restaurants don’t do vege curry the way we do at home. They tend to be as side dishes to a meat curry, rather than a meal in themselves. But we’ll go back, probably with more people, so we can really enjoy a large meal and share lots of dishes.
To top the day off, we ventured with Ruth, the Pink Ninja and family unto the West End to see Spamalot, the stage version of Monty Python’s Holy Grail and it was hilarious. Tim Curry starred as King Arthur and was magnificent. It’s hard to describe the show, other than to say that they took everything that was really good from the film (except the
professional logician sketch, my favourite bit) and dropped all the things they couldn’t do, and added some hilarious bits to fill the gap. A lot of the scenes were extended and the whole thing was crossed
Gates
Bill? No, Jennifer at the gates of Buckingham Palace, where the Queen lives. with a Vegas stage show to polish it off. Brilliant. I think by the end they were sending up themselves, which made it all the more hilarious!
Sunday brought a visit to the Thames waterfront and a visit to that most English of edifices - the Tower of London. What a place! Aside from the fantastic collection of arms and armour (including Henry VIIIs battle AND jousting armour, and a cannon belonging to the Knights Templar) we enjoyed exhibits about the ravens, torture and imprisonment at the tower and the way the palace looked when it was built and still inhabited. Did you know the White Tower in the middle
is nearly 1000 years old? Built by William the Conker in 1080. The highlight of the day was the guided tour by one of the Yeoman Warders (or Beefeaters as they are more commonly known). Our guide, Sergeant Major Simon Dodd, was clearly an amateur dramatist and really played up to the role as tour guide. He talked about the history of the tower and its various periods of construction, its salient features, (ravens, the White Tower, Traitors Gate, the Bloody Tower and the Chapel) and a sort of
The White Tower
Complete with Saruman.... general history of its more illustrious captives. We also learned a great deal about the Warders themselves - to be a Beefeater you must have reached the rank of Sergeant Major in any of HMs armies across the Commonwealth and you must have completed 22 years service to be eligible. Our guide had at one point worked for 3 years in Spandau Prison guarding Nazis, and he said that Rudolf Hess (who was held in the tower in 1941) was a thoroughly unpleasant man and wholly unrepentant. All the warders live in the Tower in apartments around the walls (most of which date from the 1800s) with their families and have a heck of a time getting a pizza delivered! You can imagine the conversation one would have with the pizza guy.
I have now also seen the Crown Jewels and they are indescribable. I am positively astounded by the excess and garishness, while at the same time being impressed by the beauty and craftsmanship. The highlight of
that collection has to be the coronation staff surmounted by the Cullinan-I - the largest diamond in existence (530 carats!) There was also a lot of staring and photo taking of
Beefeater
Sarn't Major Dodds in full flight. the poor sods from Her Majesty’s Regiment of Foot Guards - the famous Grenadier Guards - who were guarding the jewels and the Queen’s apartment at the tower - she
still has one and never uses it, but that doesn’t mean the poor sod in the silly hat doesn’t have to stand outside. It took us about 6 hours all up to see everything and it really was astonishing.
Oh, and we bought a stuffed duck. Don't ask me why. There's a photo below of the duck - now known as CG (of Seige for short) in honour of the location of the shop of his origin.
The tripping around the country for work has had one other small benefit. I've been out with drivers and I've had the pleasure of visiting an odd little town called Winchester - graced with a gorgeous church and town hall and a glorious chunk of medieval castle slap bang in the middle of a road. Glorious. I was also treated to a commentated tour of Harrow (thanks to a great Jamaican cricket fan called Woody!) including a glorious drive by of Wembley (still unfinished) Stadium and the old and venerable Harrow
Tower Bridge
At 9am on a Sunday, you can stand in the middle of the road and take photos like this.... on the Hill. As he explained it, if you go down the list of good public schools in England, Harrow comes a close second to Eton. Really rather neat. Course it meant driving to London at 0'Dark Hundred to get to depot for an 06:30 start, but it was worth it in the end.
So anyway, I've stuck some photos on the bottom here. I'm doing this in the midst of Jen and my Christmas trips around the South and East of England, so there'll be stories and photos of that in the not too distant future as well. In fact, next week. I promise. This exciting serial tells the story of how Jen and I squeezed (and I mean squeezed) into a Ford Fiesta and drove to new and exciting climes - Stonehenge, Bath, Warwick and *cue foreboding music* Milton Keynes! I will also tell you all what Oxford College staff Christmas parties are like, compare these with Nestle Christmas parties and relate my exciting (and profitable) evening at the Greyhound Races in Blackbird Leys. I may even be able to mention a thing or two about driving to Manchester. My feeling at this point is that I
A man in a silly hat
Standing guard, outside, in the cold. I think he was probably sick of the tourists! shouldn't.
Take care everyone,
Talk soon,
Al and Jen
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Ronnie
non-member comment
fun travels!
All looks great! You're getting to see so much already! I'm thinking of coming over that side of the world next year - be warned. I expect to see you both :)