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hawkwing_lbI'm staying with mates, who are the Best People Ever, and who are feeding me marvelous things and showing me all the good places. Food is love.
Oxford is... bizarre. I was here when I was thirteen, staying on a campbed in the same room as my grandmother in my uncle's house near the Iffley Road, and some of it I remember. The medieval buildings, and the Victorian-does-medieval fantasias of spires, the Tudor mass of New College and redbrick Keble, Magdalene ("Maudlin") with its pointy turrets, and the solid Georgians squatting their way through the middle. Much of the stonework has been cleaned in the last few years, and instead of the blackish grey of centuries of smoke, the natural warm yellowish tones of Cotswold stone glow under the clouds.
The centre of Oxford is half medieval/early modern city, half tourist trap, layered over with institutions of learning. (Tourist trap, because hello, well maintained. Most everywhere else I've been the historic bits are slightly more crumbly.) There is so much historical fabric, it's hard to take in. Particularly when you're walking through it with people who live here now, and tend not to slow down for your rubbernecking.
J. & K. took me down to K.'s college, Keble, which is all redbrick Victorian (and apparently St. John's has a Society for the Destruction of Keble College, because it was hated when it was first built), the red bricks highlighted by yellow bricks and the occasional blue in geometric patterns, a sort of flyaway spindly Gothic in technicolour. It's fantastic. The Dining Hall is vaulted in dark wood. It's so... academic. And shiny. You sort of just want to rollllll around in it.
It's cleaner than Trinity back home. Or looks cleaner, anyway. And Oxford has these weird abbreviations. Like "Univ" for University College. Whee!
So, anyway. The Pitt Rivers Museum is across the road from Keble. EYEBALL KICK. There's a natural history section as you go in - although the dinosaurs are closed off for refurbishment - and THEN. After the birds, and the shiny pillars of different sorts of hard stone, and the fossils, and the BITS OF ROCK YOU CAN TOUCH -
You enter this giant dark room filled with cabinets. (There's about three levels? I only wandered around the first.) And the cabinets are PACKED FULL of stuff. I mean, JAMMED. The museum staff hand out tiny flashlights so you can read the labels, and off you go into this museum which has preserved its Victorian approach to presentation, this bazaar filled with cabinets of curiosities: cabinets filled to bursting with STUFF from all over the world connected by some kind of theme. No white space. Everywhere you look you are assailed with RANDOM COOL STUFF.
The famous shrunken heads are really cool. And eensy: I had no idea they'd be that small.
So much stuff. Too much to take in. And in among all this historic stuff, and STUFF WHAT WE NICKED FROM THE SAVAGES (oh, Victorians), you get this odd modern thing that's stuck in a case with stuff to which it is thematically connected.
After an hour of this... well, the Eagle and Child is nearby. Over a burger and chips (pathetic helping of chips, although tasty burger and pint of cola is about £10, not bad), we had a discussion about C.S. Lewis's theology in the Narnia books, and J. quoted the line from Tolkien's letters about Lewis's "Ulsterior motive." Wheee! Fun was had by all.
And then off to Blackwell's. SO MANY BOOKS. I mean. The science fiction and fantasy section is pathetic, it's much worse than Hodges Figgis (I don't think I spotted a single US edition of anything, whereas HF will import things, particularly if you ask nicely), but the Classics and Ancient History sections. OH HEAVEN SO MANY BOOKS. And all of them, all of them, crying out my name. All the Oxford and Penguin Classics (most of them three for the price for two). All of the Loebs. CUP and OUP. Blackwell's Companions series. EVERYTHING YOU COULD EVER WANT.
Seriously, I want to go back in there with pen and paper and take notes on the titles of all the shiny books. And J. & K. are book-enablers. So I ended up walking out of there with two, after a drink and a brownie in the café. (Plus Cameron's The Red Knight, which I saw in a charity shop on the way into town.)
I also bought two postcards, because I'm behindhand in my reviews for Tor.com and think I should write a more apologetic note than my last email. And I owe them a thank-you note for the box of freebies. So.
Now my feet hurt and I'm lying on a comfy couch. And I ought to finish this review for SH and try to read for Tor.com.
Planning to be in London to meet a mate from college at the Natural History Museum Friday. So the rest of the week is just going to be wandering Oxford. (The NHM has a café. Whee, food! Whee, dinosaurs!)
Oxford is... bizarre. I was here when I was thirteen, staying on a campbed in the same room as my grandmother in my uncle's house near the Iffley Road, and some of it I remember. The medieval buildings, and the Victorian-does-medieval fantasias of spires, the Tudor mass of New College and redbrick Keble, Magdalene ("Maudlin") with its pointy turrets, and the solid Georgians squatting their way through the middle. Much of the stonework has been cleaned in the last few years, and instead of the blackish grey of centuries of smoke, the natural warm yellowish tones of Cotswold stone glow under the clouds.
The centre of Oxford is half medieval/early modern city, half tourist trap, layered over with institutions of learning. (Tourist trap, because hello, well maintained. Most everywhere else I've been the historic bits are slightly more crumbly.) There is so much historical fabric, it's hard to take in. Particularly when you're walking through it with people who live here now, and tend not to slow down for your rubbernecking.
J. & K. took me down to K.'s college, Keble, which is all redbrick Victorian (and apparently St. John's has a Society for the Destruction of Keble College, because it was hated when it was first built), the red bricks highlighted by yellow bricks and the occasional blue in geometric patterns, a sort of flyaway spindly Gothic in technicolour. It's fantastic. The Dining Hall is vaulted in dark wood. It's so... academic. And shiny. You sort of just want to rollllll around in it.
It's cleaner than Trinity back home. Or looks cleaner, anyway. And Oxford has these weird abbreviations. Like "Univ" for University College. Whee!
So, anyway. The Pitt Rivers Museum is across the road from Keble. EYEBALL KICK. There's a natural history section as you go in - although the dinosaurs are closed off for refurbishment - and THEN. After the birds, and the shiny pillars of different sorts of hard stone, and the fossils, and the BITS OF ROCK YOU CAN TOUCH -
You enter this giant dark room filled with cabinets. (There's about three levels? I only wandered around the first.) And the cabinets are PACKED FULL of stuff. I mean, JAMMED. The museum staff hand out tiny flashlights so you can read the labels, and off you go into this museum which has preserved its Victorian approach to presentation, this bazaar filled with cabinets of curiosities: cabinets filled to bursting with STUFF from all over the world connected by some kind of theme. No white space. Everywhere you look you are assailed with RANDOM COOL STUFF.
The famous shrunken heads are really cool. And eensy: I had no idea they'd be that small.
So much stuff. Too much to take in. And in among all this historic stuff, and STUFF WHAT WE NICKED FROM THE SAVAGES (oh, Victorians), you get this odd modern thing that's stuck in a case with stuff to which it is thematically connected.
After an hour of this... well, the Eagle and Child is nearby. Over a burger and chips (pathetic helping of chips, although tasty burger and pint of cola is about £10, not bad), we had a discussion about C.S. Lewis's theology in the Narnia books, and J. quoted the line from Tolkien's letters about Lewis's "Ulsterior motive." Wheee! Fun was had by all.
And then off to Blackwell's. SO MANY BOOKS. I mean. The science fiction and fantasy section is pathetic, it's much worse than Hodges Figgis (I don't think I spotted a single US edition of anything, whereas HF will import things, particularly if you ask nicely), but the Classics and Ancient History sections. OH HEAVEN SO MANY BOOKS. And all of them, all of them, crying out my name. All the Oxford and Penguin Classics (most of them three for the price for two). All of the Loebs. CUP and OUP. Blackwell's Companions series. EVERYTHING YOU COULD EVER WANT.
Seriously, I want to go back in there with pen and paper and take notes on the titles of all the shiny books. And J. & K. are book-enablers. So I ended up walking out of there with two, after a drink and a brownie in the café. (Plus Cameron's The Red Knight, which I saw in a charity shop on the way into town.)
I also bought two postcards, because I'm behindhand in my reviews for Tor.com and think I should write a more apologetic note than my last email. And I owe them a thank-you note for the box of freebies. So.
Now my feet hurt and I'm lying on a comfy couch. And I ought to finish this review for SH and try to read for Tor.com.
Planning to be in London to meet a mate from college at the Natural History Museum Friday. So the rest of the week is just going to be wandering Oxford. (The NHM has a café. Whee, food! Whee, dinosaurs!)
