Oxford revisited

The first time I visited Oxford I was 19.  I went to Ruskin College (not one of the University Colleges) for an interview for a course I needed to take for the profession I was then following.   I didn't care much for Oxford in 1971, it was crowded and grimy and I much preferred Cambridge which I'd known since childhood - colder in a bleaker landscape but with wider skies and room to breathe, or so it seemed to me.  I was offered a place on the course, but also a place on a similar one in Birmingham which was better suited to my needs and offered accommodation and placements.  It was a good choice and I enjoyed my time - I didn't regret rejecting Oxford.

In the 1980's Oxford came back into my life.  H needed to choose whether to pursue his PhD there or stay at the University of Wales. Finances were a big factor, we couldn't afford two homes or to make the move ,so he chose to stay with the Department he already knew (he may he have once regretted that but it's water under many bridges now). But due to the field of his research,working in the Bodelian was essential, so he spent many hours inside, and I spent many wandering around Oxford, often with small daughter in tow, waiting in the Bodelian courtyard at the end of the day for my scholar to tear himself away from its riches.  It's a good place to people watch, but there's nowhere to sit!

In the 1990's, H finished his thesis and went back to teaching.  I had a job working in a university department.  Part of this involved organising conferences - national and international, and dealing with a lot of academics and students.  Oxford became a place I visited professionally, but even on a private shopping trip I would  meet people I knew - often academics from overseas on sabbaticals or students taking postgrad courses or on fellowships and scholarships.  H was still researching and gathering teaching material but without the pressure of an impending viva.  There was more time to linger over coffee or browse in Blackwells - where visiting the appropriate section I could find weighty tomes written by people I'd met in person, and even some that I'd helped to typeset and index - with my own name in the acknowledgements.  I'd come to enjoy Oxford, if not quite to love it.

In 2004, H was diagnosed with a health problem which meant he gave up full-time teaching and, by a miracle, our finances were stable  During this halcyon period, we indulged in short breaks in Oxford staying in the incomparable Randolph Hotel.  We enjoyed golden early-summer mornings before the tourist rush, wandering around in the early light before eating wonderful breakfasts in wood-panelled diningroom, and coming back in the afternoon to indulge in long leisurely teas - teapots constantly replenished and delicious food making dinner later totally unneccesary.  Despite Morse and Lewis there were no murders  in the times we stayed.  We still met a few people we knew - H 's supervisor had moved back after retiring and a few postgrads were now academics or fellows, but we were happy wandering around the colleges, museums and the botanical garden, just taking time out.  Looking for the Oxford of Barbara Pym and Evelyn Waugh, I suppose - a bit Crampton Hodnett* .

There are still a smattering of Oxford eccentrics if you know where to look, and Ede and Ravenscroft stands firm, but Fuller's and Ellison's are long gone (mentioned in Pym's novel)  You do still see Sweet's AngloSaxon Reader in bookshops though it's largely been replaced by more modern text books and AngloSaxon is now called Old English (don't know if anyone's told Aelfric or Bede).

Now, of course, leisure time is limited.  H's interest lie more in the field of early music rather than literature these days, and  last week he went to the AGM of one of the societies he's involved in. (Long term readers may remember that last time he went to one of these he missed the train and it was all chaotic.)  Fortunately, I was able to go with him this time. I had a quiet day - the academics I knew are retired or living abroad and I doubt I'd recognise the students now so I didn't see anyone I knew, but I pottered, lingered in coffee shops, wandered in the covered market and browsed in the bookshops.  There weren't too many people about and the buses that once crowded the High belching diesel fumes have been abolished, replaced by mime artists and people selling bubblemakers. 

When I met H, after his meeting, he said rather wistfully that being in Oxford again was like having a break from reality and it would have been nice not to go home.  It would have been nice to have had tea at the Ranolph but 'always at our backs... Times winged chariot......'* * It's only a short drive from here (less than 2 hours) but it felt like another lifetime.

Footnotes: 

* A non-existant village conjured up by a character in the novel as the home of a fictional friend - an excuse for missing evensong.  This is one of the funniest novels I know if you like quiet English humour, do read it if you can get a copy.

**Paraphrased from To His Coy Mistress by Andrew Marvell 1621-1678, a poem I have loved for many decades, though if I start talking about Metaphysical Poets this post will go on  too long.  At present, the last eight lines might seem the most appropriate:

Rather at once our time devour Than languish in his slow-chapt power.   40 Let us roll all our strength and all Our sweetness up into one ball, And tear our pleasures with rough strife Thorough the iron gates of life: Thus, though we cannot make our sun   45 Stand still, yet we will make him run.

With thanks to Daughter, without whom the day out would not have been possible x.