Oxford

Due to the flooding in South Germany, I diverted and went to Oxford since I could stay with family friends my mum made during her fellowship in Oxford during the 90s.

Arrived late on the monday and was greated at the Oxford bus stop by Myles and subsequently went for a walk with their beautiful golden retriever "Geoffrey Biscuit" through the area and this lovely meadow called "Port Meadow" which has full public access and has never been ploughed. Which makes it quite an interesting spot for sustainability research apparently.

Their house was absolutely gorgeous, with a lovely conservatorium. Irene (mums friend) is the vice chancellor for Oxford uni and gets a house as part of the appointment. The house was quite old and even had seperate quarters for servants with a seperate staircase and little holes for passing food to the dining room. The dining room was massive and obviously as the Vice Chancellor for the No.1 uni in the world was designed to entertain and host meals. It had all this gorgeous glassware and cutlery in it. As Myles (Irene's husband) is a quite well known professor of physics and climate change he was inevitably busy and their son Jim was preparing for his A levels (HSC equivalent) i had the run of the house to myself mostly which was a great change of pace compared to the backpacking of hostels (my room was bigger than all the hostels id stayed at lol) nice to go back to domestic life sort of with a proper house and kitchen. They had a really really nice garden with outdoor seating and this awning to stop it getting wet since they dont get many flys or mozzies here i opted to eat nearly all my meals there.

On Tuesday night Myles graciously extended an invitation to join him for high table dinner at Merton college. If you dont know what that is, all the students eat at formal dinner at the college twice a week and like harry potter (which is based off this arrangment) the students sit on the low tables, then some junior fellows and staff sit in the middle table and whats called the SCR (senior common room, basically the big dick swinging professors, the deans of the college etc) sit on the high table and its fairly prestigious etc and often members of the SCR for that college will invite guests after events etc and its a whole big upper class networking type event with proper catering and fancy food etc. It was quite funny people asking me who I was and how i got there without a phD etc. But alas Irene before her appointment as vice chancellor of the uni was the Dean or warden of Merton college and had some swing clearly so by association i got sat very close to the middle of the high table lol.

Merton college is one of the more prestigious colleges with lots of money at Oxford and because of that had a really nice dinner. We were even joined by this famous actor "Brian cox" whos won emmys and stuff. I noticed his security guards before i noticed him, also some music label CEOs and book publishers. However, Oxford was never a planned stop for me so i had to borrow a jacket and tie from Myles and try my best to hide my nike running shoes lol. After dinner we had second dessert 🍨. A more informal kick ons for the high table only and basically included lots of chocolate and alcohol. Id be so fat and drunk if i got to do that all the time lol.

There was a lot of bookstore in the town and they were very well run with great suggestions for books. You entered them and it was tardis like. Just blossomed into thie huge store. I bought the book "the book theif" at it.

On my last day i went to the covered markets with Jim (Irenes and Myles youngest son) after hed just finished one of his A level tests and got greek food. We then got some pizza and did a mini pub crawl of Oxfords oldest pubs. Funnily enough on the pub called "the spotted cow." One of the drinking records is held by rob menzies (Ex Aussie PM) for skulling a yard of guiness in 11seconds.

Overall i had a splendid time and i will be repping my Oxford uni shirt i got given in Australia. Oxford was very cycleable and a very picturesque fantasy town i really liked it. I can see how my parents managed to lose 3 years of their life here.Läs mer