I am a native in this world And think in it as a native thinks
Wednesday, July 31, 2024
Lawn care
Another look at the North Quad at All Souls. I do have a picture without the lawn mower, but I like this one because having a person in the middle gives a sense of the scale, and also serves as a reminder that all of the velvety green lawns of Oxford colleges don't just happen.
Labels:
architecture,
buildings,
England,
grass,
Oxford,
universities
Looking in/Looking out
I took the picture on the left from an upper window at the Radcliffe Camera, looking over the wall at All Souls. And the picture on the right is the Radcliffe Camera seen through the All Souls gate.
Labels:
architecture,
buildings,
England,
gate,
Oxford,
universities,
views
Tuesday, July 30, 2024
Astronomy Tuesday
Well, it's astronomy-related, anyway.
This astronomical clock in the main quad at All Souls College was designed by Christopher Wren and dates from 1658.
I've peeked into many of the other Oxford colleges as I've walked around the city, and have taken a few pictures through the gates or from the streets, but All Souls is the only other college I've actually visited. It was founded by Henry VI in 1438, and is really more of a research institution than a college as it doesn't have any students. Those who already have a degree can apply to be a Fellow at All Souls and take what is usually described as the most difficult exam in the world. There are usually two new fellows chosen each year, and they are then paid a stipend for doing research and writing in their fields.
It's such an odd institution that I have to admit some of my time in the Radcliffe Camera was spent peering over the walls into the All Souls Quad, and when I found out that it is actually open to the public for two hours a day, I had to go.
The stairs
This image, looking up at the spiral staircase you have to climb to get to the upper reading room at the library, is what I always call a “Photography 101” picture, because it's such a cliche. But how could you resist this shot?
Monday, July 29, 2024
Inside the Camera
There's a statue of John Radcliffe near the entrance, under the magnificent dome.
You climb a spiral staircase to reach the Upper Reading Room, which has a mezzanine hugging the outer wall.
You climb a spiral staircase to reach the Upper Reading Room, which has a mezzanine hugging the outer wall.
My weekend library
The Old Bodleian is closed on weekends, so I spent Saturday afternoon in the upper reading room in the Radcliffe Camera. (Yesterday I went to the Cotswolds, so only had to endure slumming at the Radcliffe for one day.)
Sunday, July 28, 2024
Sunday bird blogging
Our field trip this week was to London, visiting Highgate Cemetery and John Soane's Museum.
There was a long line on the sidewalk waiting to get into the museum, so while we waited I walked in Lincoln's Inn Fields, which was across the street. This crow was jealously guarding this very valuable empty wrapper from several rivals who tried to snatch it away.
Saturday, July 27, 2024
From the Fellows Garden
If I've managed to be caught up on my re-reading before class, I like to walk in the garden before breakfast. There's rarely anyone else there, but the garden is big enough to provide solitude for all of us.
Labels:
England,
flowers,
gardens,
Merton College,
Oxford
Saturday reflections
Our first field trip was to Horace Walpole's house in Twickenham, Strawberry Hill. He was pre-Victorian, but The Castle of Otranto is seen as the first Gothic novel and introduces so many of the tropes—secret passages, mysterious portraits, strange noises, stormy nights— that became commonplace in ghost stories afterwards that he does fit in with the theme of our class.
This is the reflection in an old mirror in the parlor that I think Walpole would find sufficently Gothic.
Friday, July 26, 2024
The Old Warden's Lodgings
Warden is the name given to the head of the college, so this building was formerly his residence (three women have been warden here, including the current warden, but that's obviously more recent than this building.)
It's now one of the libraries; I haven't gone there yet because the Bodleian is only a ten-minute walk away and I'd rather sit in Duke Humfrey's. There's another library here in Mob Quad that is unfortunately closed for renovations. It is supposed to be haunted by a Royalist who was executed during the English Civil War.
Labels:
buildings,
England,
libraries,
Oxford,
universities
Old glass
You aren't allowed to take photos in the best reading room in the Bodleian, Duke Humfrey's Library, and I've tried to be unobtrusive in taking pictures even in areas where photography is allowed. (Also, I'm trying to focus on working and not gawking when I'm there.)
This is the view through the window in one of the other reading rooms—you can see the top of the Radcliffe Camera. I love the bubbles in the old glass.
Old Schools Quadrangle
The Bodleian entrance is at one side of the Schools Quad. The buildings on the other three sides date from the early 17th century and were originally lecture rooms. The names of the original departments (in Latin) still appear above the doorways.
Labels:
buildings,
England,
libraries,
Oxford,
universities
Thursday, July 25, 2024
The Bodleian
I hereby undertake not to remove from the Library, nor to mark, deface, or injure in any way, any volume, document or other object belonging to it or in its custody; not to bring into the Library, or kindle therein, any fire or flame, and not to smoke in the Library; and I promise to obey all rules of the Library.
That's the oath I had to recite in order to get my reader's card for the Bodleian.
Every college at Oxford has its own library, but the Bodleian is the main research library for all of the colleges. There are three main buildings: the Weston Library, which is new and houses special collections, the Radcliffe Camera, and the Old Bodleian.
This is the entrance to the Old Bodleian. That jolly-looking fellow is the Earl of Pembroke, who was Chancellor of the University of Oxford in the 17th century. Thomas Bodley, who rebuilt the library in the late 16th-early 17th centuries after it had been stripped and abandoned during the Reformation, has to settle for the plaque over the doorway. And of course having the library named for him.
Monday, July 22, 2024
Hall
Sometimes Oxford just wants to be rendered in black and white.
This is where we have our meals, “in Hall,”as they say here, banishing those uncouth articles as the English are so wont to do (in hospital, at university). Most nights dinner is informal, meaning we're served cafeteria style and seat ourselves, but twice a week we have high table dinner. We're expected to dress up, and we don't sit down until the administrators, tutors and guests eating at high table have come in, and grace (in Latin) has been read.
That's the high table on the right. Everyone gets an invitation to eat there once during the program; I'm scheduled for next week.
This is where we have our meals, “in Hall,”as they say here, banishing those uncouth articles as the English are so wont to do (in hospital, at university). Most nights dinner is informal, meaning we're served cafeteria style and seat ourselves, but twice a week we have high table dinner. We're expected to dress up, and we don't sit down until the administrators, tutors and guests eating at high table have come in, and grace (in Latin) has been read.
That's the high table on the right. Everyone gets an invitation to eat there once during the program; I'm scheduled for next week.
Labels:
black and white,
eating,
England,
Merton College,
Oxford
Sunday, July 21, 2024
Bath
I spent the afternoon in Bath today—it was supposed to be a day, but the British Railway system had other ideas. It's theoretically only an hour from Oxford to Bath by train, but you have to change trains halfway there, and because the first train was a few minutes late we missed the connection to the second train, and had to wait on the platform at Didcot Parkway (an English name if I ever heard one) for an hour and a half.
And this was after having to stand on the very crowded train from Oxford, although I had a reserved seat in a different car. People were crammed in so tight that it was impossible to move, much less change cars, and I was half-bent over some suitcases in a corner trying very hard not to have a panic attack from claustrophobia. I did have a seat for most of the ride on the second train, but my knees and back have yet to forgive me for that first cramped half hour. So, our plan to arrive in Bath at 10:30, visit the Roman Baths for a few hours, have a nice lunch at a famous fish and chips place, and spend the afternoon visiting the Abbey and the Jane Austen Centre, turned into arriving at twelve, having tea and a scone for lunch before visiting the baths, and walking around the city for an hour before getting on the train back to Oxford.
And it was worth it. Bath is a lovely city, very different from London or Oxford, and worth seeing even for a few hours. But next time—and I hope there will be a next time—I'll try to visit when it's not the height of tourist season and spend a couple of days so I don't have to rush.
And this was after having to stand on the very crowded train from Oxford, although I had a reserved seat in a different car. People were crammed in so tight that it was impossible to move, much less change cars, and I was half-bent over some suitcases in a corner trying very hard not to have a panic attack from claustrophobia. I did have a seat for most of the ride on the second train, but my knees and back have yet to forgive me for that first cramped half hour. So, our plan to arrive in Bath at 10:30, visit the Roman Baths for a few hours, have a nice lunch at a famous fish and chips place, and spend the afternoon visiting the Abbey and the Jane Austen Centre, turned into arriving at twelve, having tea and a scone for lunch before visiting the baths, and walking around the city for an hour before getting on the train back to Oxford.
And it was worth it. Bath is a lovely city, very different from London or Oxford, and worth seeing even for a few hours. But next time—and I hope there will be a next time—I'll try to visit when it's not the height of tourist season and spend a couple of days so I don't have to rush.
Sunday bird blogging
I haven't taken any good pictures of birds since I've been here, but this slightly blurry magpie on the Meadow Walk will do for now. At least you can see the beautiful blue of those feathers.
Saturday, July 20, 2024
Back to Christ Church Meadow
I visited Christ Church Meadow my first day in Oxford, but I didn't include a picture of the actual meadow. I've now done the meadow walk—a 1.5 mile path circling the meadow—several times. Christ Church College is our next-door neighbor in Oxford, and if you go out the back gate of Merton it's a five minute walk to the meadow.
What still astonishes me is that it is an actual meadow—acres and acres of grass, in the middle of a city where land is almost as expensive as Manhattan. Which tells you how ridiculously wealthy Oxford colleges in general, and Christ Church College in particular, are.
Of course, it wouldn't be a meadow without cows.
Thursday, July 18, 2024
Members only
The gate to the Fellows Garden.
I'm not a member of the college, obviously, but I do get to pretend for three weeks, and I confess that I get a thrill whenever I walk through this gate.
When I walked out of Hall after dinner a few nights ago, a group of tourists were standing in Merton Street peering through the gates by the Porter's Lodge. I tried very hard to look as though I belonged here, and since it was a formal night and I was wearing a dress and stockings, maybe I even succeeded.
Of course, I'm here to take a class and I'm really enjoying that as well. We meet every weekday from 9 to 12:30, with a tea and biscuit break at 10:30. We're studying the Victorian ghost story, and have been having some lively discussions about the difference between terror and horror, the reasons for the (very strange to an American) tradition of telling ghost stories at Christmas, and today, do vampire stories really count as ghost stories?
The accommodations...
...are fairly basic, as you can see. A small, rather monastic bedroom, and a very large sitting room. This is an undergraduate room, and would look much better with posters on the walls and books on the shelves. (The shower is surprisingly excellent though, with good pressure and lots of hot water.)
The furniture is comfortable enough if kind of clunky, but the carpeting is truly heinous. It reminds me of the scene in The Sound of Music where Captain von Trapp tells Maria she has to change her dress and she says that she doesn't have another. All of her clothes were given to the poor when she entered the convent, except for the dress she's wearing, because “the poor didn't want this one.”
The furniture is comfortable enough if kind of clunky, but the carpeting is truly heinous. It reminds me of the scene in The Sound of Music where Captain von Trapp tells Maria she has to change her dress and she says that she doesn't have another. All of her clothes were given to the poor when she entered the convent, except for the dress she's wearing, because “the poor didn't want this one.”
But if I stick my head out of my sitting room window and look up, this is my view: Mob Quad, and behind it, Merton Chapel.
I can live with the carpet.
Labels:
bedrooms,
chapels,
churches,
England,
furniture,
Merton College,
Oxford,
student housing
Wednesday, July 17, 2024
Chaucer's stairs
Obviously these stairs don't really date from the 14th century; at least I don't think so.
The friends who saw me take a nasty tumble a couple of weeks ago because of some broken 21st century pavement in Berkeley will probably be relieved to know that I do not have to drag my klutzy self up that spiral staircase—with the rope handrail!—to get to my room.
That's my door in the picture, and the staircase I take from the ground floor is old but wide, and has actual metal handrails on both sides. Which I use.
Labels:
architecture,
England,
made me laugh,
Merton College,
Oxford,
stairs
Tuesday, July 16, 2024
Mob Quad
I was lucky enough to be assigned a room here—the three windows on the left on the second floor are my room.
Mob Quad is usually described as the oldest quad in Oxford, and my building is the oldest part of the quad, built between 1310 and 1320. Yes, I am sleeping in a building that is more than 1000 years old. Never mind J.R.R. Tolkien—this was built twenty years before Chaucer was born.
Labels:
England,
Merton College,
Oxford,
student housing,
universities
Merton College

I have been putting off writing this post because I couldn't decide which picture of the stunningly picturesque college I should start with.
I finally decided to go with this—a small stone table in the Fellows Garden, where J.R.R. Tolkien used to sit and write. He may have written some or all of The Lord of the Rings here, or maybe he just graded student essays and scribbled notes to his relatives. It may be my favorite thing at Merton so far, and that's already a very long list.
If you sit at the table, this is your view, looking over the gardens and one wall of the Fellows Quad.
I'd like to think that if I sat there long enough I might be inspired to write something brilliant of my own—assuming of course that I could ever get accustomed enough to how beautiful it is here to make myself look away.
Labels:
England,
gardens,
Merton College,
Oxford,
universities,
writers
Monday, July 15, 2024
Muntjac deer
I encountered a new animal yesterday. There was a tiny deer in the field with the horses, and at first I assumed it was a stray fawn. But it was thick-bodied and obviously not a baby, and Google identified it as a Muntjac deer, also known as a barking deer. They're native to Southeast Asia, but were released to breed here by some idiot and have now made themselves quite at home all over England.
The picture with the horses in the background shows how small it is. (And as a bonus, there's a magpie by the foot of the horse on the right.)
The picture with the horses in the background shows how small it is. (And as a bonus, there's a magpie by the foot of the horse on the right.)
Sunday, July 14, 2024
Sunday morning on the Thames
There are two rivers in Oxford: the Cherwell, which is small and sedate, suitable for punts and kayaks and paddleboats, and the Thames. This part of the Thames is supposedly “really” called the Isis, only acquiring the more famous name when it merges with a river called the Thame (singular) south of Oxford. But all the signs in the city refer to the river as the Thames, and the paths along it as the Thames walk, so much as I like the idea of a River Isis flowing past the dreaming spires of Oxford, there seems to be a consensus that this is the Thames, no matter what the guidebooks say.
The two rivers merge just below Christ Church Meadow. The buildings in the background of this picture are some of the boat houses of the various colleges at the point where the two rivers meet, and the conjoined river leaves all the frivolous punts and paddleboats behind. This is a serious river, full of serious rowers (and the occasional tour boat.)
I had no idea that Oxford was so full of waterways—there's a canal in addition to the rivers, and tributaries and channels and small inlets branching off of all of them. The walkways along the Thames are full of small arched Venetian bridges spanning all the small bodies of water feeding the larger ones. It's completely charming, and I particularly like that I can take the Thames Walk from my hotel to the Folly Bridge when I'm going to the city center, instead of walking on the street the whole way.
Five-day forecast
England in July.
It's actually beautiful this morning, sunny and warm enough to go without a jacket. All subject to change within the next five minutes, of course.
Saturday, July 13, 2024
Not a hallucination
I saw these horses as we were driving into Oxford yesterday, and when we turned into the hotel driveway, I was surprised and charmed to see that they were right next door to the hotel.
But by the time I'd checked in, washed up, and grabbed my camera, they were gone. There were a few crows pecking at the grasses in the field, but no horses. And when I came back from my long walk around central Oxford, the field was still empty and I was starting to wonder if I'd imagined them. Horses? In the city?
But they were back this morning. It was overcast and I only had my phone camera, but those are most definitely horses.
Saturday reflections
A lookout mirror on a small street across from Merton College, where I'll be staying starting on Monday.
View from Magdalen Bridge
I didn't take many pictures yesterday, and by the time I took these pictures of punts in the Cherwell I could barely hoist the camera. So they're a little blurry, but I like them anyway.
Radcliffe Camera
This is one of the iconic buildings in Oxford, part of the Bodleian Library, and it's a sign of how tired I was yesterday that when I saw it peeking around this building at the end of a narrow street, I just thought, “Oh, there's the Radcliffe Camera,” and couldn't be bothered to walk a block and see the whole thing.
Labels:
architecture,
buildings,
England,
libraries,
Oxford
Oxford
Christ Church Meadow, on a ridiculously beautiful summer afternoon. I think that's the cathedral in the background, but I will have to verify at a later time when I am in less of a stupor.
I got to Oxford yesterday afternoon, after a mercifully drama-free flight, and I had booked a private transfer from the airport instead of taking the bus-plus-taxi or two-trains-plus-taxi that getting to Oxford from Heathrow would otherwise have required. (It was surprisingly reasonable, but the convenience and comfort of having someone simply pick me up outside customs and drive me to my hotel after an overnight flight would have been worth a lot more than I paid.)
I walked much farther than I should have yesterday afternoon but I kept being lured on by yet another interesting building or park or bridge ahead, until I was an exhausted, aching mess. I'm planning to take it easy today. I'm here for three weeks. I will have time to look around.
Although I can tell already that you could live here for years and never see it all.
Labels:
architecture,
cathedrals,
England,
gardens,
Oxford
Thursday, July 11, 2024
Urban poetry
Here are some fun shadows and geometries from my recent trip before I leave on the next adventure: a bridge over the Truckee River in Reno, and the San Francisco Bay Ferry terminal in Richmond.
Labels:
Bay Area,
California,
geometries,
Nevada,
Reno,
Richmond,
shadows,
urban poetry
Wednesday, July 10, 2024
Golden hour
Some of the grasses on the verge in the golden light of late afternoon, and a house taking the theme of native plants to a beautiful conclusion
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