The start of an Oxford blog, completed a week later

[was too tired and hot and anxious last night post Cup post paper-marking to do anything with this, and it's already midnight after a lonnnnnnnnng day]

Catching this up will be an ongoing struggle. I'm typing this on the Eurostar train, booming through the French countryside on the way to Lille and thence to Paris-Gare du Nord. I spent much of yesterday marking the papers they'd written on Thursday, and trying to reconcile a number of minor conflicts in the schedule (for example, the bus tour of Paris was originally going to be Monday afternoon, but instead came in as Monday morning--so could the classroom be switched and we could be delivered by bus to the classroom (on the Boulevard St Michel) instead of the hotel-apartment complex (near the Gare Montparnasse). I went through another period of self-doubt and woulda-coulda-shoulda vis a vis the whole arrangement of days: when to have class, when to do the Versailles tour, when to start museum passes, you name it--and of course the Bastille Day holiday sitting right in the middle of the week renders things even more complicated. I guess I write this stuff in the blog just to give an idea of the kinds of odd little decisions one has to make, and to live with, doing this job.

Taking the bus to Oxford on Friday was a nice familiar process, although I rode the "Oxford Tube" service, instead of the county bus--they both have nearly identical frequency and price, and it would astound a Californian to see how these two cities can support such a number of public transit options (name a destination 90 minutes bus from San Francisco that is served by buses 50 times a day at least!). Of course, with the congestion charge to get into the city by private car, public transit makes a lot more sense, and probably saves a lot of lives. But this photo shows how the day continued--more on this later.

[finished in Paris on Friday the 16th][there are some advantages to being a Writing Professional, I guess, as I realize in the last couple of hours I blasted out about 2500 blogwords out here on the occasionally smoke-infested but often quite peaceful courtyard of the Citadines-Montparnasse, the quiet side of the building, away from the infernal 23-hour-per-day racket of motos, trucks, buses and fire engines that afflicts my side of the building]

The day in Oxford began and ended alone, which was nice: I rode in quite a bit earlier than the others (some of whom despite my urgings cut things too fine), so that I could walk around a bit; I missed the chance to get off in St Clements on the east edge of town and head over to the Iffley Road track, where years ago I worked out and saw the plaque commemorating Roger Bannister's breaking of the 4-minute mile on that spot. I did, however, head into Christ Church Meadow, absorbing the peaceful and improbably bucolic ambiance a few hundred yards from the hubbub of the High Street (I should note also that the traffic on the High, in fact all through the center of town, seems much less frantic than when I was first there--and I am including my other height-of-summer visit back in 1978 before my semester abroad. Perhaps this is a result of more congestion pricing and rerouting and delivery scheduling).

Funny to feel the same arrogance of Christ Church as I passed through the gate and headed up to the post office to buy stamps, and then into the Covered Market to have a quiet cup of coffee and croissant before the day began in earnest. Heading down to the Radcliffe Camera (where I spent so much of my time--the reading room for literature was on the ground floor) I was girding myself for screwups, and I got them: only my assistant showed up on time, followed by a couple of students. Evidently the photocopying was a little faded, and no one seemed to want to ask for directions, and people thought that they could make it across London in ten minutes and that a bus would miraculously be there and that a 100 minute journey obviously would be done in 80. Not a good start, but I realized it would do nobbody any good if I wigged out at the stragglers.

Eventually, as we came up on 11:40 for an 11:00 meeting time, Mark Curtis my Oriel contact called, checking in to be sure he had the day right (and also, I'm sure, because he knew that the dining hall would be less accessible to us once it was full of people from some of their summer programs). I decided to mosey on over, and just as I did so the last people showed up, including some who had actually been in town but who had decided to go to Starbucks and had probably wasted half an hour! Unbelievable.

It was slightly less congenial to visit the college without seeing my old tutor Glenn, who was spending holiday time in Cornwall, and slightly less informative to be getting the tour of the Senior Library from someone other than the librarian, who was on vacation as well, but Mark acquitted himself well. The Chapel was a highlight for me, singing a lick from the Bach cantata we had sung in March, as well as whistling a bit of the 2nd Brandenburg to demonstrate the flattering acoustics. After the usual bio-breaks we agreed to meet back up at the Radcliffe Square at 2 PM for our walk to North Oxford and the Cherwell Boathouse.

It was just hot enough to cause some people to think about complaining, but the shade of the University Parks helped to nip that in the bud; we dispersed into six punts of five people each, and headed jerkily up the river. As last year, this turned out to be a bonding experience as people shared the frustrations of going in circles and the satisfaction of getting things moving in the right direction, and I didn’t notice any of the pissy dynamic that had marred last year's outing for a couple of boats. The weather was perfect too, unlike the overcast we had last year, and when we finally tied up at the Victoria Arms a fair number of the kids took my suggestion to have pints of shandy rather than beer, the perfect refreshment on a warm day. Soooo nice to sit and just chat out on the lawn, having moved one of the picnic tables into the shade.

The people who had struggled poling up the river had an easier time of it going downstream, and from what I could tell, everyone had a blast. After I had walked them to the University Parks I figured they could find their own way home, so I hung out and watched people play tennis for awhile, as the mental hamster spun in its cage: I had brought running gear, but I had no place to stash my pack. I could go back to the punthouse and ask them to store it for an hour, and then spit-shower in their WC, but that didn't appeal. Neither did asking the porter in the Oriel lodge. So I changed in the Parks restroom, and simply strapped on the pack and started the wilderness-jog, heading out the paths toward Marston, winding my way a few miles around and back to town, everntually running into Tiffany and another group at the bus stop (some had gotten a rumor that the last bus was at 7 PM, which was fiction that I disabused them of) before heading back into Ch-Ch meadow again and toward the rowing boathouses.


What a nice decision that was: ended up watching some people doing capsize practice (intentional and otherwise), and talked to a coach on the dock, before a rower descended from the ergs upstairs and dived into the river! It looked sooo inviting, I couldn't resist, as he pointed out "People are afraid of duck poop, but come on, we've been dealing with worse for thousands of years!" What a kick. Shallow dive, then talked for 20 minutes while floating and standing, then another half hour with several others, all from Lincoln College, about rowing, about why Oriel had been so good for so long, about the effect of budget cuts on educational systems in the States and in Britain, you name it. The cool water made me think of Tahoe and Yosemite, of summers past, of family, and how strange it sometimes feels to be over here doing all these strange things for this weird bunch of people. Most peculiar.

Then it was quick behind the boathouse door to change back into street clothes, then back to town (talking to Amelie and Alex along the way, surreal though that was), then back onto the bus, enjoying the warm eveing light on the stones of the city as I waited by Queens Lane, sipping a Sprite that tasted ridiculously good after my jog and swim and walk. Once on the bus, instead of reading essays I listened to my iPod and just watched the day slowly turn to the long northern dusk. After a quick and somewhat dopey meal, it was another night on the not particularly posturepedic Vincent House bed, followed a by a day full of work, mostly in the VH garden--preparing for the next day's trip, as well as getting ready for the transfer to Paris via Eurostar, as well as laundry, etc. Sometimes I had to share with a guy and his stogie (mercifully far enough away); other times a slightly wacko woman made mysterious annotations in what looked like a scholarly journal while sitting propped in a chair on the lawn; another time I returned from a break to find a prodigious bird-turd inches from my papers, a pile the color and consistency of tar! Then it was off to the students' residence in South Ken for their pre-journey briefing, complete with admonitions about the Paris metro and certain Frenchmen's reactions to short shorts and decolletage (did they listen? no) as well as my dramatic reading of David Sedaris's "Picka Pocketoni" from Me Talk Pretty One Day, which I used as a "Can anyone name all six Ugly American traits that Mr Sedaris describes, that we won't exhibit when we are visiting Paris?" cautionary tale. Gales of awkward laughter.