Peregrinator Slept Here

Haven't felt compulsive enough about blogging, especially because the Obsessometer was in the red zone from my sprint through the first batch of papers to mark. This group is amazing in that more than half of them have read ten times more of this literature than I have, yet they ALL have much to learn about analysis, coherence, writing style, etc. Absolutely bizarre to be so ill-read compared to my students. Food for another blog post, yes indeed.

Sunday as a break from marking I did a nostalgic loop walk past every place I'd lived while at Ox, starting from the University College Annexe at 25 Staverton Road in North Oxford, where the Pomona program spent its September before the Oxford students returned. That was an odd little scene, as the 1 of us got to know each other and met our tutors, and cooked in super-cramped quarters but enjoyed unseasonably warm fall weather.

Then it was off to 21 Leckford Road a few blocks away, where I was placed with a ghastly Danish-English couple who rented rooms and browbeat their kids--the other participant and I protested their portions and attitude so much we got out of eating with the family in the basement (I'm not kidding), and cooked on our own in the tiny dingy galley kitchen upstairs. These people definitely were hateful and mean-minded. Old codger named Yorick lived upstairs, along with a young Nigerian student who every weekend would be spirited off to London to sing in clubs--her name was Falushade but eventually her nom de stage was shortened to the last two syllables...

Then it was up to Bardwell Road, out of chronological order, where Bob J and I spent our second year after Oriel made its graduate students leave the nest. We'd met the eccentric landlady through a couple of girls from Pomona, and convinced her that we could successfully rehabilitate her garret in return for a slight reduction in rent. Must to her disbelief, my housepainting skills proved more than equal to the task (and far better than guys she had hired in other parts of the house, and my window at the top left of the house still appears lived in.

Then it was back into town and a couple of streets from the Oriel main entrance, where the college had a graduate housing annex in 4 Alfred Street. My room was on the ground floor, a few doors from The Bear pub, a few beer glasses from which launched through that window--how fitting to have the garbage bag garnish in this picture. We ate most of our meals in hall, but there was a (dark) kitchen where I taught Bob how to make bread and pancakes, and during the reading-intensive vacation we spent there, it became something of a social center for a couple of other graduate students who were similarly under the gun

That just about covers the places I actually lived. I probably spent a few nights in other places (a couple of B & B's and couple of sleepovers, heh-heh) but this was pretty much it. Odd to feel the ghosts coming back from 30-33 years back, forcing me to reflect on how different a person I was then, but in some ways how much that period shaped the rest of my life to come.

Here's a plaque almost covered in leaves in Park Town, the back of which was part of our lovely view from the Road garret-kitchen.


And now, to bed. Tomorrow's discussion is on Harry Potter, and then on Thursday we head to London for a boat ride to Greenwich, some sightseeing, and for some, a midnight showing of the last of the HP movies. For me though it will be a much awaited reunion with wife and son! And I won't even have papers to mark.