Celebrations through the bleak midwinter

The last month has been one of travels, visits, strengthening friendships and, of course, celebrations. On Thursday 20 December I headed off to Hungerford to spend a week with the Frenkels. Most of you know this but for those who don't, I know the Frenkels though Averil, whose family my mother knows from childhood. Her husband, Louis, also grew up in South Africa and his daughter, Myriam, is studying at Oxford and is the secretary of the Oxford CS Lewis Society which I attend. So in all they were a good family to spend my birthday and Christmas with. 

I took the train from Oxford to Hungerford, which turned out to be more of a chore than expected. I arrived at Oxford station just in time to get my first train, and had just gotten on board when an announcement was made that the train had been cancelled due to signal failure in Slough. The strange part was that Slough is past Reading (where I was due to change trains). The train itself was bound ultimately for London Paddington, and those going all the way would have been stuck in Reading, but I still don't know why they cancelled it in Oxford. Especially when everyone taking the train was advised to find the next service to Reading and find a train from there to London. Anyway, there was another train heading Reading-ward soon afterwards and we were told our tickets would be accepted on any service so I took that one instead. I was only about half an hour behind schedule but the second train was slower than the original as it stopped at more of the little stations along the way. That was not a problem for me, however, as I had all day. It was a rather miserable rainy day, and as we travelled I noticed the effects of the recent flooding in the countryside as many of the fields we passed had become pools of water.

When I got to Reading, I had missed my connecting train (as I suspected I would). This was not a problem as I could easily take the next one heading to Hungerford. Only I did not know what that next train was (when it was leaving or what its final destination was). After being shuffled from one platform to another and told a number of different things by different officials, I went into the station and asked at the help desk. The whole of Reading station was completely chaotic both because large-scale construction work to the station meant platform numbers had been moved around and because the signal failure at Slough resulted in a large number of trains being delayed or cancelled (Reading being the closest big station to London meant many of its trains were heading from or to London).  Eventually I found my platform and had to wait about half an hour for my train. It was particularly miserable watching the pouring rain as I sat under the shelter of the platform, but the arrived at last and the trip from there to Hungerford was relatively uneventful. Louis came to pick me up from the station and I arrived at the Frenkels house in time for a late lunch; wet and tired but otherwise happy.

The next day, 21 December, was my birthday :D (my 25th). It was about the best day in terms of weather we'd had in a long time. In recent weeks, most days had been either freezing cold and sunny or warmer and rainy. This day was both sunny and "warm" (by which I mean it was close to 10°C as opposed to the near 0° temperatures of the weeks before). I visited Hungerford town (which consists almost exclusively of the High Street) that morning and came home for lunch. My mum also phoned me to wish me happy birthday. That afternoon, Averil and Louis took me to the closest "bigger" town, Marlborough, for tea. We went to this family-run coffee shop that served the most amazing hot chocolate (it tasted like genuine liquid chocolate) and lovely fresh cakes. For dinner we went to an Indian restaurant in Hungerford. In all, I had a really lovely birthday. It is the first time in my life my birthday has fallen on mid-winter's day (last year it was on the 22nd and every year before that I have been in the Southern Hemisphere, where it is summer). Despite fears that the Mayans had predicted by their accurate calendar system that the world would come to an end on that day, Jesus' words "no one knows the day or hour" were proved true again and we are all here to tell the tale.

Birthday cake from Averil

Nativity display in local gift shop

Hungerford town hall

Marlborough

The next day we went to Newbury (the other bigger nearby town - slightly further away and bigger than Marlborough) and Averil did some last minute Christmas shopping. On Sunday I went with Averil and Myriam to the church which is right next door to their house (they live in what used to be the parsonage for the church). It was probably the first time I'd been in such a formal, liturgically-based Anglican service, which was kind of nice for a change though I don't think I would enjoy going to such every week. That afternoon and the next day, Christmas Eve, were fairly relaxed. 

Although it was my second year in the UK, it was strange having a Christmas Eve that did not include the big family Christmas dinner, which we usually have the night before Christmas according to my mother's family's Danish tradition. What kind of made up for that was that we went to a a Midnight Mass service, again at St Lawrence's next door - my first midnight mass ever. On Christmas Day we started the day at Church again and then went home to prepare for the big Christmas lunch. Apart from my birthday, the weekend had been very rainy and there had been more flooding around the UK. Christmas morning, however, was mild and sunny, and though it clouded over later, there wasn't much rain. For lunch we had nut roast instead of traditional British turkey, as the Frenkels are vegetarian, with all the normal trappings.

St Lawrence's, decorated by Averil

St Lawrence's interior

St Lawrence's tree

St Lawrence's Christmas Morning

Christmas Lunch with the Frenkels

That evening I went with Myriam to the Church vicar's house, a family she is very good friends with. She warned me it would be a rather crazy evening, and it was - involving a whoopee cushion, large pea shooters and balloons. At one point the vicar said something about bringing out the bagpipes and I thought he was joking until - well he went and fetched them. The two men there (his daughter's partners) both took turns trying to play them and while neither got much of a tune out of them, the mere fact they got them to make a noise was quite an accomplishment. To top that, he then brought out an accordion. Not only was that the closest I have ever been to an accordion, but he actually showed me how, and let me try to play it. I can't play much without any sheet music, so it wasn't very tuneful but it was kind of fun and seems pretty easy to learn. The only problem was that it felt like a terribly right-handed instrument (for some reason more so than the piano, although the principle is not much different and I play that right handed without much struggle).

On Boxing Day, Averil offered to take me to Winchester Cathedral which is not too far a drive from Hungerford. There has been a cathedral on the site from Saxon times and the current building dates back to the Norman period. Among its interesting features is the grave of Jane Austen. It also has a number of chests with the bones of Saxon kings such as King Cnut. Unfortunately the chests were not on display as they are currently undergoing scientific tests. The contents of the chests were mixed up at some point (I think during the reformation) and so they are now trying to see what they can find out about them. There is also a crypt which it was recommended we see as it had flooded, resulting in a beautiful reflection of the arched ceiling. The cathedral was full of other interesting bits of architecture and decorations, numerous side chapels from different periods, beautiful choir stalls, stained glass windows and other interesting bits of history. 

After visiting the Cathedral we had a quick lunch (it ended up being at a MacDonalds because it was getting late, many places were closed because it was Boxing Day, and we needed somewhere that sold vegetarian food. On the walk back to the car, we passed a statue of Aelfred the Great who is said to have been the first West Saxon king to have styled himself "King of the Anglo-Saxons" and had his capital at Winchester. That evening, Myriam and I watched the Doctor Who Christmas special together (she was the one who lent me her Doctor Who DVDs last year which got me to start watching the show).

Winchester Cathedral

Nave

Jane Austen grave

Old Chapel

Flooded Crypt

West Window

Sign for Mortuary Chests

Old Quire

Aelfred the Great

Winchester Town

The next day, I headed back to Oxford. The trip was less problematic than the ride out although it was raining again, and the first train heading from Reading to Oxford when I arrived there had been cancelled and I had to wait for the next one.

But in all I had a great birthday and Christmas week with the Frenkels. My only disappointment was not getting to see a white Christmas. Instead I got a wet Christmas (which we do pretty well in Durban anyway). But at least with it not snowing, it was relatively warm. And my next Christmas will be back home :D

Visits to The Kilns, A baptism, Thanksgiving and Some lovely Americans

Five weeks since the last post, and term is over again - it's scary how fast these eight-week terms speed by. So much has happened since the last post, I'm going to write about it in two parts: The first will be on the second half of Michaelmas term and the second on the last week since term ended.

I was still sick with my cold and cough for much of 5th week, which wasn't a whole lot of fun. On the Monday night (not Tuesday as I said in my last post) was Guy Fawkes. I could hear fireworks all around but couldn't see any, even when I took a short walk in the freezing cold around the neighbourhood. I had, however, seen some out of my window on the Saturday, which was better than nothing. I might have mentioned last year that I'd forgotten how pretty fireworks can be since the ban in SA seems to have limited the amount and variation of fireworks that are available.

The highlight of that week was the Saturday evening when I went to the Kilns to watch a performance of An Evening with CS Lewis by David Payne. David Payne is a British Actor who started up this one-man-show after playing CS Lewis in a stage performance of Shadowlands, a dramatic biography of Lewis' life. People would come up to him and ask him questions about the life of Lewis which he couldn't answer, and he thought it would be interesting to research and come up with a performance in which he, pretending to be the man himself, could answer those questions. The show has been running for a number of years all over America and also in Canada and he has eventually decided to bring it to Britain. From 7 to 11 November, he performed it in the library at CS Lewis' old Oxford house, the Kilns. The show was free of charge and a collection was taken up to aid the running of the Kilns Centre. I had heard at least two members of TLC talking about having seen the show in America and Canada, so I was quite excited to be able to see it myself. It was also the first time I got to see the inside of the Kilns, having only seen it once from the outside when I first arrived in Oxford last year.

An Evening with CS Lewis is a one-man-show in which David Payne pretends to be CS Lewis talking to a group of American authors in the final years of his life. He sits in a chair drinking tea and tells them his life story. Usually he does the performance for large crowds in theatres and the like, but the library of the Kilns could only fit in 20 people at a time. The show was excellent, although you could tell that it was written with an American audience in mind (he made a joke about iced tea) and that he was less used to acting in such an intimate setting (sometimes he came across as a little too theatrical, which I could see as working fine on a stage, but this made it less convincing as he sat on that chair in the library not far in front of a small group). I tried to imagine that he really was Lewis and couldn't quite convince myself. I think he also missed a few opportunities to make use of the fact that he was really in Oxford, in Lewis' house. For example he would refer to Headington (the town/suburb of Oxford where the Kilns is) as "the village" rather than just "here", and when he referred to the first house Joy, who would later be his wife, lived in, he could have said "just down the road" and pointed in the appropriate direction. But in all, it was a great performance and a privilege to be there. I had the opportunity to greet and thank him after the show. I also met two old ladies who were attending the show, one of whom said she was at Oxford 60 years ago and used to attend some of Lewis' lectures. The second lady (who it turned out was a Classicist, and like me, prefers Greek over Latin) had been to some of his lectures in Cambridge when she was training to be a teacher there. Apparently earlier in the week, a man had come to a performance who was a childhood friend of Douglas Gresham (Lewis' stepson) and used to play in the woods by the Kilns with him.

The following weekend, my friend Emily's parents came to visit from America. Mary (my other friend who likes hedgehogs) and I got to meet them on Saturday evening when we went out for dinner at the Eagle and Child. I also got to see them again on Sunday evening at and after church and on Tuesday before the weekly CS Lewis Society meeting. They are a lovely couple and it was great to meet them. On Sunday evening, one of the guys from the Worcester CU, Rob, who became a Christian earlier this year, was baptised at St Aldate's Church. I went along with a number of others from Worcester. It was the first time I had been to a service at St Aldate's (the other large evangelical Anglican church in Oxford) and we were treated to testimonies from a number of people who were to be baptised. It was an amazing evening, hearing how God has worked in the lives of these various people and especially in our friend Rob's. After the service those of us from the CU went up to pray with Rob which was a really powerful experience.

On Thursday 22 November, Maryanna hosted another Thanksgiving meal to which she invited all the LingPals and a number of her friends from Wolfson college. It was a great time, especially as I don't get to see the LingPals so much this year since we have fewer lectures together.

Thanksgiving group photo

Christelle and me

The turkeys

Carving the turkey

A plate of thankfulness

That Friday afternoon, the Worcester CU held a "Text-a-Christmas-Treat" event. It was like the Text-a-Toastie sessions we have except this time college members could text in for Christmas treats (mince pies, gingerbread men or carrot sticks) along with a question about God or Christianity. We had some very interesting questions and discussions that resulted from that. That evening I went out with Emily and two of her friends that are also here for their year abroad at Worcester, Michael and Peter. It was the evening the Christmas street lights were turned on and although we missed the lantern parade and switching on ceremony, we went to the evening fair and market in St Giles Street, which was lots of fun though rather cold.

St Giles Christmas fair

Peter, Michael and Emily

St Giles fair

St Giles fair

In case you are starting to think that I didn't do any work in the second half of term, I really did. I finished my essay on Greek verb stems (mentioned in the last post) which was the last of my History and Structure of Greek tutorials. Since then, I have had three tutorials for Historical Linguistics (one of the other options for which I will be writing an exam in June). I wrote three essays on grammaticalisation (the process in which words in a language lose their lexical/word-based meanings and become grammatical forms like prepositions or prefixes and suffixes), analogy (the process in which forms change in a language based on other related forms) and the comparative method (the method historical linguists use to reconstruct the ancestors of language families based on what we know about the descendant languages)*.

In addition to the essays and tutorials, I was forced to come face-to-face with my thesis topic as I had to give a presentation on it on 27 November. It meant sitting down and working out exactly what I'm trying to do in a way that I could explain it to my course-mates, which was a good exercise. For those interested, my thesis is looking at Hellenistic/Roman Period Greek word order as used by the 2nd century Greek novelist Achilles Tatius. Greek word order is really free and I am trying to find out if there are any patterns that could help us identify a "standard" word order and am using Chomsky's syntactic framework (the Minimalist Program) to see if I can explain why we get the variation we do. (I may at some point write up a clearer explanation - "My thesis for dummies" (?) - for those for whom that makes no sense. Those who do understand what I'm talking about, I can send you the handout from my presentation if you are interested, though I don't know how much sense it makes in isolation). I was extremely nervous for the presentation, but it went pretty well in the end (though I went a bit over time).

The evening after my presentation Emily and I were treated to something I've been looking forward to since Myriam told me about it last Christmas. Every year on the last Tuesday of term, the CS Lewis Society has a Christmas party at the Kilns. There was a lovely spread of Christmas and other snacks (mince pies, cakes, cookies, Turkish Delight ;-) ) and mulled wine. Mulled wine is a Christmas phenomenon that they have here in Britain that consists of spiced heated wine. I've never tried it as I don't drink alcohol, but at the party they had alcohol-free mulled wine so I could finally try some. It tasted kind of like warmed grape juice with All-Spice added (probably not as exciting as the real thing) but at least I could get an idea of what the fuss was about. Part of the tradition of the evening is a reading from a short piece written by CS Lewis called Xmas and Christmas: A lost chapter from Herodotus. It's a piece I have loved ever since I first read it and has become even more special since I became familiar with Herodotus' actual works (and Herodotus became my favourite Greek author) and could see just how Lewis was imitating him. It's a satirical piece about this strange tribe that lives in Niatirb (Britain in reverse) and practises this strange annual festival called Exmas, which involves the stressful activity of sending Exmas cards and Exmas gifts to friends and family (a terrible task as one has to guess which of one's friends will send cards and presents and what the value of each gift will be so one can send a present of equal value to the friend). It also involves over-eating and drinking and and wearing paper crowns is on the whole a very stressful and depressing time. He goes on to talk about another festival practised by a smaller number of Niatirbians called Crissmas which takes place at the same time. Some say the two festivals are related, but he doubts this as observers of Crissmas, "doing the opposite to the majority of the Niatirbians, rise early on that day with shining faces and go before sunrise to certain temples where they partake of a sacred feast. And in most of the temples they set out images of a fair woman with a new-born Child on her knees and certain animals and shepherds adoring the Child." The passage was read out to us by Richard, one of the older members of the Society with an amazing knowledge of all sorts of things. He was the one last year who told me, after a Tolkien-related talk at the society, about the time when, as a boy, he met Professor Tolkien.

The evening was to get even better. We had been told we would be given a tour of the Kilns. What I didn't know is that one of the tour guides would be Walter Hooper, the literary advisor of Lewis' estate, who has been responsible for publishing much of Lewis' work posthumously. Mr Hooper is often present at society meetings and I always feel slightly in awe of him since he actually knew Lewis during his lifetime. I didn't realise that the man had actually lived with Lewis and his family at the Kilns in the later years of Lewis' life. Lewis believed that once an author published a work he had written, it was his responsibility to answer every letter his readers sent him. Lewis' brother, Warnie used to help with the letters (as he could use a typewriter and Lewis could not), but Warnie suffered from alcoholism and would go off for long stretches at a time. As a result, Walter was asked by Lewis to help with the letters (making him I guess a kind of secretary). More than a tour of the house, we got a first-hand tour of Walter's memories of Lewis. We would go into one of the rooms and Walter, being old, sat on a comfy chair while we stood around (or sat on the carpet like little children) listening to the stories.

Photos of the outside of the Kilns from my trip last year - I didn't get any from my visits this time around:

Grace and I at the Kilns

The Kilns door

The Kilns

Outbuilding near the Kilns

He told us about the first time he came to visit Lewis in his house. After a few of cups of tea, he (being an American man) asked Lewis if he could use the "bathroom". Lewis proceeded to take him to the room where the bath is (the toilet being in a separate room) and gave him soap and a towel and left him there. Eventually he plucked up the courage to tell him what he had really meant and Lewis laughed saying that that would teach him to stop using American euphemisms. He also told us about the time (not long after that first meeting) when he was invited to a gathering of The Inklings at the Lamb and Flag. One of my favourite stories was about how Lewis gave away all his earnings from the initial publication of The Screwtape Letters and the radio broadcasts that would become Mere Christianity to orphans and widows in need. He then got into trouble because he was supposed to have paid tax on those earnings and didn't have the money any more. He managed to work something out with the lawyers and after that set up a charity fund where he would give (I think it was a third) of his earnings so he could still pay tax and look after himself and those he was responsible for. He also shared how Lewis lived a very simple life, despite being an Oxford fellow and successful author. Apparently years after the end of Word War II, the Kilns still had black-out curtains because Lewis couldn't be bothered spending money on having them replaced. Eventually they had to be replaced after a lady insisted they be washed and they disintegrated. Walter said they could have lived a much more comfortable life, but Lewis was happy as he was and settled for "digestives and beer" over more luxurious food and drink.

The most ironic story was from after Lewis' wife, Joy died. When people learned that he had lost his wife, they thought to encourage him by sending him copies of a recently published book on grief: A Grief Observed, by NW Clerk. The book was actually written by Lewis himself, but published under a pseudonym. To kept up the secret, he made Walter write thank you letters to those who had sent the book, the poor people oblivious that Lewis himself was the author. A fun fact we learnt from the "tour" was that Walter Hooper's cat is named "Blessed Lucy of Narnia". Apparently the Italian town of Narni, after which Lewis named Narnia (Narnia was the old Roman name for the town) really has a saint called Lucy - Blessed Lucy of Narni. I was quite excited when Mr Hooper referred to the Kiln's gardener, a man named Fred Paxford, who is said to have been the inspiration behind the beloved overly pessimistic character Puddleglum in The Silver Chair. When Lewis and Joy were about to leave for a long-planned trip to Greece, Paxford insisted that they really should not go as there had been a tragic plane crash in the last week and they were likely to die while flying over. I wish I'd been taking notes - there were so many more awesome stories. Emily and I were sitting with out mouths agape half of the time. While I really enjoyed David Payne's Evening with CS Lewis that I attended earlier in the term (listening to a man sitting in the Kiln's pretending to be Lewis tell us about Lewis' life) it paled in comparison after being in the Kilns while Walter Hooper as himself told us stories of his memories of CS Lewis. It was an evening I will not easily forget.

I spent the rest of the week, finishing off my essay on analogy. Although it was the last week of term, I had one more essay and tutorial last week, in "9th week", as I had missed a week earlier in term when I was unwell.

I'm going to end my account there for now. Last weekend (between the last two essays), Bethany (my friend from TLC whom I stayed with in Easter and who went to watch The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe stage show in London with me) came to visit. Emily and I also did some fun and touristy things around Oxford, but I'll keep those accounts (with pictures) for the next post.

Thanks again for reading my posts (apologies for the length of this one). I hope you enjoyed reading about some of the experiences from this term as much as I enjoyed experiencing them.

* These are gross simplifications of the topics. If you want to know more about them you're welcome to send me a message, email etc.

Christmas Part II

After a slightly longer than comfortable silence, Uncle Harold finally said, “I suppose it can't hurt if I take her to the city to have a look.” Lest Aunt Alberta object to such an ill-use of her husband's time, Susan quickly replied, “That's okay Harold, I don't mind going down there by myself. I'll take the... coach.” She had been about to say “train”, when she remembered that she had vowed never to take a train ride again. ~ My Susan Fic.

At the beginning of this year, before University went back, GeoffreyF from The Lion's Call, encouraged me to write a fanfiction, something I'd never done before, although I'd had something of a plot for one in my head for about five years. It's the story of what happens to Susan Pevensie after her siblings and other family members are killed in a train crash in The Last Battle, the last of CS Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia series. I'm still working on the story and will probably be doing so for a long time. When I was starting out, I asked Narnian Steward (another guy from TLC; as you can gather we don't use our real names on the site) for some help on the intro, since he lives in England. I wanted to know how I could have Susan travel from Cambridge, where she was staying with her aunt and uncle (Eustace's parents, if you know the stories) to London. I didn't want her taking a train, since her family had died because of one, so he suggested I have her take the coach (British word for inter-city bus) to Victoria Station, which would be near enough to Scotland Yard which was where I needed her to go.

I never guessed that 11 months later I would be taking an almost identical trip - a coach ride from Oxford to Victoria Station, London. While I had by the time I was writing thing applied for Oxford, I was still unsure as to whether I'd get a scholarship and I certainly hadn't thought this far ahead. In fact, the only reason I chose a coach ride to London the train is that it was cheaper.

The Oxford Tube is a coach service specifically for taking passengers from Oxford to Victoria, London. I'd heard that it wasn't particularly good, just cheap, and it was certainly the cheapest way to London I could find, with a special discount for students. You can imagine my surprise then, to find that it was very comfortable inside (more so than the normal intra-city buses) and had seatbelts, reading lights and free wireless internet access.

Okay, so my trip was probably a little more comfortable than Susan's, but the similarities were still striking. I'm grateful, however that my trip to London was under much happier circumstances than hers (to spend Christmas with the Dockseys, a family known to Pamela Thabethe, from her stay in England), and I can certainly say that the girl I would be staying with, Sarah Docksey, turned out to be a much better friend than Susan's host, Margaret, in my story.

The coach ride took about 2 hours. I slept through part of it, but awoke to catch my first sight of London. When we arrived at our final stop I was a little confused because they said it was the "Victoria Train Station" but we were actually a block away from the station, and I wandered around for a while, consulting a map on the street corner, before figuring out which direction to go in. I was to catch a train from the station to Hackbridge. When I got the the station, I was grateful that I'd had to catch a train back to Oxford from Hungerford earlier that week, because at least I now knew how to book a ticket. The ticket is valid for the day, so I decided to get myself some lunch before working out when the next train would be leaving and stressing myself out. On the way to an M&S food shop, from which I knew I could get a sandwich and cooldrink, I discovered that the station had a South African Shop which sells South African products. I got my lunch from M&S and then had the brainstorm of getting a box of Ouma rusks for the Dockseys as a Christmas/thank-you present. It turned out to be a good plan, though they were slightly confused as to when and how to eat them. You dunk them in tea!

Once I had eaten my lunch, I had a look at the trains. It took me a while to figure out which train was stopping at Hackbridge, but I found it at last. There was no platform number up yet and I discovered they only put them up shortly before the train leaves. It would be a while, so I found somewhere to sit and ate my lunch. At last the number went up. When I got to the ticket barrier, I didn't know what to do with my ticket. At the Oxford station you only insert your ticket when you arrive and I was afraid that if I put my ticket in the slot, it would swallow it and I'd have no ticket. There was no one around interested in helping me. Eventually I took the chance and inserted my ticket which was immediately spat out again, the other side. I'd been worrying for nothing. When I got to the platform, I wasn't sure which coaches to get into. The first man I asked was useless, the second told me to go to the further coaches, where the light was. By the time I'd understood his answer those coaches pulled, away leaving the closer ones (which I would have got into) behind. I'd missed the train.

No matter, I could still catch the next one, though it was a little difficult getting out of the platform area back into the main station without losing my ticket. I convinced someone let me out and had to wait another half hour till the next train. I decided to buy myself a Creme Soda from the South African shop to console myself while I waited. For some odd reason they weren't selling Bar-Ones or I'd have bought one too.

For the next train I was ready and waiting for the platform number to go up, so I could get to it as soon as possible. There must have been a problem with the line though, because they skipped my train when then numbers went up and went on to the next. I could tell that there was a number of other people around me waiting for the same train. At last, the number went up. It was platform 15, but the area we were in was for trains leaving from platforms 1-12. Clearly there was something wrong with the normal platform.

The people around me whom I had sensed were waiting, all started moving to the other side of the station where platform 15 was. If not for them, I wouldn't have known where to go and would have missed the next train too. Thankfully I got there in good time.

While I was on the train, I got a message from Sarah saying to get off at the Mitcham Junction rather than the Hackbridge station. They are similarly close to her house, but at Hackbridge I would get out on the wrong side of the track and have to drag my luggage across a footbridge. That should have been no problem. There were two stations with the name "Mitcham" on the trip, Mitcham East, and Micham Junction. I knew I needed to get off at the second one, but when we arrived, the rolling signboard on the train still said Mitcham East. By the time I was sure this was my stop, had gotten up and unjammed my case that didn't want to roll properly, the train doors were closing and we were on the way to the next station, Hackbridge. So I had to send a message to Sarah saying to fetch me from there and had to drag my case over the footbridge. Not fun dragging a 60 litre wheelie case up and down stairs, but I somehow managed. Sarah arrived soon afterwards and we were safe on our way to her house. It had been an eventful and long day, but I had made it. I was in London :-)

*****

The next day, Christmas Eve, went much more smoothly. Sarag took me on a tour of London. This time I didn't need to worry about catching and missing trains - I just followed whatever Sarah did. We started off at Buckingham Palace. We were a little early for the Changing of the Guard, so we were on our way to the houses of parliament when we passed the Wellington Barracks (near the Palace) and saw the guards practising in a fenced area outside the baracks. We had a front row view, and after watching them for a bit and taking some photos through the fence, the brass band came out and started playing Christmas carols. Partway through, I had the idea of trying to record what they were playing on my cell phone. It came out better than I expected.

Wellington Barracks

Palace Band

Close up

Palace guard marching

As it was nearing 11 am, we made our way back to the Palace. By now the crowds were so great we couldn't actually see into the Palace. We did get to see them marching along the street, however, and caught a partial view from the side fence. We'd seen and heard much of it during the practice anyway, so it wasn't too much of a let down.

Palace Horses (for Hilda!)

Palace Gate

Here they come

Zoomed in full

Peeping thru the bars

From there we proceeded along the Mall, where various royal houses and other prestigious buildings are located. We passed through Admiralty Arch to Trafalgar Square and then went along Whitehall past Downing Street to Big Ben and the houses of Parliament, Westminster Abbey and Parliament Square (where I found the statue of Nelson Mandela but couldn't find Oliver Thambo). Sarah was kind enough to offer to take photos of me with various landmarks, hence there actually being pictures with me in them.

Admiralty Arch

Minor Palace Guard

Nelson's column

The Olympic clock, Trafalgar

Nelson's Lion

Yes, I was a little scared

10 Downing Street

Big Ben

Westminster Abbey

The other Nelson

Next we took a boat ride along the Thames. We arrived a little early, so we bought some cheap lunch at Tesco's to take on board. I got a window seat in the enclosed boat, beautifully decked in Christmas trimmings. We were given a lovely and fun commentary of the various landmarks and bridges we passed. We got off at the Tower of London and spent some time in the tourist shop there. Among other more normal tourist items they were selling collectors dolls of all Henry VIII's wives for a few hundred pounds each. There were also smaller versions of them that looked like they were trying to be Christmas tree decorations. Why one would want to decorate their tree with Henry VIII's wives is beyond me.

View of Westminster Bridge

The London Eye - close up

WW II ship and Tower Bridge

Tower of London

From there we took a tube (underground) ride to St Paul's Cathedral. We arrived at about quarter to 4 and were delighted to hear the bells ringing a complex tune (which continued for the next 15 minutes). There was a long queue outside, doubtless awaiting some Christmas Eve service. I was somewhat surprised to see the Occupy London tents still out in front of the church. I haven't quite made up my mind about the protests themselves, but it was rather disturbing to see something resembling a South African informal settlement of refugee camp on the doorstep of such an old building.

Occupy London

Queen Vic

St Paul's Front - with Christmas tree

St Paul's Dome

After that we took the tube to Covent Gardens because a friend of Sarah's had said it had lovely decorations. Unfortunately, by now most of the shops were closed, but we did get to see the decorations which consisted mainly of baubles and giant disco balls which created an incredible lighting effect. We watched a street artist doing a performance which culminated in him juggling a soft ball, a machete and a chainsaw (which was switched on).

From there we made our way to the Oxford Street which is famous for it's street and shop light decorations. We were going to go on to Harrods, but by now it would have been closed and it was getting dark and we were tired after an exhausting but enjoyable day. We took a bus back to Victoria Station and made our way back to Sarah's place by train.

Covent Gardens

Oxford Street lights

Boots store, Oxford Street

Selfridges shop window

******

Sunday was Christmas Day. After going to the Breaking of Bread service at Sarah's church I had my fifth and final Christmas dinner for the year. Along with me, the Dockseys had also invited an Indian couple that was meeting in their assembly. After lunch we opened our gifts and watched a DVD which her brother had bought for her father. It's a docudrama called. It's narrated by John-Rhys Davies (yep, the same who plays the dwarf Glimli in the Lord of the Rings and Mordecai in One Night with the King), but the title is somewhat deceptive. The first portion deals largely with the life and accessions of King James VII and I and what led him to requesting that the Bible be retranslated. It is very well done though and the acting not too bad. After that we had evening "tea" with some snacks, Christmas cake, oh, and not forgetting the Christmas crackers.

The Christmas table

Everyone Smile ^.^

Jonathon and the visitors

Me, Sarah and her dad

******

On Monday, Sarah was going to take me to one of the palaces, but both the ones she had in mind were closed for boxing day. As was Harrods (so much for the Boxing Day sale at Harrods) so we went to the BlueWater shopping centre instead. It was rather busy, but not too bad considering it was Boxing Day. I think we missed the craziest shoppers in the morning rush. I had my first proper takeaway fish and chips since coming to England (they're kind of hard to find in Oxford). We had supper with Sarah's aunt and uncle and cousins.

On Tuesday morning I packed to return to Oxford. Sarah and I watched a DVD (Emma) and after lunch I made my way to the station. I had planned to take the train leaving just after 1, but lunch was running a bit late so we got there just in time for the next train. While I was buying my ticket, an announcement came over the intercom that the train was cancelled because police were attending to an incident on the previous train (the one I was originally wanting to take). I don't know what the "incident" was, but I thank the Lord I wasn't on it. I had to wait for the next train, but I didn't mind. The rest of the trip was uneventful. I slept on most of the coach ride home and got back to Oxford just before 6 pm.

*****

PS. Yes, this post has been a long time coming (I feel like I've been working on it for ages, so forgive any typos, I'm tired of proof-reading it). I have even more photos from my trip which you can look at here:

Christmas in London Album (you don't need a Facebook Account to look at them)