The year winds down

I can't believe my first year in Oxford is over. Term officially ended on 15 June and I leave for South Afric on 1 July. The last couple weeks of term were spent finalising my topics for my thesis and syntax essay. For those interested in such things, my thesis is going to be an analysis of Hellenistic Greek word order from a Minimalist perspective and my essay on Afrikaans negation. I'll be working in particular on my thesis while I'm at home over the summer/winter.

Speaking of "summer", the beautiful week of warm and sunshine I mentioned in my previous post lasted a whole nine days. After that things turned cold and wet and have been fairly miserable since then. We've had a few bursts of excessive rain. On three separate occasions, there has been pretty bad flooding in different parts of the UK. Thankfully, Oxford has not suffered. In between, however, there have been a few warmer days and patches of sunshine, but maximum daytime temperatures have mostly stayed below 20°C, occasionally getting as low as 15°C.

The first weekend in June was quite a fun one as it marked the Jubilee celebrations of Queen Elizabeth's 60th year as Queen. It was an extra long weekend with holidays on the Monday and Tuesday but, as Oxford doesn't take holidays off, we had to continue working. I did manage to watch quite a few of the events on TV, however, which included a Flotilla Pageant of over 1 000 vessels down the Thames on the Sunday, a concert in front of Buckingham Palace on the Monday evening and a thanksgiving church service on the Tuesday morning. On the Sunday afternoon we also had an MCR (college graduate community) "garden party" to mark the end of term. Unfortunately, it was pouring with rain that day so we had to move it indoors. At one point, we did have to go out in the rain for our annual group photograph. It seemed like a typically British situation with us standing there on the photo platform in the pouring rain with our umbrellas up. We had to put down our umbrellas for the photo itself so all got quite wet. The only thing that put a damper on the Jubilee celebrations was that after spending an entire afternoon standing on the royal barge on a rainy afternoon (following the Queen's example), Prince Philip took ill and had to be taken to hospital. He missed the Jubilee concert and thanksgiving service. Thankfully, after a week in hospital, he recovered enough to spend his 91st birthday with the Queen and his family.

I've done a fair bit of "Narnian" stuff the last couple weeks. On the last Tuesday of term I went with a small group from the CS Lewis society on a walk through the Wytham Woods near Oxford. The walk took about two hours and ended at a pub where we had dinner and from which we took the bus back to Oxford. One of the fun moments was when we crossed the Swinford Bridge which is one of the last remaining private toll bridges left in England. Thankfully, they no longer charge pedestrians to cross the bridge, though it would probably have been only a couple pence considering how cheap the toll on vehicles was.

View of Oxford from Wytham Woods     

Wytham Woods     

Wytham Woods     

Swinford toll     

Swinford toll house

The highlight of the last few weeks was when I went with Bethany (my friend whom I stayed with in Sommerset) to watch a new theatre production of The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe in Kensington Gardens. We met in the Gardens at about midday and had lunch at a nice Italian cafe nearby. It was a moderately nice day with intermittent sun and cloud and quite a strong wind. After lunch we spent some time watching the swans swimming in the lake in the Gardens before making our way to the temporary theatre where the play was to take place. The play was quite different to what I expected, but very good and very loyal to the book. I have written a review of the play for the Narnia fan site that I belong to, The Lion's Call, which you can read a copy of on my other blog on the link below:

Narnia Show in Kensington Gardens - a review

Swan lake

Pavilion next to theatre

Bethany and me

Writing a message from TLC

Inside the pavilion

The 360° Theatre

Squirrel in Kensington

Kensington Palace

This last week, I have been making the most of my final days in Oxford by doing some of the things I've been wanting to do but hadn't gotten around to yet. On Sunday 17, I went punting with a group of guys from the Worcester CU. A punt is a small boat that sits quite low in the water and is driven by a pole (kind of like a gondola). That evening we had a Linguistics department end-of-year barbecue.

On Tuesday, one of the rare sunny days, I went to the Oxford botanic gardens with another CU friend, Catherine. They are a lot smaller than Durban's botanic gardens and don't really have a place for picnics and such (there are plenty of other places in Oxford for that). Many of the plants, especially those from more tropical climates, are grown in Green Houses. I was really exited to see a number of South African plants or plants we have in our garden back home.

On Wednesday, I spent the evening with the other linguists from my year as we got to meet Maryanna's parents, who have come over from from the USA. On Thursday morning, I met them again and went with them to Magdalen College where another linguist, Prerna, who is at that college, took us up the Magdalen Tower (the tallest tower in Oxford). The stairway up was a narrow steep spiral one with about 115 steps, but the view from the top was spectacular and made it worth it.

Magdalen Bridge

Maryanna and Prerna

Magdalen College     

       Oxford City Centre  

Tower stairs

My main plans for the coming week are to get things packed up. I will be leaving most of my things in Oxford at a friends' house and  am currently going through the arduous task of packing my things in boxes. It's a weird experience for me. I've never moved house before (except coming over here, which involved packing just one suitcase with the necessities and buying what I couldn't bring over when I got here). Now, for the first time, I'm actually having to pack things in boxes. And I need to decide carefully what I will take home because I will have no access to the things I leave for two and a half months. It's not a fun task, but it's a necessary one.

So, I now head into my final week in Oxford (for a while). I can't believe how quickly these last ten months have gone. I have seen and done and learnt so much. But I really can't wait to get home and see my family and doggies again (or in the case of Jackson, for the first time).

April showers bring May...and more showers

I guess it's time for an update. I can't believe it's mid May already. The weather here (since my last post) has been absolutely horrid. After a couple of lovely weeks in late March it has just gone downhill. Here I was thinking Britain isn't nearly as rainy as the impressions tell us, but it decided to prove the impressions right. Although, many people do assure me that this isn't actually normal for this time of year. The BBC has described it as the rainiest April in over 100 years (or since records began). And May hasn't been much better, though we had a bit of relief on the weekend. The locals seem to think it's summer already and some are dressing as such but I'm still pretty much in my winter gear. Maximum temperatures are anything between 12°C and (occasionally) 17°, though 13-14° is probably about average.

As anticipated, this term has been a lot busier than the previous two. I've started having proper Oxford tutorials, rather than just attending lectures. For those who don't know about the tutorial system here, it's based on one-on-one (or one-on-a-few, but in my case one) meetings with a tutor in the fields you are focussing on. These are in preparation for the final exams I will have next year. So far I've had three tutorials on The History of Greek (one of my options). I had an essay set on a different topic each week (these were on Greek phonology and morphology and their derivation from reconstructed Indo-European forms). Then in the tutorial my tutor would discuss the essays with me. I'm having a bit of a break from that now and will continue with them next term (along with tutorials on Historical Linguistics in general). For the rest of this term I will be having meetings with my Syntax tutor. Syntax is my third choice but because I don't have an exam for it, the meetings take on a different form, meeting to discuss the topic for the final essay I will be writing for the Syntax module. I had a topic idea from last term but decided it was going to involve too much work and would be better as a thesis so now I need a new essay topic. I will also be finding information for and narrowing down my thesis topic throughout the rest of the term (which for anyone who's interested will be on Word Order in Ancient Greek).

Apart from the work, I've also started attending the CS Lewis Society meetings here. I signed up for the society when I first arrived, but wasn't originally getting their emails and then was too busy to go. So far this term we've had a walking Inklings tour of Oxford, a talk on the influence of Medieval Bestiaries on the Chronicles of Narnia and a talk on Tolkien's use of (pagan) mythology in Middle Earth. (It's more of an Inklings society than limited to Lewis stuff). This week will be hearing readings of some recently discovered poems written by Joy Davidman (Lewis' wife) and next week we have a special treat with Lewis' stepson, Douglas Gresham coming to talk. It's been fun meeting other Lewis and Tolkien fanatics.

I've also been doing a lot of organising of trips the last couple of weeks. It started with me trying to get my flight back home in July. I came over on a return ticket but the latest date they could get was 15 May and term only ends 15 June. So I had to book knowing I'd have to apply for a change of date (which was actually kind of nice because I had an excuse to take time to decide on when I wanted to go). Apparently waiting till the end of April was a bad idea. When my mum tried to book the change of date, flights for the end of June/beginning of July were already really full. I had decided to wait until after 9 July since the Olympic torch is coming through Oxford that day. It looked like they could get me a flight for 10 July but when they tried to book it, it wouldn't let them. I had to decide whether I wanted to go on the 9th (which would mean missing the torch the day it came) or earlier, on the 1st, or to wait until the 18th. I decided I'd miss the torch and go back a bit earlier - on the 1st. 

After this, I had a look to see if any neighbouring towns were having the torch before I left. It will be around here in early July and in Scotland and Northern England before I leave. But then I saw that it would be in Cardiff on 25 May. This is a Friday and I won't have a Friday lecture that week. I've been wanting to visit Wales, so I've decided to take a little trip to Wales to see the torch and the city. I've also bought tickets for The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe stage show which is showing in London throughout the summer. I'm going to watch with Bethany the weekend after term ends. The tickets arrived in the post today, which was quite exciting.

So, that's what I've been up to the last couple weeks. Thanks again for reading and for your prayers (and comments are also always welcome).

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)