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We went to Oxford yesterday, which was splendid. I walked along the Isis, which I wanted to do last time I was in Oxford but didn't have time for, and Caitlin and I had a cream tea (no. of cream teas on trip so far: two), and I purchased Humphrey Carpenter's The Inklings - although sadly after we went to the Eagle and Child, so I did not get to read Caitlin choice excerpts while sitting in the very pub where Tolkien and Lewis once smoked their pipes.
We did meet a very nice group in the Eagle and Child, though, one of whom had brought along a stack of Lewis & Tolkien books and a pipe to take a commemmorative Inklings photo. He lent me his pipe for a photo, which was terribly kind of him.
We went also to the Bodleian, where I found a postcard with the covers of all sorts of different British girls' books from around the turn of the twentieth century. Of course this instantly became the nucleus of a new reading list, and I promptly downloaded piles of Angela Brazil on Kindle.
(I just finished reading Brazil's The Youngest Girl in the Fifth, in which our heroine Gwen is skipped from the Upper Fourth into the Fifth during the middle of term. The middle of the day during the middle of the term, even! I cannot think that the headmistress thought this through; the whole thing seems to have been managed to give Gwen the hardest time possible.)
If there was an exhibition connected to the postcard, I couldn't find it, which was rather vexing. But it occurs to me that it would have been yet more vexing to be surrounded by books that I yearn to read (many of which are not on Kindle, alas) and not be able to touch, and not to have time to read them even if I could.
Then I decided that the best way to get back to the train station was clearly to drag Caitlin along the path alongside the Isis. Suffice it to say that this is probably the least efficient (although most scenic!) method of getting anywhere in Oxford. But we did see some people punting while wearing actual straw boaters!
We did meet a very nice group in the Eagle and Child, though, one of whom had brought along a stack of Lewis & Tolkien books and a pipe to take a commemmorative Inklings photo. He lent me his pipe for a photo, which was terribly kind of him.
We went also to the Bodleian, where I found a postcard with the covers of all sorts of different British girls' books from around the turn of the twentieth century. Of course this instantly became the nucleus of a new reading list, and I promptly downloaded piles of Angela Brazil on Kindle.
(I just finished reading Brazil's The Youngest Girl in the Fifth, in which our heroine Gwen is skipped from the Upper Fourth into the Fifth during the middle of term. The middle of the day during the middle of the term, even! I cannot think that the headmistress thought this through; the whole thing seems to have been managed to give Gwen the hardest time possible.)
If there was an exhibition connected to the postcard, I couldn't find it, which was rather vexing. But it occurs to me that it would have been yet more vexing to be surrounded by books that I yearn to read (many of which are not on Kindle, alas) and not be able to touch, and not to have time to read them even if I could.
Then I decided that the best way to get back to the train station was clearly to drag Caitlin along the path alongside the Isis. Suffice it to say that this is probably the least efficient (although most scenic!) method of getting anywhere in Oxford. But we did see some people punting while wearing actual straw boaters!
