Oxford University Park

Saturday, we had a visit from an old friend of M’s. D was one of the “gang” that used to stay at our house when the boys were teenagers. So we’ve known D for many, many years. He has recently moved to London to be with his English partner R. So old friends and new friends. During their visit, we went for a loooooooooong walk through Oxford University Park, a place I didn’t even know existed until Saturday.

My first introduction to the park was when K said: “Madeleine, come over here!!”. I was busy looking at something else. This was what she had to show me.

I was so fascinated, I forgot to ask the man what exactly the bird was. I think it’s a hawk judging by the Google images I found. He/she was apparently 12 years old and the bloke has had him since he was a little bird. How gorgeous. I don’t even know why they were there in the park. The bird had been on his arm until just before I took this photo. Apparently, they like to have the wind under their wings and this was what he was doing. Also, apparently, they don’t weigh anything when they have the wind under their wings like that. He was sort of hovering on the sign.

Here’s a close up.

The Oxford University Parks, more normally the University Parks, or just Uni Parks to members of the local community, is one large parkland area slightly northeast of the Oxford city centre in England. It is open to the public during the day, and boasts beautiful gardens, large sports fields, and rare and exotic plants.

From 1853 to 1864, the University of Oxford purchased a total of 91 acres of land from Merton College to build the parks. Some of this land was then used for the University Museum and the Science Area, so the current site is measured at about 74 acres. The park is situated mostly on the west bank of the River Cherwell, though a small plot of land called Mesopotamia sits between the upper and lower levels of the river. The Parks are bounded by Norham Gardens to the north, Parks Road to the west and the Science Area on South Parks Road to the south.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_Parks

The is the High Bridge or Rainbow Bridge over the River Cherwell, it is shaped like a rainbow (hence the name) and was built in 1923/4 as a project for unemployed people. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainbow_Bridge,_Oxford

Here’s a photo going up the bridge and the backs of M & D.

After more walking, we came across this:

For some reason I didn’t take a photo of the whole scene. This is called the Punt Rollers, but I’m not quite sure why. Maybe because when punts get to this point they are likely to roll over?

This is not my photo. I took it off the net

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c4/Punt-rollers-river-cherwell-oxford.jpg

There was a lot more water flowing when we were there and here’s some close-ups of the water.

I do like my close-ups.

I subsequently discovered that there are a couple of interesting stories about this part of the park.

Mesopotamia is a narrow island (about 800 yards long by 30 yards wide) that forms part of the University Parks, Oxford, England. It lies between the upper and lower levels of the River Cherwell. The name Mesopotamia in Greek means "between the rivers" and originally referred to the area between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in present-day Iraq.

The land was purchased by the University of Oxford during the expansion of the Oxford University Parks between 1860 and 1865. A footpath, Mesopotamia Walk, laid out in 1865 runs along the centre of the spur to Kings Mill.

The Domesday Book records a watermill on this site and milling continued until 1825; one level of the river was once the mill stream. From 1914, attempts were made to introduce wild ducks and geese to the area, but these proved fruitless because of the predatory local otter population. Until 1926, a ferry operated from a point half way along the Walk, when it was replaced by a footbridge.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesopotamia,_Oxford

Also, in Wikipedia (and this one gave me a giggle):

Parson's Pleasure in the University Parks at Oxford, England, was a secluded area for male-only nude bathing on the River Cherwell. It was located next to the path on the way to Mesopotamia at the south-east corner of the Parks. The facility closed in 1991 and the area now forms part of the Parks.

Parson's Pleasure was traditionally frequented by dons of the University. To save the embarrassment of ladies who might be sitting in passing punts, they could be directed to a path that skirted the area behind a high corrugated iron fence. If a pretext were needed, the ladies could be told that the men needed to haul the punt over "the rollers" — a track made of concrete with metal rollers — next to the nearby weir. Women's use of the path declined in later years. The path and the rollers remain.

Parson's Pleasure is now part of the folklore of the university. One anecdote goes that a number of dons were skinny-sunbathing on the Pleasure when a group of students floated by in a punt. All but one of the startled dons covered their modesty — one placed a flannel over his head instead. When asked why he had done that, he replied haughtily, "Oh, well my students know me by my face.".

There are many variations of this joke. One, which appeared as a series of cartoons on a weekly wallpaper in Oxford about 1990, had a punt of camera toting Japanese tourists glide past the Pleasure, flashbulbs popping, much to the disgust of the dons enjoying their Sunday Times crossword. All but one of the dons covered their modesty with the crossword, and of course, the caption below stated something along the lines of" "Old Chap, I am rather known by my face in these parts!"

In 1996, the Oxford University Beer Appreciation Society commissioned a local brewery to produce a barley wine that was called Parson's Pleasure Ale.

A similar Dame's Delight for female bathers also existed nearby, but this closed even earlier than Parson's Pleasure.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parson%27s_Pleasure

And just a bit more information about Dame’s Delight

Dame's Delight was a place for family bathing on the bank of the River Cherwell in the meadows near the Oxford University Parks opposite Mesopotamia Walk in Oxford, England. It was started in 1934, but closed in 1970 due to maintenance difficulties because of flooding. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dame%27s_Delight

Interestingly enough, the story about the don covering his head rather than his genitals, is one I have heard. I can’t remember where, of course. I think it was in a movie somewhere.

Roald Dahl wrote a story called The Parson’s Pleasure which is a lovely little story, but has nothing to do with university don’s bathing naked. You can find the story here:

www.daltonvoorburg.nl/file/5147/1068724036/Parsons+Pleasure.doc

Here’s a bit of a map with our travels. After our walk, we stopped at the Royal Oak for a drink and a rest before heading back to the house.

 

And that’s all for now folks.

Madeleine

Monday, 8 December 2008

Cold

Overnight was below freezing. I went for a walk Sunday morning, not particularly early, around 11 a.m. Lots of ice, puddles. This was a puddle on the side of the road.

Frozen!

Interesting shadows This was the footpath. You can see the shadows of the railings on the bridge where the ice had been shielded from the sun. All along I could see the melted ice where the sun had touched the surface; and the ice in the shadows.

Different clothes on people depending on how much they felt the cold. I saw a man wearing a t-shirt, shorts, running shoes, and gloves. No hat, no jacket, but gloves. Another man was wearing a normal suit and carrying what looked like a fur coat. Most people were rugged up the way I was.

That’s the other thing. Before you go out in this weather, there is a whole process to go through. I had to put on my long johns, which means removing the outer layer of clothes, and then dressing again with the long johns on. Then you have extra socks, shoes, coat, hat, gloves and once these are all arranged properly (scarf tucked into jacket so the cold doesn’t get in, jacket done up etc), you are ready to brave the world. I am so glad I don’t have small kids.

This was the railing on the bridge. Again, you can see where the sun had touched and melted the ice and where it hasn’t.

A close up of the ice crystals.

Looks almost furry.

And the misty view from the bridge.

This one is taken from a similar place in October. It’s hard to compare them as I was looking at different things when I took each photo.

Now will y'all stop nagging. I've given you your fix for today.

cheers

Madeleine

Monday, 8 December 2008

More Winchester

Winchester Cathedral has a number of special happenings during the Christmas season. While we were there, they had a market with all sorts of stalls selling crafts and goodies. Not much different from the markets we have in Australia in what they sold. What was different was that each stall had a wooden chalet, each one the same.

All this scene needs is some snow falling and it would be perfect I reckon.

This is Winchester Cathedral.

Not bad for an old lady (or man).

They had also set up a skating rink. I thought about going but then couldn’t be bothered with waiting in the queue to get on the rink and the inevitable cold wet bum when I fell over. But here’s a photo of the rink area. This is 4 photos together. Looks pretty good, if I do say so myself.

In amongst all the craft items was an area that was selling food. I mentioned that I had never tasted roasted chestnuts, so K bought some for us to try.

As far as the taste goes. They are all right. Nothing special for me. But for someone who grew up on them, they would mean Christmas, winter, all sorts of connotations. A bit like vegemite to an Australian.

This one was taken inside the cathedral

And then looking straight up

This window was interesting. Apparently the original window was destroyed by a bomb during Oliver Cromwell's time. People pieced together the bits of coloured glass and ended up with a mosaic of stained glass instead of religious pictures.

Apparently

The cathedral's huge west window is made up of fragments of medieval glass put together randomly, in a manner something like pique assiette mosaic work. The original panes were deliberately destroyed by Cromwell's forces following the outbreak of the Civil War in 1642. Soon after the restoration of the monarchy in 1660, the broken glass was gathered up and used again.

As this display in the cathedral visitor centre shows, the original pictures were not reconstructed, as was attempted at St Peter Mancroft in Norwich. Perhaps the damage at Winchester was just too great for a "jigsaw" approach. Out of necessity, the cathedral pre-empted collage art by hundreds of years.

http://www.thejoyofshards.co.uk/visits/southtrip/winchcath2.shtml

The photo above gives an idea of the size of the window. This is a close up of one section. I just can’t imagine the amount of work that must have gone into recreating this window.

If you look closely, you can see a head in this one, but the rest are just bits of glass put together.

We had dinner/lunch (couldn’t decide if it was going to be linner or dunch) with K’s cousin who lives in Winchester. However by the time we got there, it was definitely dinner time and we were all tired and hungry. When we headed back to the car, the streets were much quieter and I took a couple of shots of the Christmas decorations all lit up.

Then we hopped in the car and came home, ending another journey.

Madeleine

Tuesday, 2 December 2008

Great Story – Winchester Cathedral

On our travels this last weekend, we went to Winchester Cathedral. We had a local (K’s cousin) who took us around and gave us some of the history of the Cathedral. One of the stories she told us was the one of William Walker (diver) and his contribution to the Cathedral.

I have been doing a bit of research since I’ve been back and here is the story.

The cathedral had originally been built in the 11^th Century by Norman Monks. It had been added in the 13^th Century and in the late 19^th century it was discovered that these additions had begun to subside. Apparently, they had been added on the top of a peat bog.

“Although parts of the building were reasonably well supported on chalk and flint infill, other parts had been constructed on an intricate raft of tree trunks that virtually floated on the water table. A partial drying out og the area due to drainage works carried out in later years had resulted in subsidence and rotting of this wooden foundation.”

http://www.urgdiveclub.org.au/LinkClick.aspx?fileticket=2Q89yRCk2gU%3D&tabid=59&mid=391

(BTW I copy and pasted this, including spelling errors)

With limited methods of rectifying the problem, a diver, William Walker, was sent to remove the water an shore up the foundations of the cathedral so they could be fixed properly.

This is how his work was described:

"At this point Walker, in his helmet diving dress weighing 200lb went into the pits and working in completely inky, foul water with absolutely no visibility began to remove, bucket by bucket, peat and rotted wood. He worked entirely by touch, wearing gloves to protect him from the water made septic by nearby graves in the Cathedral grounds. When he had completely removed all the unstable filling and was down to firm gravel base he then proceeded to build up layers of cement bags. This procedure was repeated day after day, week after week, in the many pits around the walls, all the time in danger from a possible wall collapse."

http://www.urgdiveclub.org.au/LinkClick.aspx?fileticket=2Q89yRCk2gU%3D&tabid=59&mid=391

Now what a story is that.

But this is not the end.

The Cathedral was fixed and all was well and eventually someone decided that they needed a statue of William Walker to commemorate his services to the cathedral. Which was duly done. Imagine the horror when the statue was unveiled and turned out not to be William Walker’s features, but Sir Francis Fox the engineer involved in the project. Apparently the sculptor had been given a photo of the two men and had picked the wrong one.

Now how embarrassing would THAT be !!

The error was eventually fixed and I took two photos of two different statues and I’m not sure who they are of. I think they are both William Walker but who knows.

This one was inside the Cathedral. The sign under it reads: William Walker – diver 1896 – 1912 And I can’t read the rest.

This statue was outside between the shop and the cafe and looks like him as well.

The sign under this statue says:

Now apparently Norman Pierce was the man who did a bust of the real William Walker – diver. However, this one was tucked away in a corner outside the cathedral, and the first one had pride of place inside the cathedral. So whether I am right in my assumptions I really don’t know.

Madeleine

Monday, 1 December 2008

Stonehenge

It’s hard to describe the setting of Stonehenge. It is on Salisbury Plain – 300 square miles of flatness. There was no way I could get a photo that did justice to the size and scale of the setting. I took a photo from the car window as we were leaving but all it shows is the rain on the window.

Driving down the highway, and watching for signs. Very suddenly there was a sign for the turn off, which we almost missed. A short drive further, and there it was, amongst the flat nothingness of the plain.

It was bitterly cold. Raining. At one stage a drop of rain hit my face and it felt like ice. Do we bother to pay money and wander around in the cold? We had driven a fair way from Southampton to get here. I did want to see it in real life. How important was this to me? It was really, really cold and wet and horrible weather.

K and I decided we would go for a bit of a walk and see what we could see. There was a fence around the whole area. Apparently you could walk under the road from the car park into the fenced area and wander around. We decided to stay outside the fence and just see it from a distance. In spite of the distance, this is what I saw.

Even through the fence it’s kinda kewl, now isn’t it?

However, when I zoomed in, I was more able to get a feel for what they felt like close up:

Wow!!

How incredible.

They are ginormous.

To give an idea of the size of them

This photo gives an idea of the weather as well. So I took a close up of the people and the umbrellas.

That’s why we didn’t go any closer. For almost £7, I didn’t think the effort was worth it. There was a path around the stones. You can’t get close enough to touch them.

Over the years, tourists have written on them, taken bits from them and generally defaced them in every imaginable way. In the late 1960s when I was in the UK, you could walk amongst them. I wish now I’d managed to get to see them and get some photos then.

The path around them is quite long and wide around the stones. Probably gives a great sense of the scale of both the plain and the stones, but for me, it wasn’t worth the cold. I’d seen enough from my side of the fence.

Madeleine

Monday, 1 December 2008

Phone Call

I had a phone call this a.m. Most unusual. I answered expecting it to be someone for M or K and it was for me. It was the house sitting agency. Immediate panic. What was wrong with my fur kids?

Damn !!

Turns out the fridge is not working.

Damn !!

Is that all?

Do I care if the fridge is not working?

Not really.

I know I should, and I guess I do at some level, because I know that Perth, in December, no fridge is a definite problem. Anyway, I think it is sorted.

BTW, the fur kids are fine.

When I told M about it, his first response was: “Oh, no!!” He went immediately into “There’s something wrong with the fur kids” as well.

Madeleine

Monday, 1 December 2008

The Pantomime

What can I say? Bad jokes. Incredibly bad jokes. Which were so bad and so predicable they were funny. Singing, lots of it. Dancing, yup, that too. So for those who have never seen a pantomime, what on earth is it?

It is a show, singing, dancing, ridiculous jokes, no plot, a hero, heroine and a bad guy. The audience becomes part of the show. So when the villain comes on the scene, the audience boos and hisses. At one stage one of the actors had asked the audience to watch over his fish, and if anyone came to steal his fish, that we were to let him know by shouting: “Wishee Washee, Fishy Wishy” (and yup, that’s for real). So when the villain attempted to steal his fish, the audience was a bit slow in warning him and he came out before we had a chance to cue him. So he looks at the audience, tells them that we had been a bit slow, goes back, and we start again. It was hilarious.

Apparently in every pantomime there is one character played by the opposite sex i.e. a man playing a woman or vice versa. In this one, a man played the central character, a woman, Widow Twanky.

According to my book, there are 4 major elements in a pantomime: music (both singing and dancing), comedy (including slapstick) , audience participation and a traditional story of good and evil.

Our seats were right at the front and we were warned that we were likely to get wet, and at one stage M had his coat wrapped around him and he warned me that this was the point where we were likely to get wet. We didn’t. The funny bit about that scene was where Wishee Washee was being assaulted by various forms of fluid and one of the children came out with a pie, carried very wobbly, and we were waiting for Wishee Washee to wear the pie. He didn’t. You could hear the audience settle and then about 5 minutes later, just long enough for the audience to forget, Wishee Washee wore the pie, much to the audience delight and laughter.

This pantomime was Aladdin and was totally different from any version I’ve ever heard, although I must admit I am a bit weak on my Arabian Tales. The story according to this pantomime, and apparently this is one of the standard English pantomimes, Aladdin is a friend of Wishee Washee and his mother, the Widow Twanky. The Widow Twanky owns the local laundry service. Aladdin falls in love with the Emperor’s Daughter, who cannot marry him cause he is poor. The villain, Abananzer, wants the money from the cave and the lamp, but can’t go and get it himself cause only a brave and honest man is allowed in the cave, so he has to trick Aladdin into giving him the lamp. And so the story progresses from the audience being told that we are not allowed to look at Princess Jasmine or we will all have out heads cut off. So there is much fun amongst the audience, both children and adults, to look at the princess and yet not look at her so we could see what she was up to. To the final where the good guys win out and the local bobby takes Abananzer off to wherever he goes to learn to behave himself and everyone lives happily ever after.

I found it interesting that usually polite, apologetic and adapted Englishers were so free in this instance to shout and hiss and boo at the villain, and to shout stupid things like “Wishee Washee Fishy Wishee”, to one of the actors. The whole pantomime was hilarious.

Including the main characters, there were also 10 children involved in the production, singing as a chorus and I presume, learning their pantomime skills for later in their lives. At one stage they got 10 children from the audience to come up on stage and help, and these children all went home with a little present. At another point in the story they called from a member of the audience to come and sing and the man who they chose just happened to be the little girl sitting next to me’s teacher. So even one of the local primary school teachers was allowed to get involved and behave like an idiot – which he quite happily did.

I loved it. It was silly. There was no plot. The singing was great. The audience loved the whole experience and that included me and M neither of us having every been to one before. I don’t think the Aussies here will understand. I think if anyone had told me, my response would have been, no way, you’ve got to be kidding. It was great.

I wasn't allowed to take photos, so, sorry, no pictures this time.

Madeleine

Saturday, 29 November 2008