The Experience of Oxford, Part 2

The Experience of Oxford, Part 2
Christopher Bogart

The rain may never fall till after sundown.
By eight, the morning fog must disappear.
In short, there's simply not
A more congenial spot
For happily-ever-aftering than here
In Camelot.
Camelot, Alan J. Lerner and Frederick Lowe

One of the great things about the time I spent in England, and in Oxford in particular, was the weather. Now I know that sounds a bit paradoxical, as England has a reputation for rainy and damp weather, but in the ten days I was there we had only one overcast day. It rained only briefly in the evenings, and the days were sunny and dry. I was there in the beginning of August and the temperature never rose above 78 degrees F during the day, but descended to the mid-forties in the evening. It was almost comical seeing people walking around in the evening in sandals and heavy woolen sweaters. Each of the 38 colleges has greens and gardens that, in typical English Garden fashion, are overflowing with flowers. Coming from New Jersey where our summers over the last decade have been hot and humid but with little rain, I asked one of the gardeners how often he watered these gardens. He replied, “Maybe twice a summer.”

While the colleges were built in a variety of styles that reflect the eras in which they were built, they were almost always built with honey-colored Cotswold stone. As a result, the city seems to have a certain uniformity of theme. This stone catches the light of day in different ways and at different times of the day, making it appear pale yellow in the morning to almost golden in the evening. The stone is now getting rare, and even small pieces of it are kept to make repairs.
In the summer of 2005, there were at least four Shakespeare plays being performed around town at any given time. I went to see an excellent student presentation of A Comedy of Errors in the garden at Magdalen College. Weekly orchestral and choral concerts, some in Sheldonian Hall, a hall built by Sir Christopher Wren, the architect who designed and built St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, in 1668, were advertised all over town. Museums, art galleries and botanical gardens as well as guided tours of the university and of Blenheim Palace, the “Alice in Wonderland Walk” or an evening with Colin Dexter, the author of the Inspector Morse mysteries, and the inspiration for the Inspector Lewis mysteries.

And then there are the pubs or public houses. Each of these pubs reflect different atmospheres and named for anything from the historical to the religious to the fantastic, with names like The Royal Oak (named after the oak the future Charles II hid in), The Lamb and the Flag and The Eagle and Child. The Bear is the oldest pub in Oxford was built in 1242. The Eagle and Child (or as the locals call it, “The Bird and the Baby”) was the pub where the Inklings, a group of authors which included J.R.R. Tolkien (The Lord of the Rings) and C.S. Lewis (the Narnia books) met to discuss their writing. And while the serve the English “favorites” (steak and kidney pie, steak and ale pie and fish and chips), they also serve a wide variety of food, and of course, pints of ale with foam like whipped cream.

However, one night, a few of us decided to go on “an adventure.” We walked down Observatory Road out of Oxford toward the setting sun. Chatting carelessly and relieved that we had made it through the first day of the conference; we walked over the Oxford Canal Bridge and across the meadows where cows were grazing as the sun set over the field. It was a beautiful night, and reminded me of Grey’s “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard.” We found a dirt road and walked down it until we came to a wooden bridge that spanned the Thames River. On the other side was the little town of Binsey, a town that consisted of only about five houses, and The Perch. The Perch was a thatched roofed pub that was founded in 1468. It had an outdoor eating area that fronted the Thames. We went in and found exactly what we expected – wood paneled walls and the locals having a pint and talking about the day’s events. Most of our fellow travelers sat in booths, but I went to the bar, ordered a pint and spent the evening talking to Simon, the bartender. Lost in conversation and the excitement of where I was and what I was experiencing, I barely noticed how late it was. Simon called us cabs. We were afraid of walking into the cows in the pitch black fields on the way home.

When the cabs brought us back to Oxford, I sat on the steps in front of the dorms and thought about the experience I just had. It was almost a walk back into time to a place in the past that was very similar to the one I had just experienced.