street lights glisten on the boulevard

Thursday was a day spent very happily on my own. Jane had a good deal of work to do, a meeting to attend, and a student to tutor, so she sent me off with a map and some advice, and I had an adventure.

But that was mostly the afternoon. The morning was me going shopping around Summertown. I was to go wandering on my own and buy postcards and look at shops that had fascinated me, and return at 12:30 for lunch.

So I went, and I went to a thrift store and looked at everything and found a very pretty yellow dress that was like a daffodil but I didn’t buy it.

Here is a store I thought Thad might like:

Walking on down the street, I slowed down to try to fix my necklace, which had broken. A man leaning against a car had just started smoking a cigarette. Then he looked up and saw me.

“Oh, I’m so sorry, I’ve just lit a fag,” he said apologetically, in a pleasant non-posh very English accent. And it pretty much made my day, because NOBODY apologizes for smoking or thinks about other people having to breathe in their smoke. But he did. [Side note: another thing I appreciate about England is that many expressions have retained their original meaning instead of taking on unpleasant connotations…]

I went into a pretty little clothing store that had quotes that I liked on the window, and found the most perfect little dress that I loved, but only loved to admire since it was £130.

After that I landed in Oxfam, a store that sells both secondhand and new things and donates most of their profits. I got lost there because I found a book of children’s poems, and when I looked at the time on my camera it was 12:38 so I dashed back to the apartment. We ate lunch quickly, then grabbed our things and set out southward to the centre of Oxford. Jane bid me farewell just north of the Eagle and Child (a pub Lewis and Tolkien used to frequent) and went to her meeting. I walked to the Eagle and Child and slipped inside, leaving before anyone could ask me if they could help me, since I didn’t want to spend any money.

We pass this shop every day between the centre of Oxford and Summertown:

I walked from there until I reached the Ashmolean museum. I was tired of walking and my bag seemed very heavy and I wanted to sit and write and think, because something was unsettling me and I didn’t know what. So I sat down on the stone seats around the – can you call it a porch when it’s enormous and made of stone? – well, the whatever-it-is of the museum, and thought.

After some thinking, I had figured it out. Though England looked like I had pictured it, Oxford really didn’t. The buildings did, but I didn’t know Oxford was a city, especially a big one full of stores and loud buses and cars and heavy traffic. And since the road that Jane’s flat is off of is the main road down through the city, in order to get anywhere, we spent most of our time walking down the very busiest street there.

I felt better having worked out in my mind what it was that was bothering me, especially knowing that there were probably places off of the main road that seemed more like the Oxford I had imagined. I was just getting out my notebook to write down these thoughts, when an older man and his wife came up to me.

He was the sharp, country sort of older man, not at all frail, but weathered and keened, with a green trilby hat (the kind where the top folds down over the brim) over his dark, sparkling eyes. He greeted me and spoke to me, and he told me many things, in such a thick accent that I only caught about half of what he said. His name is Lloyd Davidson, and he is from Liverpool. He told me things about English history, and things that had happened to him, and for some reason he got talking about Mormons at one point and told me a story about how when they arrived at the Salt Lake locusts came but seagulls ate them. And I nodded and listened to as much as I could understand, and wished that I could make a recording to listen to later. Occasionally his wife – small and grandma-ish, with a blue scarf tied around her hair, a little more fragile seeming than her husband, but not frail – would interject with corrections or additions.

Eventually they said goodbye and went on their way, leaving me feeling comforted in the knowledge that England was still England.

I had seen somewhere that the Ashmolean had lots of 1800s paintings and I wanted to see them. So I went in, and wandered around in there for a good hour, and saw many, many things, including a type of very ancient Greek statue that I had seen while in Greece and was very much hoping to see again.

You see, they are figures of women, with their arms crossed over their middle, and the toes pointed, and the heads tilted slightly back. Displayed upright, they look very haughty and imposing. Laid down, however – which many archaeologists think is their rightful position, since they couldn’t have been stood up on those pointed feet – they go from looking haughty to looking perfectly relaxed, a lovely image of repose.

And it touches me still, that what these ancient people found most beautiful, what they chose to represent in their art, was a woman at rest.

I loved many of the paintings and statues –

and I saw the real Thinker and the real Dancer Looking at the Sole of her Right Foot, which made me happy.

I finally tore myself away from the museum, because there were several other things that I wanted to see before having to be at Vespers at Ali’s convent at 5:30. I wanted to see Jesus College, because that’s where the couple in A Severe Mercy stayed. And I wanted to see Alice’s Shop, and Magdalen College and Christchurch meadow.

Jane had given me a map, and I looked to see what the best way to walk to Jesus college, because I wanted to get off the main busy road as soon as possible and see what the little roads were like.

I found a way, and when I turned onto the street where the college was, I was very happy. A narrow road, running between golden-stoned buildings, with people walking but no cars – this was just how I had pictured Oxford.

I walked past it at first and had to turn around, but was very happy, upon finding it, to see that it was open to visitors. Often many of the colleges will only let students in so that they aren’t overrun with tourists all the time.

I walked through one quadrangle into another, thinking happily of how Davy and asdf had been right here before me. Then I went on out, and set off further south toward the road that goes off to Magdalene (they say it mawd-lin, I don’t know why). But When I got there, I looked at the time, and decided that there was no way I would have time to get all the way to Magdalene and back and still get to Vespers at 5:30; it’s a long walk to the convent. So I would have to forgo that for today and hope to do it later, as well as the meadows – time was getting on quickly.

I stopped to take a picture of this store - it's everywhere, basically the British version of CVS. So I took a picture of this one for my cousin. :)

I did, however, find Alice’s Shop,

and got thoroughly lost in it. I looked at many Alice in Wonderland things, but in the end only bought one – a metal tin of barley-sugar sweets, just as Alice Liddell, who is the Alice that Carroll’s Alice was modeled after, used to by in that very shop (which is, of course, why it because Alice’s Shop in the first place). Looking at my camera clock, I saw that it was 5:05. Yikes. Better get going.

Then a long, long walk in an off-and-on rain all the way to the south end of Oxford. I alternated between running and walking, and didn’t bother getting out my camera to look at the time on the way because it would just slow me down and knowing how much time I had wouldn’t make me get there any faster; I was going as fast as I could anyhow. It was really rather pleasant in a melancholy sort of way; I got to cross on a bridge over the Thames – except they call it the Isis where it goes through Oxford.

When I arrived at Fairacres road, I was surprised to find myself still very much in town. The street was all narrow houses joined together, and I found myself more expecting to find Bob Cratchit’s house than a convent. It was that sort of road – rather poor, but in a homey rather than a trashy sort of way.

I arrived at the end of the road, and I had not found the convent. Bother. I asked a man walking by, and he said it was there, back the way I had come, the entrance just past the little crossroad. So I went back. I found a big wooden door in a brick wall between houses, but not knowing for certain whether it was the convent or not, I didn’t like to just open it and barge in. And it wasn’t labeled at all.

I came upon a woman on her bicycle, and she biked beside me as I ran and pointed it out to me – it was indeed the big wooden door. So I opened it – it was oh so just right, heavy, but silent on its hinges – and went inside.

I felt small and lost and rather wet and rather like a lost soul, but not at all unhappy. It was just the character I was at the moment. I found the chapel, and vespers had begun, but I could see Ali when I opened the door a crack and she nodded to me to come in. The place where we were sitting was at an alcove at a right angle from the main part where the nuns were. There were a couple other people there as well, listening.

None of us sang along. We all sang along at the monastery. I didn’t like not participating. But it was beautiful. It was the feast day of Joseph so there were songs about him.

When the service was done, Ali and I went out. A nun met us on the path and Ali introduced me to her. Talking to her, I felt even more like a sort of prodigal lost soul. But again, not in a bad way, in a character way. I like to be all sorts of characters. This was heightened by the fact that Ali was allowed to have dinner with the nuns but I wasn’t, though of course Ali came back to the guest house at ate with me. Jane and I had been planning a late dinner afterward, but I was very glad that there was food to eat at the guest house because the apple and banana I had packed had not turned out to be enough to eat and I was very hungry.

So we had bread and cheese and I also had cereal, and we waited for Jane, who had to tutor until 6pm and was to come after that. Fortunately the dining room window looked out on the main part of the convent, so we would see Jane if she was wandering about. Her not being there, and it being dark and rainy, and none of us having cell phones, was worrying me greatly. Periodically Ali or I would go out to see if we could see her.

Then, one time, Ali had gone out, and then I heard something, and looked up at the window, and there was Jane! Oh, joy and relief! “I am SO glad to see you,” I mouthed through the window.

So she came in, and we gave her water to drink and then bread and cheese, and we talked for a long time, also with another lady who was there, who talked a lot, but she was sad. She is one of those who feels the brokenness of the world, and she grieves all the prejudice and hatred between countries, talking sadly about how in so many countries they dislike or are afraid of her because she is English.

We sat and talked until suddenly the nun came in and said that she was locking up and Jane and I had to leave. So we gathered our things and went, but not before finding out that Fridays were to be Ali’s day off, and that meant tomorrow! So we agreed to meet at 1:30 at a certain place in Oxford.

I thought that I would be cold, tired, and miserable on the way three-and-a-half mile walk back, but instead I found myself warm enough and full of energy. It was a happy, adventurous walk, and it is nice walking with Jane because we don’t have to talk. Even if the water did wick up the back of my jeans all the way to my knees.

Then home, and pasta with tomato sauce and broccoli for supper. And too sleepy for a movie, so we went to bed.