This morning I shall be in Oxford
I know that it is very easy to form a poor opinion of a place when it is tonking with rain but shall we just say that my worst fears of Cardiff were entirely justified. Walk through the city centre at ten thirty on a Monday morning & you realise that it isn’t so much the heart of a reinvigorated Principality as a repository of the unemployed unemployable. Even a cursory glace might lead the casual observer to conclude that main thing that both men & women have in common (aside from BMI scores in the low 50s) are the tattoos. In fact one feral couple arguing in the middle of Queen Street were so dense that light had started to bend towards them: I cannot not begin to articulate how pleased I was to see that M4 Eastbound motorway sign.
This morning & as if by way of contrast, you find me on my way to Oxford; an altogether more civilised destination. It’s off to Oxford today before getting on a plane this evening.
Pip pip.
Comments
Much better - although I do see what appears to be a man in flip-flops lowering the tone...
Posted by: Bruce | November 17, 2009 9:37 AM
Ah! the Sheldonian Theatre at the end of Broad St by Christopher Wren as i remember, and at the opposite end the Martrys Memorial to Cranmer Latimer and ? marked with three brass crosses in the middle of the Street Enjoy
Posted by: exlimey | November 17, 2009 1:19 PM
Picture not taken in November, right? Skirts, sandals, etc.
Posted by: Bubba | November 17, 2009 2:42 PM
Bubba, that's yer global warming right there...
Anyway, allowances must always be made for student towns like Oxford, Heidelberg, etc. Despite having the vote, these young people are still unformed social clay and have yet to learn the niceties of social convention and manners.
They do respond well to frequent beatings, however, so they can be moulded.
Posted by: Kim du Toit | November 17, 2009 4:07 PM
Contrast Mr FM? There is still a young lady in a little black dress albeit in work mode rather than party mode.
Posted by: shadow12 | November 17, 2009 5:26 PM
Kim-
As a current student at the University of Oxford I feel compelled to inform you that a select few of us have already received the requisite beatings, either at home or at one of Britain's fine boarding schools. As a result, I shall be spending tomorrow evening sipping Talisker and smoking my pipe rather than "going out on the lash".
And no, I do not wear flip flops.
Posted by: Tom | November 17, 2009 9:06 PM
To be fair to the hipster, when those feet in ancient times walked upon England's mountains green they were probably shod in flip-flops. It's right Oxonian, in its idiom. He might have gone with the monk's cloth cowl though, just to keep his outfit together.
Posted by: comatus | November 18, 2009 4:43 AM
Ridley. Regards, Nigel.
Posted by: Nigel Johnson | November 18, 2009 6:07 PM
Tom,
It has been my experience that people who have experienced whippings at the hands of parents and schoolteachers seldom need advice on clothing and manners -- and if they do, after all that, they are generally in jail anyway.
I STILL hold the record for strokes of the cane at my old school -- 125 in five years -- and it will never be broken because the wussies abolished corporal punishment a few years after I'd graduated.
Posted by: Kim du Toit | November 18, 2009 7:01 PM