Today! Today was super cool. Today we saw C. S. Lewis' house, the Kilns. There are actually real live people living in it (like at Jane Austen's) but because this weekend is Oxford's "Open Days" where they let the normal, general population act all touristy and go see cool buildings and places for free, they let us pop our heads in at the windows and see the muddy pond where Lewis used to go punting ... though how he managed, I've no clue; honestly, it wasn't any bigger than our pond at home! I'm guessing he did more sleeping in the punt than punting ... though the punt was actually there at the house, very very very old and all that; the house and property have all been restored and kept up and everything, but it's pretty much impossible to restore a wooden punt, so it's a bit out of shape. But still cool.
And on the pond were some funny black ducks with white bills; perhaps the ornithologist at home might be able to place the curious creature ... ?
It's a very cute house, as you can see, with lovely flowers bordering and encircling it. The current owners are American, ironically enough, but it sounded like they put a lot of time and money into restoring and keeping up the old place, which is awfully cool. I think when I die, and my house becomes famous, I'd like some Brits to move in and keep it up. Oh, wait, I don't have a house ...
After that, we went to visit the courthouse, where the Knave was on trial for stealing the Queen's tarts. The rendition of the famous court scene was masterfully portrayed by a fabulous Hatter, until he left off Caroll's version and began making up his own ending to it, which I found rather lame. And he said that the raven and writing desk have quills in common: plain old boring old quills. I thought that a remarkably stupid answer to the riddle, compared to good old Poe, but perhaps he felt disinclined to credit an American writer with any ingenuity. But the tea was good, and everyone clapped, and in the end no one was beheaded, which was a mercy, and everyone went home happy and content.
After a rather long day's outing, I was disinclined to study, but I peeked in between the pages of a book on medieval Europe, and as it happened to be well-written and a fairly easy read, I took to it and made some considerable progress. For dinner, I treated myself to some crackers, some brie, and a pear, and let me tell you, it is a dinner fit for queens, red or white. Positively scrummy. A quick stop at Sainsbury's [the local grocery store; similar to Meijer's] and a quid-fifty [little more than $2] offered more satisfaction and delight than many a painstakingly-prepared cafeteria meal. Why, oh why, must they insist on serving us three squares a day, when we can have all the geometric shapes in the world?
There was a point to this, and I have forgotten it, and it will return as soon as I post this. Murphy's Law, don't you know.
Sounds beautiful.....I am packing my bags! What would you have had at the cafeteria if you didn't buy your own dinner? I will have Eddie check on those ducks!
ReplyDeleteWell, I was sort of being facetious about the food. :) As you know, cafeteria food is notorious for unidentifiable dishes, large globs of goop, leather-tough meat, baby-food veggies, etc., so I was sort of generalizing in a vague sort of way. But cafeteria food here is quite decent (though lots might disagree; I'm definitely past my picky-eater stage! Aren't you proud of me?), but amusingly British as well. For example, the eggs at breakfast are always runny. I've gotten used to it, but a lot of people turn up their noses. Then again, we had black pudding once; v interesting, extremely salty, but I kind of liked it. Someone else spit it out when she heard it was cooked in blood. Yeah, well ... But food in general here is very nice, as I said, v carefully prepared it seems, for cafeteria food! We've had lamb and gammon and there's often some sort of quiche or chicken or couscous, and always a vegetarian dish (we seem to have a lot of vegetarians here, interestingly enough. Maybe they're just a bit scarce in the wild woods of MI!) and fun desserts. :D Though I've been pretty good at not eating them ALL ...
ReplyDeleteYou really must come; I'll start looking for a B&B close by :) We'll get crepes for breakfast, shop in BHS, stroll through the covered market, have lunch at Taylor's, visit Alice's Shop, pop into the Bod, explore Blackwell's, have tea somewhere - haven't found a good tea shop yet - and then ... well, I was going to say I don't know what people do here in the evenings, but I take that back. I don't know what non-students do here in the evenings. We might have to try the White Horse or something; I haven't been in there yet! ;)