If You Go Down to the River

Since it was a lovely day today, I wandered down the Isis to look at the boats. The river is one of my very favourite Oxford places, and it's great to watch the riverboats come and go and the slow changes of the riverside population over the year. Come for a ramble with me and look at all the pretty boats. If you're the kind of person that gets offended by me using female pronouns for boats then maybe this isn't the post for you.

Today was the August bank holiday, which is always on the last Monday of August on the assumption that no-one wants to be cooped up inside on what is likely to be one of the nicest days of the year, so I was by no means alone down on the river. The Isis Farmhouse (known to students universally as the Iffley Pub, despite not being in Iffley and there already being a bunch of pubs actually in Iffley) was doing a roaring trade. Most days of the year you think they're having a laugh with this many picnic tables out in the rain, but on their boom days it's easy to see that they easily fill the place.

This black riverboat has been berthed here most of the year. You can normally tell the actually lived-in boats from the tourist ones because the lived-in ones tend to accumulate plants. These guys are growing a bunch of succulents, but some of the others have full-blown veggie patches. Apparently vegetable theft on the river is quite the problem, though, so these boats are becoming rarer or more carefully protected.

There are a few of these fibreglass numbers moored up each day. They always look bright and clean, but if you have the choice between one of these and a narrowboat why would you pick one of these? The extra space and light can't possibly make up for the character (and the wonderful earthy smell!) of a genuine narrowboat. If you look closely you can just see the fingers of the little girl about to pop from the hatch and make me jump by shouting 'Bananas!' at me. Apparently my new system of measurement is getting around.

These littler boats are inevitably populated by two blonde middle-aged ladies and a large box of white wine. I'm honestly surprised that this one has its top on, as it was a lovely day outside and there's nothing like an afternoon nap in the sun after a long morning on the river.

Hey, it's the Dee Gee! She's always here. I've never seen her move, but she turns up at different moorings up and down this stretch, so someone loves her enough to take her out now and then. I'm pretty sure that her main use is as a fishing boat, but it's hard to tell, as her windows are extremely aged, making it hard to get a good look inside to be sure.

If you ask me, you can have a lovely colour scheme and a great boat, but you're not a proper boat person unless your boat has a name lovingly displayed on her somewhere declaring something of her character to the world. This blue one looks charming with her red curtains and her pinewood fittings, but how can I know for sure unless I know what she's called?

Rhoda May has it going on. Big, bold name. "Look at me! I'm here!". Nice details with the black and red, obviously well looked after. She's a local too, and is often sitting idling with her engine running when I come past. Sometimes when I have time I like to stand around and let the charcoal smell soak into my clothes.

Tom Tug has been here a few months now, and is a really nicely kept boat. He's one of the few boats that I don't think of as a woman, partly because he obviously has one of the most masculine names possible, but mostly because there's just something stereotypically man-cavish about this armchair sitting snugly in the bow.

Errol is so cute! I'm pretty sure that I saw this one once the first couple of weeks that we were here last year, but he must come from elsewhere on the river. The plants at the stern suggest that he's a living boat, but if he is then whoever lives here live quite snugly. Errol feels like a good name for a batchelor, maybe a retired vicar or something?

Another boat with classic character but no name. They're really missing out. Maybe it has a name but it's just not displayed to the public, or is only or the river-side or something to keep her secrets from the pedestrian riff-raff. I love this rich red colour, it feels very much like the boudoir of an aging countess or something.

Anglo-Welsh are one of the big companies that rent out narrowboats, and their boats are all this pretty Welsh bottle green colour scheme. Their boats always look great, but you'd want them to for the price, I looked this 8-berther up online, and know that it would have cost these guys £1770 for a weekly booking this time of year.

There was a little black Scotch terrier running back and forth on this one yapping his little head off, but he kept disappearing whenever I tried to get a photo. This one is almost as little as Errol, but those dark-wood furnishing are just smashing.

There's quite a few of these slightly wider, more modern boats that are so wide that the name 'narrowboat' seems like a misnomer, so I guess 'riverboat' is more appropriate. I like the big bench at the back of the Celtic Lady here , it just screams cups of tea and crosswords on sunny afternoons.

The council is working on some much-needed riverbank repair, and there's quite a few places that are marked for work, so this crane and barge is going to be a regular for the next couple of months. It's not technically a boat, I know, but the whole arrangement is quite impressive. I'm kind of surprised that the council had to load a regular crane onto a barge instead of having some kind of barge-crane on speed-dial.

As I wandered down the river I heard a sudden shout and explosion of giggles up ahead, and as I rounded the bend I came across this classic Oxford scene. To the right of the frame are a punt full of embarrassed tourists slowly drifting down the river, and to the left is their punt, trapped in the river mud. The only way that this could be a more stereotypical Oxford scene would be if they'd left behind their punter clinging to the pole! Student punters tend to keep to the Cherwell, which is a shallower river with less mud and fewer people walking past to take photos are laugh if you make a fool of yourself.

 I knocked. It doesn't seem like Ramy was home, but you never know. Maybe he just doesn't like visitors. This is another boat that I've never seen before. But she really stands out with that Royal blue, doesn't she?

Boats up this end of the river tend to be in more long-term moorings, and some of them don't move at all. I'm pretty sure that this us one of the ones that serves as accommodation for some more enterprising international students. It has a pleasingly classic tug-boat look to it, and somebody obviously looks after it, though, and that doesn't seem like student behaviour, so maybe I've got this boat mixed up with one of the others.

This green boat often has a number of washing lines rigged up, so I think they must live there with their kids. This isn't the boat with the lady that home-schools her kids, which seems to have moved on, but it's always kit up at night time. They seem to have all the mod-cons, a television and everything, which all seems very unromantic to me, but I guess even people on riverboats want to be able to tune in to University Challenge.

The Jay Bee obviously either houses or has connections with some seriously artsy types, as there's a nice rendition of a Jay and a Bee on the side. It's all very nice.

This one has a very suspicious boxing glove on the end of a long pole, which I can only assume is used for the legendary sport of narrowboat jousting, which is a good way to get yourself very wet. I haven't tried punt jousting yet, as it's the sort of thing that the establishment frowns upon and I'm a very responsible and respectable young man, but riverboat jousting just seems a little bit next-level.

I definitely wasn't the only person out enjoying the river on this bank holiday, and this is the most packed I think I've ever seen one of the local tourist ferries. I've heard the patter of the tour guides so often that I think I could probably do a pretty good job of it myself (...if we keep going from here for another four days or so we'll be in London...). At least it's a more factual and relevant speech than some of the ones you get from the tour guides out around town, but that's a story for another day.

Blaugust Writing Prompts
1) Have you got anything that you've always wanted to do that is technically against the rules?
2) If you had a pretty riverboat, what would you call it? What colours would you pick?
3) It's a public holiday! What are you doing?

One Banana, Two Banana

I have noticed an interesting pattern along my route to work each day. This pattern is best described in pictures, so I'll let them do the talking.

You may have noticed a couple of things. Firstly, that my walk to work each morning is really quite picturesque (Oxford is pretty nice, you know), and secondly and most importantly for the purposes of this post, that the distance from the Low Commission to the nearest public bin (outside the churchyard at the end of Church Lane) seems to be exactly the same distance as it takes me to eat a banana at my normal walking pace.

Strangely enough, if I'm feeling particularly peckish and decide that it's a two banana day, then the next public bin (by the horse paddock) is exactly the right distance to deposit my next banana skin. I hereby designate this distance to be One Oxford Banana and will endeavour to use this measurement wherever possible.

Fun fact: This isn't the first time in my life that I've used bananas for measurement, in honour of an old friend I've rated every movie I've seen for a last decade as 'seven cool bananas'.

I'd hoped that the Oxford Banana would be more useful globally, breaking down the barriers between metric and imperial measurement, causing world peace and unification one measure of distance that we could all get behind, but Mrs. Owl has helpfully reminded me that there's a slight flaw in my plan. Bananas come in all sorts of zany shapes and sizes and can't be relied upon. The ones she's been eating in Bangalore probably wouldn't produce the same results.

Blaugust Writing Prompts
1) Noticed anything you've never seen before while travelling a familiar path?
2) The wonders of camera phones helped you capture anything awesome?
3) What do you think has gone wrong to produce bananas that small?

As an aside, did you notice that lovely stone wall around the churchyard? They rebuilt it last week and I caught them in the act of cutting back the earth to install concrete blocks and give the wall some additional strength. What is the world coming to, when even an 11th century Norman churchyard isn't as it seems?

Not Such a Good Pun After All

Oxford colleges are generally closed to the public, presumably because if they weren't then the students would never get any actual study done. As it is, we often feel like zoo animals as the occasional paid tour group wanders through, taking photos of us drinking tea and playing croquet and the like (the joke is on them of course, as I am not a student and their photos of the Oxonian student experience are thus corrupted).

Every now and then, generally during holidays, some colleges throw open their doors and let the great unwashed in to look around for free, so back in January (remember, January is winter, which is why I'm wearing my beanie) Mrs. Owl and I went to do the tourist thing and have a look around the venerable old Magdalen College, which is one of the 'tourist colleges' that people at home had suggested that we avoid signing up for, along with Christchurch, because pushing your way through crowds to get to your lectures and having to deal with porters in bowler hats is an irritating way to live your life.

It's easy to see why Magdalen is a popular place with the tourists. Even if it didn't have the extra street cred of having had CS Lewis (and let us not forget, our own Malcolm Fraser) amongst its alumni, Magdalen is obviously an institution that has had far too much money for far too long, and hasn't been afraid of using it to beautify the place. The college is littered with pieces of art new and old, and most notably, many of the buildings are dotted with gargoyles many and various, which would be a fascinating subject of study for someone with a lot of time (in fact, by the mid-17th century the meaning of many of them had been lost, and the principal at the time ordered such a study, which is apparently a good read, if you read Latin).

The college tower is the tallest building in Oxford (though not in the best location, an honour that goes to the Engineering Department), and has a special place at the heart of the annual Oxford May Morning traditions, which involve the singing of suggestively bawdy folk songs (as if there's any other kind) from its rooftop. The gargoyles decorating this one apparently depict staff and students as well as the building contractors that restored it in the 70's (a common theme in gargoyles, also visible above the High Street entrance to Brasenose).

A series of interconnected quads display the classic Oxford tradition of building with no particular thought to the future, but also to the resourcefulness of a series of college administrators, resulting in strange dark passages, impractically narrow and steep staircases ascending into old roof-spaces converted into student sets (have I talked about 'sets' yet?). Even access to the dining hall (sadly closed to visitors) is via one of these strange staircases.

In the finest tradition of the churches being the stodgiest places around, there's no cameras allowed in the chapel, of course, but it was pretty darn fancy. Not quite the most impressive of the Oxford chapels (for my money that honour goes to New College if you ignore Christchurch, who are totally cheating), but certainly more than a bit posh, with a graceful taste that is not displayed in the decor choices of some (cough, cough, Brasenose, cough), and with a shape that suggests wonderful acoustics, though I refrained from shouting to test them out because I am a good rule-abiding young man, and besides, the porter was watching like a hawk. Up high on the wall in the ante-chapel (so high that Mrs. Owl missed it completely) is a full-size (3x8m) replica of Leonardo's Last Supper of unknown provenance but at least 400 years old, just in case it's ever needed.

Set back from the rest of the college is another building (creatively called the New Building) that mostly hosts fellows rooms, originally designed as the first side of yet another quad, but it's quite nice by itself, even if the open nature of it makes it feel, dare I say it, a bit Cantabrigian. But hey, it makes for nice photos, an attribute that in our rush to see all of the college we failed to take full advantage of.

Then to the gardens. There's a long path around an extensive meadow up to the River Cherwell, that also passes by the Magdalen Grove (allegedly Brasenose's small courtyard is called Deer Park in imitation of this feature, though ours (until recently, anyways) has a plastic flamingo instead of Magdalen's famous herd of deer). Cross a bridge and you're into the Fellows garden, a meandering walk down the Cherwell (the local punting river, since the Isis is dominated by rowers) down to University Parks.

Finally, no post about Magdalen could be complete with out mentioning the pronunciation. As specified in the founding documents, the college (named after Mary Magdalen) is pronounced the old English way 'mawd-lyn' instead of the fancy newfangled French-influcence 'mag-dal-in'. This means it sounds like 'maudlin', that feeling of students following exams, which I'm sure would be a hilarious pun if it weren't for the fact that the two have the same root and the word maudlin actually comes from the attitude of Mary at Jesus' tomb, the realisation of which makes it less funny and more one of those moments where you accidentally learn something. There is a 'mag-dal-in' Street in town, but for the most part, Oxford people pronounce all the Magdaleny things (there are a few: the college, schools, the road I work on...) as 'mawd-lyn', and learning to do so is one of the shibboleths that we all learn quickly after coming up.

All in all, it was a most agreeable day out. And our jealousy only lasted until we remembered that the students here are bothered by nosy parkers like up every day of the year. Well, maybe a little longer, but for all the living-in-a-shoebox feel of it, I don't think I'd trade the friendliness of our Brasenose family for living in the beautiful, spacious surrounds of Magdalen. It feels like too much of a gentleman's college, whereas we're definitely more the 'poor and indigent students' type.

Blaugust Writing Prompts
1) Have you accidentally learned anything lately?
2) When picking a home, what are your priorities?
3) If you could own a full-size replica of any work of art, which would it be?

A Brazen Soul

If you're here for Blaugust, you've come to the right place, but if you're here to get the lowdown on video games, I'm really not your guy. The Leaflocker strays into video game territory now and then, but we tend to march to our own drum. Since you're here, I hope you enjoy the rhythm.

For almost a year now, I’ve lived here in the dreamy tourist town of Oxford, and I figure that it’s just about time that I actually get around to doing some of the touristy blogging that I’ve been promising folks back home that I would get around to doing eventually. This feels a little weird, as I’ve been here so long that I don’t feel like a tourist any more, or at least I don’t block traffic like all those naughty tourists out there in the square frustrating the locals. In a sense Oxford is the sort of town that just has SO much history that even people who’ve lived their whole lives must feel like they’re just skimming the surface on a quick visit, so maybe we’re all tourists, and I figure that until I’ve done a good bit of poking about, at least in most of the colleges and museums and things, a duty that I’ve been a little lax in fulfilling, then I definitely have a licence to do the tourist blogging for a little longer.

Brasenose Old Quad - with some humans messing up the view

It seems appropriate to start with my own college of Brasenose, for two reasons. One is that being a member of the college I don’t feel that awkward sense of the embarrassment of being an outsider whenever I raise my camera inside college grounds, meaning that it’s one of the few Oxford locations where I’ve actually taken half-decent photographs (though I was able to find worrying few when compiling this). The second reason is that it seems timely to offer up this post as a sort of tribute, as this weekend I bid a fond farewell to my dear friend Charles, kindred spirit and our Brasenose mentor, who to my mind invokes the very essence of the college. Charles isn’t dead or anything, but he’s going down to take up a Ph.D. at Cambridge, something any Oxonian (and Charles himself, at least prior to drinking the punch presumably spiked by errant Cantabrigians) would gleefully tell you is a fate worse than death.

That’s one of the wonderful things about Oxford. It’s exactly what you expect. In the rarefied air of Oxford, the Harry Potterisms, quaint traditions, senseless rivalries and genteel snobbery pervade everything, but Oxonians are refreshingly honest and open about them. They’ll disparage their fellows ‘from some insignificant place North-west of here’, but drudgingly admit that at least they’re better than, well, anyone else - the poor souls just weren’t fortunate enough to come up to Oxford. They wouldn’t dream of getting rid of sub-fusc, the strange gowns-and-bow-ties uniform of the middle ages that students gladly pull on for any and all formal occasions, including exams, because that’s how it’s always been done. In many ways, Oxford and the Oxford student, particularly classicists like Charles, are the champion of a bygone age. Not to say it hasn’t played a critical part in progressive thought over the centuries, that is what education is all about, after all, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

Oxford was already a flourishing town at the time of the Norman Invasion (that’s 1066 AD, for those playing along from home). Thanks to some handy concessions, it quickly became a centre of scholarship. Hundreds of small academic halls sprung up to house and educate the ‘poor and indigent’ scholars. Some of these residential halls were more successful than others, and Brasenose Hall slowly grew, and grew, and took over their neighbours so that they had more space to store all those irritating student types that kept showing up. As much as Charles would insist that the real glory days of Brittania ended when the Romans left, the period following the Norman invasion really was a period of great population growth and improvement of the quality of life in England, and Oxford's handy location put it in a great position to take advantage.

Brasenose Hall - the knocker is just under the portrait of the bishop

Named Brasenose after their distinctive brass doorknocker, the Hall even survived some of their students walking out in the mid-14^th century and stealing the doorknocker away to start their own rival Brasenose Hall in Lincolnshire (one can only assume they it allowed blackjack and hookers, the sorts of things that conservative Oxford would have frowned upon). Brasenose has a long memory, though, and when their rival Hall went up for sale more than 500 years later, the college bought the property just to regain the doorknocker, which now sits in pride of place above the Principal’s chair in the college hall. It doesn’t do anything, it’s just there. Personally, I think for a place with as many time-honoured traditions as the ‘Nose, there really ought to be some kind of knocking ceremony, but maybe I’m just not invited to the right sort of parties.

Though Brasenose had been around for a while, it only officially became a College with a capital C when it received its royal charter in 1509, 13th among the 44 colleges and halls still in existence today. It had a reputation for traditionalist values from the very beginning, being dominated by Catholics during the Reformation (six of the fellows were executed and many more dismissed for their papist tendencies) for, the Cavaliers during the Civil War. (the royalist principal of the time locking himself in his lodgings and continuing to direct the affairs of the college despite a new principal with more politically fashionable views being appointed), and the Jacobites during the reign of George I (stirring up riots in Oxford - students never change, do they?). Back in the day, the scholars would mostly have studied theology, but as the middle-ages wore on and Europeans rediscovered the Latin and Greek authors, classical studies (or ‘real studies’ as Charles would say), became more common. Later still, the sciences started bring studied to, but as undoubtedly our good friend would say that that’s when the rot set in, we’ll not mention them further.

New Quad and the college chapel - courtesy of  Fran because my photos suck

The Brasenose that you can see today is clearly the product of this historical identity. The Old Quad was finished in the 17^th century, built in a period of booming student numbers, stands on the site of the original halls, and the oldest and grandest of the rooms in the college, including the original library (now creatively called the Old Library) and the Hall date from this period. After that, the college expanded upwards, adding a second, and eventually a third level to the quad to accommodate students when financial woes would have made the addition of new buildings or the acquisition of new grounds prohibitively expensive. As you might imagine, this means that student rooms (or sets, because apparently students are badgers?) are pretty various in size and quality, some of the nice ones like the fancy one Charles is always bragging about, are bigger than our two-bedroom apartment and come with all the mod-cons, and some people kind of miss out. But hey, at least they get a bed, I guess. During a period of puritan tastes the decidedly extravagant Chapel was erected, the dignified Oxford principal’s equivalent of blowing a great big raspberry at the current government. I’m sure there are interesting stories to tell about the erection of the New Quad at the turn of the 20^th century, but as that’s the domain of undergraduates I don’t tend to venture over to that side of the college.

Brasenostrils (yes, that’s the official term) haven’t always been old-sticks-in-the-mud, though. We were also one of the first colleges to admit female students in a tradition that had only enrolled men for the preceding 700 years, which can’t have been an easy step for anybody involved in a place that takes its traditions so seriously. As to traditions, well, there are some corkers, but I think it’s probably best to leave them to the posts of their own that they so richly deserve and simply say that you’re in for a treat if I ever get around to writing about the Ale Verses or Ascension Day. These traditions are lovingly handed down amongst students from age to age, and the stories naturally conflate with the telling to such an extent that it’s hard to know what’s true and what’s not, but it does make for some wonderfully strange rituals.

All this combines to make a humble, egalitarian place of learning where we’ve felt very much at home since first arriving in Oxford, not the sort of inaccessibly formal place that I was expecting before I came. Yes, I can’t help but be constantly struck by the reserved, dignified, almost ethereal beauty of the place, and the absurd stuffiness of some of the rules is simply infuriating, but the college is undoubtedly our home-away-from-home, a place to relax, drink pots of tea and shoot the breeze with the fellow students that have become our treasured family while we feel so isolated from our folks back home in Australia. Charles, with his anecdotes about Roman legionaries and Aristophanes fart jokes, wasn’t the first person to make us feel at home here, and I’m sure he won’t be the last, but I can’t help but feel that there’ll be a little part of Brasenose that will always be missing for me from this point forwards.

At least he’s an alumnus now, so he’s sure to come back now and then if only to sample the generous meals the college regularly puts on for Old Brasenostrils. I hope the next one is soon, I miss him already.

Blaugust writing prompts for those who need a little prodding:
1) What has changed about your life in the last year?
2) Have you ever met someone and just known that they were a kindred spirit?
3) What have you learnt about your local area lately?

A Very Brasenose Day

Apologies for the lack of photographs on this one. I actually took a whole bunch (not always an easy thing to do clandestinely in college) but my old camera is...a little sick.

Brasenose College manages to be a very down-to-earth and friendly place while at the same time being a strange mix of every Oxbridge stereotype that you've ever met. But no matter how at-home I feel there, one can't help but be struck by the sheer...Brasenosity (it sounds like pomposity) of it. I've struggled to put this feeling into words, so I thought I'd just try and describe a recent day in college and see if you get what I mean. Thus I present the following without further comment.

Thursday evening was the second 'Blurbs' evening, where members of the graduate common room (and even associate members, if they grease the right palms) get together to listen to academic talks given by their fellow members of the college. Traditionally, a Fellow and a graduate student present current research on a shared subject area, but apparently that's optional, as on this occasion one student presented a talk on baby linguistic development and another on prostate cancer, tenuously linked by the concept of 'big data'. What's not optional, this being Oxford, is that generous amounts of wine is provided for the event and that there is an intermission long enough for everyone attending to refill their glasses.

I thought the talks were quite illuminating, but it might have been all the red wine that I consumed.

One reason that Blurbs is such a keenly-anticipated event amongst the graduate students (tickets usually sell out in less than a minute) is that the talks themselves are followed by a High Table dinner. A regular college dinner is served on trays like any school cafeteria. A formal dinner (held three times in a regular week) is three courses (and three very respectable courses, if you ask me), but everyone with eyes knows that the people sitting on High Table gets the good stuff. Since most students don't get many chances to eat with the Fellows at High Table, a chance to have the fancy dinner (at approximately un-fancy prices) is highly valued.

It didn't disappoint. After the traditional college grace (in Latin, of course), entrée was some kind of baked cheese with salad accompanied by a sweet white (the menu says Toasted Cheese Crotin on Toasted Hazelnuts, Beetroot & Red Onion Compote & a Dressed Leaf Salad with 2013 Château Courac Cotes du Rhone Villages Laudun Blanc), then Fish and seasonal vegetables with a not-so-sweet white (Roasted Brill with Confit Leeks & Baby Spinach, Boulangѐre  Potatoes & a Vermouth Sauce with 2007 Chateau Girauton Blanc). For dessert...wait, they don't call it that here... Pudding was some kind of creamy jelly thing in miscellaneous fruit sauce (Rhubard & Ginger Soup with Vanilla Panacotta & an Orange Tuille) [I guess 2/3 guesses weren't bad?]. 

Pudding normally comes with port, I'm told, so there were a few disappointed faces around the table, but I didn't mind too much. I thought the whole thing was pretty nice, but it might have been all the white wine that I consumed.

After dinner was the common room tradition of 'second desserts', which involves the consumption of copious amounts of fruit, cheese, chocolate and enough port to make up for the dearth at dinner. The event takes place in the Old Library, which stopped housing books at some point in the 1660s, but is still called the Old Library for some reason. It's a very nice wood-panelled room, with the added advantage of having windows that open towards Exeter instead of the Old Quad, allowing air-flow without causing noise to overflow into the college, the sort of thing that gets parties shut down prematurely.

I thought the fruit and chocolate was all pretty enjoyable, but it might have been all the port that I consumed.

Despite the fact that the party was pumping, I abandoned it and headed back to the Brasenose Hall, the site of dinner an hour earlier, now converted into a temporary theatre. Brasenose doesn't have any kind of auditorium (heck, it only has three rooms capable of housing a class of 20) other than the chapel, which seats about 100 on a good day if most of those don't want to see, so any event that needs any kind of capacity ends up in the hall. Tonight the event in question was a musical written by one of the organ scholars called 'Less Milibandles', which promised to riff on the theme of the recent UK election to some recognisable tunes. The benches and windows were filling fast with undergraduates, but we managed to find ourselves some seats in the stalls.

We were well entertained with a long stream of British politics jokes, most of which went completely over my head as someone who has come to the country since the time period in question, but a politics joke is a politics joke and with lines like this, how can you go wrong?

One day more!

Another day, another argument

This never-ending road to Parliament

These men who wish to see me burn

They must not have a second term

One day more!

Given the lack of amplification and the slightly esoteric nature of the subject matter, the whole thing was generally understandable, with baguettes and insults thrown and only a few lines completely muffed, not bad at all for a cast performing on an absolute minimum budget of practice, what with being actual students during an actual term of a university that isn't known for its light workload. Students of all political outlooks left grumbling at the bias of the script, which is a pretty big win for one-off comedy script writers and national news networks alike.

All in all, I had a lot of fun, but it might have been all the flying baguette that I consumed.

Afterwards I headed back to the common room, where I found my fellow members still nursing the remains of the port and talking nonsense, so it ended up being quite the late night. Eventually I made my way home, artificially warm and singing all the way...

At the end of the day a new Parliament's dawning

And the sun in the morning is waiting to rise

Like the waves crash on the sand

They'll be in and out in a second

All the voters in the land

Have been rallied and heckled and beckoned

And there's gonna be taxes to pay

At the end of the day.

Blaugust 21/31: Scheming Spires

It's still Blaugust, guys. This is day 21 of 31...

It seems like a bit of an anticlimax to have got to the Friday after the two big long posts about ties (voting is still open on the ties!) and games the last two weeks and just have a few bits and bobs to share, but maybe that's a little metaphor for moving countries. We do the big things, and they feel good, but it's all the little things mounting up that end up getting the better of you.

To try and keep track of all these tasks, Mrs. Owl and I are trying out using Trello. I've used it a little for myself for various projects, but this is the first time that I've tried to use it in a team environment. I like Trello for the way that it allows and encourages you to use their simple idea for all sorts of different things, instead of boxing you into one idea, so I look forward to seeing how it goes.

So far, we have about a hundred items on there, but by separating the tasks between us each week and setting some goals, maybe we'll knock at least enough of these items off that by the time we fly the country in a month we'll have at least fulfilled all of our legal and financial requirements.

Some of the items on my list this week are going pretty well. I've made a good show of cleaning out the shed where we'll be storing all the furniture that we haven't found a home for. The next thing that we have to do here is actually decide how we want to store things in here before we move too many more of them, as some kind of sensible system is going to be needed if the shed isn't just going to become a smaller, colder version of the pigsty that our house can become on a slow housework week. We haven't decided if we're going to stack things this way, or that way, and leave a corridor against the wall, or down the middle...and of course, we're not quite sure what we're putting in there, as we'd like to be able to sell or give away some of the furniture, etc. That's probably fuel for another post some night when I'm feeling more organised.

You may have noticed that there was a bed up against the wall in the shed there. That's because one of the other items on our list has been to clear out our bedroom for use as a space to pack and organise, and also eventually as a second area for people in the occasion of us having some kind of going away party. So far...this hasn't really worked out. We got the bed out, and did some vacuuming that we've been putting off for years, but then we moved our desks down from upstairs. It's turned into a kind of quasi office for everything from dressmaking to CounterStrike, and the actually using it to do packing in is more of a potential thing than something that seems likely to happen in the near future. We're sleeping upstairs in the front room from this point, but it's still strange to walk into the room that we've lived in for the last three years and find it so empty.

So, there's a couple of things that have been qualified successes so far, but there's one thing that hasn't gone that well, and that's the applications for visas. It's been difficult to even get to this point what with all the hoops that have needed to be jumped through, but now that we're here, we find this dread notice up on the visa site...it's in beta. Let me tell you, if this is an improvement, the old system must have been an abomination unto Nuggan. I don't want to complain too much given that I want the nice fellows at the foreign office to let me into the UK, but there's a couple of things that I'd have thought would be part of a modern web-based system of this nature:

1. Integrate the help documents (if they exist), so that all applicable definitions and requirements can be looked up in-line rather than having to refer to all the separate requirements documents (if you can find them)
2. Use some kind of validation checking, so that text cannot be entered into fields where numeric results are expected, at least
3. Indent or distinguish in some way between parent/child questions so that the user can determine which questions relate to each other
4. Check your grammar ("Enter your the maintenance charges") and keep continuous formats for questions.
5. Don't repeat the same questions.
6. Provide information you already know about the user, calculate what you can and fill in any requirements rather than asking the user to have a perfect understanding of the eccentricities of your system.
7. If you're running a beta, provide a feedback form so that the users you've shanghied into using your new untested system can actually give you some feedback on it.

So, Visas aren't going great. But they're a walk in the park considering some of the other nonsense that we're wading through at the moment. Don't even get me started on the bloody Oxford Real estate market...nevertheless, hope springs eternal, so here we go again...