Wrapping up Oxford

I’m getting some pressure to move on to India, so I’m going to try to please my public (Hi Mom!) and get on with it. But, I have to wrap up Oxford first, because I did some pretty neat stuff outside of pubs and eating myself silly.

I bought my travel journal midway through the week at Scriptum, a magical little store that specializes in Italian leather-bound journals and other writing equipment that could be from the last century. Upstairs they have bookends, Italian Carnivale masks, a fox head, and a model ship, along with used books, notepads, address books, and a few smaller journals. Downstairs is wall to wall gorgeous leather, wrapped around thick stacks of paper, in colors and styles that have been in vogue since forever. Writer friends, I know you love your moleskins, but these are far, far sexier. The store will stamp the leather for you if you want your journal to say something, like “Travels” for instance, but I had too much trouble committing to a genre. Maybe next time.

Later that evening I stumbled upon Evensong at Hertford College. In America, I frankly dislike organized religion – everything about it. The zealots, the nonsensical/insane practices, cannibalistic rituals…I can’t find anything good enough to redeem the bad. But in England, I feel completely differently. In England, religion and aesthetics go hand in hand. Truth is beauty, beauty is truth – Keats could have just as easily said that about English Christianity. It is beautiful. The churches, the music, even the ministers make me believe that the human spirit can transcend the animal and become sublime. Despite all the warm fuzzy feelings I get from English Christianity, it’s still, well, Christianity, and I get a little nervous around it. Going into a chapel, holding a book of Common Praise, standing up and sitting down along with prayers, it all gives me the heebie jeebies. And what if I do something wrong? At least I’m past the stage where I thought priests could read my mind (I was six, it’s not that weird). But as soon as the choir began to sing, I was put at ease. Such incredible beauty. And the minister, a round happy-looking woman, preached a message of acceptance and friendship. Oxford is particularly glorious in its secularism. They take the best parts of God and the best parts of man; zealotry is not allowed to spoil intellectual achievement or community.

Later in the week, Xander, Miranda and I met up with some journalists for drinks at the King’s Arms near the Sheldonian theater. Don’t ask me how Xander knows these people; he knows everybody. One was a reporter for radio, and the other a journalist for the BBC – Jamillah Knowles, if you want to google stalk. Despite my aspirations to become a journalist, I don’t get to hang out with journalists very often (like, at all) so this was a real treat. I didn’t want to come off as a rabid reporter wannabe, so I just let them talk. Lovely people! I love journalists. Intelligent, unpretentious (though that could be because they’re British), interesting, witty…sigh. I want to be a member of that club. Jamillah had just come back from Calcutta, so we got to talking about India. She was in town for a couple days covering the Museum of Science’s Steampunk exhibit and wanted to do a bit of sightseeing on her down time. Since the Pitt Rivers museum was on both of our To Do Lists, we wound up making a plan to go together with Xander as our guide the next day.

We needed a guide. Let me tell you, the Pitt Rivers museum is extremely hard to find. I didn’t even know we were there when we were stepping around giant fake dinosaur footprints in the front lawn. But the museum is worth the search: Skeletons of extinct monsters, touchable stuffed displays of creatures you wouldn’t want to touch if they were alive, cases of shrunken heads and totems. The building itself looks like it was made from the bones of a prehistoric beast.

On my second to last day, I had to check off the remaining items on my To Do list: climbing to the top of St. Mary’s (about a mile of narrow staircases for one of the best views in town – terrifying, tiring, and totally worth it); and taking a walking tour.
Walking tours around Oxford cost around £6.00, the cheapest entertainment in town next to buying a pint. Our guide took us in and out of a few of the colleges around the older parts of Oxford, into quads, dining halls and chapels. And I don’t remember one damned fact from the whole thing. I do remember feeling incredibly humbled and in awe standing beneath the portrait of Lawrence of Arabia (the spitting image of Peter O’Toole) in the dining hall of his old college.

The very last thing on my To Do List was to walk through Christchurch Meadows, the home of the luckiest cows in the world, and the smuggest squirrels.

Meat Pies and Other Staples

One more post devoted to food. I can't resist.

Inside the Covered Market in Oxford are gourmet groceries galore. There is such pride and care in these stores. One gets the feeling that the butchers have been butchers for generations, that the tea is a legacy, and that Ben's cookies are absolutely the best in town. Ok, that's not a feeling, that's a fact.

Butchers hang fresh kills outside their doors and pile sausages in their windows, and the tea shop stores its tea in 90 year old Chinese canisters.

Now this is the kind of small agriculture I'm talking about. I mean look at it! It's not pre-packaged, it's not plastic-wrapped, it's not in neat little cartons, it's real, honest food that came from a farm, or a field, or - a duck pond. But it came from somewhere nearby, delivered by someone who was proud to have produced it.

Ok, enough of my waxing poetical about raw meat – here is my new favorite place in the world: Pie Minister.
Next to the ancient butcher and tea shops, Pie Minister is jarringly new. But there is nothing more traditional or comforting than a meat pie. And meat pies are all they do – with sides of mashed potatoes and mushy peas. Have I mentioned my unhealthy (literally) fixation on meat pies? Oh how I love them.

And I love all their variations too. Put anyting in a pocket of pastry dough and I'm happy. Incidentally, that is the exact recipe for a Cornish Pasty: anything wrapped in pastry dough. There is a very old joke that the Devil never dared to go into Cornwall for fear of ending up as a filling in a Cornish Pasty - since those Cornish wives would put anything in there.

Before I leave the subject of food, at least in Oxford, let me pay homage to my favorite mocha, found in Puccino's coffee shop just outside the Covered Market.As much as I have touted the improved tastes and culinary skills of the English in these last two posts, sometimes they revert back - behold this version of ... cheese fries with ketchup and mayo? Oh dear God, that's disgusting.

Farmers Market to Table

I would like to, once and for all, dispel the myth that British food is bad. It was bad. But from when I first went there in 1992, and they poured thick cream over everything and had terrible coffee, to now- Britain has undergone a gastronomic revolution.

The Farm to Table movement has hit big, and not just with CelebriChefs. Xander and Miranda used to have a box of vegetables from the surrounding farms brought to their door once a week by a guy on a bike. Now, they walk a few blocks to the Farmers Market every Saturday.

Their farmers market is small, in the gymnasium of an elementary school, but the vegetables are fresh out of the ground, the bread is unmistakably homemade, and blonde woman with peaches and cream skin sells jams she makes out of berries picked around Oxford – is that not heaven?

England has 350 farmers markets and counting. In London, Borough Market is a weekly foodie event. Xander and Miranda had a CSA before Southern California even knew what one was (many of us still don’t). If you ask me, England is on the cutting edge of the culinary scene which is quickly heading back to small production, family farmers, and free range meat and quality produce. It’s so easy to bandy the term “quality produce” around, so let me take a moment to define it: fruits and vegetables that make the farmer proud because they are the best he can grow. You can’t buy that at a supermarket. Off we went to the glorious farmers market before breakfast or coffee. Which meant that I was Shopping While Hungry. I bought a loaf of crumbly, moist, gorgeous bread, a jar of jam from miscellaneous local berries, and a Greek spinach pie as big as my hand. We walked back via the regular supermarket so Xander and Miranda could finish their weekly shopping, and I was as happy as a pig in mud taking pictures of the exotic offerings.
I love how the Twix "biscuit fingers" comes with "Free Tea with Every Pack". Claim your Cuppa!
The "boozy" pie. In a can.

The walk back to the house was long, so we decided to stop midway at Costa Coffee on Cowley road for some caffeine and The Guardian. Miranda went for the coffee, Xander found the newspaper, and I planted myself at the table – starving. My Greek spinach pastry was looking awfully good. I figured that since we were getting three coffees, it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world if I ate my pastry. Three bites in and Xander goes out for a cigarette. We have our coffee, lug the groceries home, and I dive into the bread and jam.
Hours later, or maybe the next day, I’m telling them how some of the English peculiarities are surprising me. Like the invisible queuing system in pubs that only the English see and only the bartenders understand. We begin talking about some of the differences in manners one might not expect, and it turns out I committed a horrible faux pas. A faux pas so severe that Xander was driven out in shame to smoke a cigarette: I had eaten a pastry in the coffee shop which had not been bought there. He explains that if an English person had committed this offense, another English person might very well have scolded the perpetrator, ensuring mortification through public embarrassment. But because I ate my pastry in a perfectly natural and entitled way, bystanders likely assumed I had somehow received special dispensation. As an American, it’s news to me that there are bystanders staring at me eating a pastry in a coffee shop. This seems a bit paranoid. But, it was enough for Xander to not want to be seen in my company, so I felt extremely sheepish.

The offending pastry.

Funny Paper

Randomly found on an Oxford street --

Ben and Xander’s Guide to English Dating (or lacktherof)

My favorite part about bumming around Oxford for a week is being able to spend time with Xander, Miranda and their friends. The conversations they have over pints are the highlights of my trip. I consider myself to be very funny. It’s a skill I have carefully honed over years. But at my best, I am only just able to keep up with the witty conversation. I’ve been laughing so hard, so often in fact, that I’m beginning to see abdominal muscles appear under the layer of fat I’ve developed from eating meat pies and pasties every day.

For example: Ben and Xander’s thoughts on Dating.

Over a bottle of beer outside Kazbar on Cowley road, Xander and Ben explain the mating behaviors of the British male. Miranda provides eye-witness testimony to the accuracy of their account.

English men never ask women out on dates. To ask a woman out on a “date” would be far too direct and risky since the only outcome Englishmen can imagine is that they will be turned down flat, and laughed at publicly. Since the Number One priority for an English male is to save face, there is no “dating” in England at all.

At this point in the conversation, I point to a young woman pushing a pram with a pink pudgy baby blinking over its blankets and ask Xander and Ben, “So, how does that happen then?” Evidently, the English still manage to have sex.

Xander explains: “You go out to a pub with your friends, some of whom are girls, get too drunk one night (but not too drunk) and end up sleeping with one of them. Then, suddenly, you’re in a relationship. And since she’s already slept with you, you won’t be rejected - presumably. And it usually works out quite well since you were friends first.”

Breaking up is hard, since it is very English to avoid confrontation and disagreement. I got the impression that the breaking up ritual frequently involves the man’s shoes being chucked out the window or into the sea (whichever is closer at the time). But that could just be Xander’s bad luck.

I yell at both Ben and Xander with every ounce of American self-righteousness I possess that “The English Killed Romance! This is cowardice!” I harangue them, saying “I’d never date a man who didn’t have the nerve to ask me out on a proper date!” My boyfriend can attest to the brutal truth of this rule. Ben and Xander just shake their heads. That would never happen in England.

They tell me that in England, women have complete control. They choose who they will go out with and then somehow lead the men to think the relationships were the men’s idea. If a woman were to go up to a man and ask him out, the answer would almost certainly be yes. The men would be so relieved. I am sorely tempted to put this theory to the test with the Oxford Eye Candy… but, alas, I have a boyfriend. One who asked me out on a proper date too.

Ben tells a funny story of when he went to the Caribbean for a friend’s wedding. He was sitting in a restaurant with a group of English guys and one American man, and there was this beautiful girl sitting alone at a table across the room. All the guys were talking about her amongst themselves until the American gets up, walks over, and asks her what she’s doing the next night. He makes the date and gets her number. The English guys are floored. In shock. They spend the rest of the trip marveling at the American’s success and asking him how he did it.

With a history brimming with brave and chivalrous English Men, one would think the descendents of that noble past would be able to man up.

However, I can’t get too high and mighty – as much as I’d like to. The “hookup” is quickly taking the place of dating on college campuses, and for much the same reason as the British non-dating: Less pressure on the men, less risk of rejection, less commitment by avoiding the label of “date.” Men need to put forth less and less effort. They don’t need to be brave, they just need to be there for some girl to find.

Well, not on my watch. Sorry Charles, you gotta do everything the hard way. Because I have ideals. And I know you’re man enough to handle them.

The Creative Class

Oxford, October 13th

As I’m writing this, I am sitting at The Crown pub, the oldest in Oxford. Shakespeare stayed here and shagged his friend’s wife according to the plaque at the entrance.

The lighting in pubs is of a warm, dim, golden quality, almost like candlelight although everything is electric. This makes taking photographs inside pubs impossible; they don’t turn out at all. Which is why you won’t see any here. I’ve tried to take pictures of the outsides of pubs. However, that leaves you – and me, when my fuzzy memories fade – on the outside looking in.

The last few days have been a blur. I feel like I should have been taking notes the whole time, but according to my SD card and run-down camera battery, all I’ve been taking is pictures. Much of my time has been spent in pubs with my hosts, Xander and Miranda. The pub culture here is unlike anything in America since the Founding Fathers drew up the Declaration of Independence on a bender.

Part of the reason for the culture of the pub is that drinks are large, cheap, and only moderately alcoholic: beer, cider, and perhaps watered down whiskey. Try to order a martini in a pub and you may end up with a gin and tonic if you’re lucky. Pub music is quiet enough to talk over. It is a place for conversation, the sharing of ideas, and the making of big plans. Xander and his friends hatch their most creative schemes at the pub. In fact, they are currently buying plane tickets to New York for a December Beatles Tribute concert that his musician friend, Ben, will play in – along with other musical and literary endeavors by all three of them along the way. They explain it better than I can – I wasn’t quite drunk enough to follow the conversation.

Xander and Miranda move in a world of creative people: writers, musicians, poets, novelists and comedians. East Oxford has quite an active music scene on Cowley Road. I haven’t spent much time with musicians to be honest, but they do come with a reputation, don’t they? The musicians I’ve met here (other than Ben, who is very nice and relatively normal) are very cool with their leather jackets, skinny jeans and combed-forward emo hair. They look sexy until they begin to speak—true of almost all men in my experience. But conversation among musicians is limited to the minutia of recording, recording technology, the music business in general, and the last time they came down the stairs wearing nothing but a tight thong that pushed their large, hairy balls out on either side of the G-string. True story. And I was not nearly drunk enough to appreciate it.

It is a glamorous lifestyle. Hanging out with musicians, traveling, being the struggling writer. Yep, I’m envious of Miranda. She is surrounded by creativity. She can talk shop about writing and getting published with her friends. No one looks at her like she’s crazy for not following a more conventional career path because none of them are following conventional career paths. There is camaraderie there and a sharing of joy in being artists. That’s Oxford in a nutshell: creative people constantly striving to do big things. I can relate.

The Lit Crowd

October 9th, evening

Xander and Miranda are going to a housewarming party for one of Miranda’s friends from the Oxford Brooks writers program, and I get to come along. We walk a few blocks to Iffley Road past rows of stone houses that could be described with the same adjectives as supermodels: tall, skinny, and fashionable. Miranda’s friend has moved into one of these. Her parents own it and are renting it to her. Oh to be a poor writer who has parents with money. >> /end bitter rant<<

So there I am, talking with three other twenty-something female writers. Two of them, including Miranda, are writing novels, the other is working on a collection of poetry. I think Miranda’s friends have both been published in The Guardian. But, despite their literary achievements, their perfect, poreless matte skin, and their posh intellectual accents, I actually feel pretty cool in my own right. This is a first for me. I have really amazing and impressive friends – and, no fault of theirs - I usually feel like a hanger-on underachiever when I’m with them.
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For the first time, I feel like I belong with such a stellar group. I quit my despised day job, which these ladies would all like to do; I am successfully supporting myself by writing (though most of the paid work is ghostwriting); and I’m traveling all the way around the world. There is no company in which that is not really cool. I am not embarrassed to say what I do or where I work anymore. I don’t feel like I have to make excuses for my life. I don’t feel like a wannabe, doomed to dream in a cubicle decorated with postcards of places I’d like to go someday.

I am so happy.

And that is worth giving up a thousand fat paychecks.

NASA bombed the moon and Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize

October 9th 4pm

Jetlag doesn’t begin to cover it. I slept from 10pm to 12pm – 14 hours total – after not having slept for around 30 hours, thanks in large part to a Spanish woman on the plane yelling to her friends behind me every time I was about to fall asleep. Vaca Gorda.

I have every excuse to not want to move today. My throat is a little scratchy and my nose a little sniffly thanks to the sudden change in weather. I give in to sleep. I dream that I wake up at 5pm to hear Miranda coming in from work, but I wake at noon and force myself to deal with the plumbing. See, the most traumatic part of travel is figuring out the bathrooms of other countries. In England, older sinks have two faucets, one on either side. One faucet spews boiling hot water, the other pours ice cold water. Either causes instant injury. There are two solutions to this problem: 1) catch the cold water in your hands and carry it to the hot water, thereby only burning the tips of your fingers; or 2) wash your hands very quickly with the hot water spout before it has time to heat up all the way.

Oddly enough, the shower combines the hot and cold taps to make fairly hot water – and why this technology has not been applied to sinks, I’ll never know. The other thing that baffles me about the hot and cold taps is that the spigots are very close to the edge of the sink so only part of one hand can fit under the water flow at a time. Just – why?

I come back downstairs after my shower feeling so much better about the state of the world. It’s only when I’m in the middle of dealing with foreign bathrooms that I start thinking travel is stupid and England (or wherever I happen to be) is a deeply flawed country.

Then Xander comes up to me and says “NASA bombed the moon and Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize.”

“What?” I say, thinking that this is a bizarre manifestation of British humor. Surely he’s being funny. Sometimes it’s hard to tell when the British are joking since they do it with straight faces.

“No – it’s real.” He says. “Go to the New York Times.”

So I go to the New York Times website and there it is. Front and center. Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize.

I’m sputtering things like “FOR WHAT?!” “You do realize that he hasn’t actually DONE anything. All he has done is talk to a lot of people in a lot of places – which is what Democrats DO – and the only action he has taken is to ban clove cigarettes.” I think I’m shouting at this point.

Usually, I don’t get political. It’s too risky with my friends. They’re almost all liberal, and loudly so. As a conservative in California, I half live in fear of being found out. I maintain a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy for political affiliation. But at this news, Ugh. I lost it.

Even PrObamas are shocked by his getting the Peace Prize. Xander wonders how the President’s PR people are going to handle this. Is he going to say “thanks” and run with it? Is he going to give it back, acknowledging that he hasn’t done anything to deserve it? Or is he going to say something like “thank you, I hope I can live up to this”? That last one is my bet. I mean, he has to own that he hasn’t done anything but talk when it comes to promoting peace (yes, my liberal friends, I know you think talking is doing something – but it really isn’t). He has gone to summits, traveled, and flown on the wings of his own charisma and the fact that he is the successor of a vehemently disliked President.

I leave America for one day, and all Hell breaks loose.

Oh, and we bombed the moon apparently. Looking for traces of water. As they say here: Brilliant.

Oxford Eye Candy

October 8th

It’s 11:43am England time. I put on makeup while waiting for my suitcase to materialize at the baggage claim, exchange money, and pay £26 for a return bus ticket to Oxford – the best deal around. It takes me a while to find the bus and figure out the system. I love traveling, but I’m not a very good traveler. I ask for directions and look lost a lot (though only in safe places like airports – I fake confidence on the street since looking lost in a city is begging for trouble). But, here I am, on the bus, and it is a crisp, crystal clear, bright October day. Not a rain cloud in sight. The bus driver is very funny, every word is sarcastic or understated. I’m enjoying myself immensely and trying very hard not to show it. I don’t want to spook the natives with too much open adoration.

The bus drops me off at the Gloucester Green station an hour earlier than expected. Xander and Miranda, my friends and gracious hosts here, can’t meet me for another hour and a half so I wander around the market square. On Wednesdays the square hosts an antiques market and there is plenty to see. I briefly consider taking pictures of the bizarre, inexplicable 1930s kitchen gadgets for my blog, but opt for a latte and people watching instead. A group of young middle-eastern men are giving me the once-over and seem to be debating whether or not I have been staring at them. I start walking before they can make up their minds.

I walk, hoping to find an internet café, until I discover that my feet know where they are going. I get this feeling a lot in England. Even if I’m in a town or city that I’ve never been in before, I can easily find my way around. This never happens to me in LA. I’ve been to Oxford a total of 3 daytrips over the past 6 years, which isn’t enough for me to have developed a map in my head. My feet, however, lead me straight down George Street and when I stop walking, I find myself staring up at the giant spire of the Martyr’s Memorial – the first structure I remember seeing in Oxford 6 years ago. I find the restaurant my Contiki tour ate in, the church I took pictures of, and I know exactly how to get back to the bus station – which is important because my cell phone doesn’t work here and pay phones baffle me.

I sit on the steps of the spire and fight the urge to take pictures of all the beautiful men here. There are equal numbers of beautiful women, but for obvious reasons, I pay them less attention. I’ve seen around five sexy grownup Harry Potter types, one Cedric type (aka Edward from Twilight), the rebellious intellectual, long-haired types, and my favorite: the tousled brown, curly hair that’s slightly too long type, wearing a long flappy coat. Rawr.

Unfortunately, the only males staring at me are the pigeons parked next to me on the steps. And maybe the guy who just walked by…maybe.

Not that I’m looking for romance. I have the best boyfriend in the world who would fit right in at Oxford. But I haven’t seen this much eye candy since I studied abroad in London 3 years ago, and I plan to enjoy it.