There is a scene in the first episode of “Life on Mars”, in which Sam truly discovers the bustling street around him, full of people and life, and says to Annie that he finds it hard to believe that his own mind would make up so much detail. All this is done to “Baba O’Reilly” by The Who, a song which perfectly reflects the giddiness of exploration. To this tune I embarked on my own wanders in Oxford, happy and only too aware of the fact that this is reality at its loveliest.
My walks took me along the canal, from Canal Street in Jericho up north and back. The water provided in taps for the people who live in boats seemed to taste better than the water coming out of taps in the city. Tap water, so far, is the only thing about Oxford that does not seem to agree with me...
I arrived in Jericho, and left a part of my heart there that I will now have to go and visit from time to time. It truly is a wonderful place, crammed in around Oxford University Press and demarcated by the canal, full of little shops and pubs and small houses that hide the affluence inside behind an unassuming exterior. My circle of acquaintances has steadily grown; from the staff and regulars of the Jude and the Raddy, to the nice guy in the organic shop who I like to talk to and who gave me a leftover croissant on Friday – he thought I might need one after surviving the floods. I did.
My hair dresser, whose telephone number I found in the yellow pages and whose salon I nearly didn’t, is in a posh “health club” in the equally posh part of north Oxford. After having failed utterly to locate the number of the street I cycled down a path, asked a police officer and some builders if they had a clue what might have happened to number 69 (I had found 67 and 71). They suggested asking in the club and to my great astonishment that was where it was. I went in confused and came out with a nice hair cut. So I will be back.
By the time I was looking for my hair dresser I had already acquired what, in the life of me, is an absolute must. A bike. I bought it second hand from a nice man who delivered it to my door and adjusted it for me. It is “mechanically sound”, as he put it, and can go as fast as I want it too. A perfect exploring bike, really. It is, however, lilac. And surely the ugliest bike in Oxfordshire. But it gets me around and opened up the city even further. I had restricted myself to Jericho and the University Parks; now I am exploring streets everywhere. When I finally I get around to actually buying a map of cycle paths (it’s on the list of stuff to do) I will probably know them all. My general map serves me well, so far, and besides, I love getting lost. Getting lost can be entertaining.
On Thursday I went for an evening cycle, managed to get subtly lost in east Oxford and then headed home via the University Parks. Or rather, I was going to. As I got to the Marston entrance I noticed a little irresistible path. The bike and I got on it. After a while it got narrower. There were nettles. And some mud. I had to walk and at times negotiate the bike across puddles. By the time I realised that it wasn’t looking very good it was too late to turn back; 1) I don’t like turning back, something which will forever get me into trouble, 2) how much further could it be? And then, there it was – a cattle fence and the mother of all muddy puddles. I tried, feebly, to get the bike over the fence while standing on a branch but predictably failed. The bike and I went in and I waded out, mud to the knees (it was glorious mud, of the perfect gooey texture for mud baths) and carrying the rather dirty bike. We soldiered on. Finally, I found a little bridge which took me over the river and away from the muddy path. The only problem was that it also took me straight into Wolfson College! I had strayed into college grounds somewhere. Oops. But there was nothing for it – I had had it with mud. So I walked over the bridge, entered the college and walked through it and out – legs and bike covered in mud but head held high. I then giggled rather irresponsibly while cycling home – and had to spend half an hour demuddifying myself, the bike and my poor shoes, who may never fully recover…
Nature is always close at hand here, be it in the parks or in the fields around the city. (Mud lovers never have to go far.) One minute you are in the city, the next you are in the country. And sometimes you are in Wonderland, or in a poem: N. showed me the treacle well and the poplars in Binsey. Port Meadow isn’t just pretty, however, it is also a flood meadow, and one that has now faced a difficult test. On Friday came the flood. Actually it was just rain, lots of it, but due to lack of serviceable draining, lots of rain equals flooding. My colleague A and I spent a good three hours in a caravan of cars trying to drive on the flooded roads, in disbelief at how a few hours of heavy rain could cause such havoc. The motorway was closed, the villages were under water. It was almost an anti-climax to arrive in Oxford where everything was business as usual. Well, we survived, didn’t get stuck and A’s car, hardly built for such adventures, held up. Port Meadow has been transformed into a lake.
My new housemate T and his friends, who were going to the festival, have set up camp here and, refusing to acknowledge defeat, are having a barbeque and play music in the garden. In the rain. So my first night here, in the enormous house that will be my home from now, has been accompanied by the scent of frying vegetarian sausages, laughter and Cohen songs played on a green guitar. At one point we were all wearing silly hats.
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