You get some high quality busking teams on the streets of Oxford, within the Castle
Ironed jeans
Blow-waved hair
Shirts and jackets
Polished cello
I’m way to haphazard to ever achieve any legitimate form of musicianhood at this level. Respect to them
first you hear the bells
then you see the people walking in odd ways
next you’re blocked by the bus
finally a smile and a wave helps us along
Thomas conducts his perfunctory fence post inspecition duties without so much as an hurumpfff
C S Lewis wrote the Chronicals of Narnia while living in Oxford. On a frosty February morning driving along a deserted Oxfordhsire road reminds me of stepping from the Wardrobe into a frozen Narnia
Old Frenchy
My wardorbe was originally shipped from France to Portsmouth, probably circa 1880. It has a French accent. I found it in a 1993 garage sale (no garage) where the owner was moving to America and selling large furniture that wouldn’t ‘fit’ in an American apartment
Sailed to Seattle
Ironically, in 2000 I shipped the wardrobe from Portsmouth to the USA. The french wardrobe looked decidely small in the large bedroom with its own built-in, walk-in, wardrobe. In Seattle the wardrobe was honourarily called an ‘Armoire‘ in respect of its origins.
Now nearer Narnia
Most recently it was shipped from Seattle to the Wendy House in Reading town, near Narnia inspiring countryside of Oxfordshire. Armoire holds my hat collection. Over 50 hats, silk and top hats in hat boxes, baseball caps on hooks, Cloches carefully laid out and stuffed with wooly ski hats.
Mr Benn
The hats in Armoire provide a doorway to so many different places. Each time I put on a different hat, like Mr Benn, I’m taken to the place that is right for that hat. In Today’s -12 temperatures my ear-muffing psuedo-Russian snow leopard hat will be taking me somewhere….I wonder where…
Labyrinths have a a physical pull, a gravity. They pull you into their pathway. Unlike a maze they provide a single pathway, there are no tyrannous choices. You walk the gentle curves that wind you slowly and steadily towards the centre. If several people walk the labrynth one after another, they can seem to be walking in opposite dirctions, passing each other several times on their journey towards the centre. This passing prompts smiles, laughter, greetings and an acknowledgement of the shared destiny. The meeting in the middle.
There are 3 modern labrynths on the Ridgeway by Streatley. They are constructed from small trenches and rises in the ground, the rises are marked with sparsely placed local stone, flint. The low hung sunlight of the summer solstice helped to highlight their presence and draw us in…
Early morning climbing the steep hillside at Streatley to the Ridgeway with friends. We watched the solstice sun rise in the distance. Toasting the arrival of the green man with mead, elderflower champagne, and sloe gin made with sloes from a nearby tree. Then cleansing each other with some homegrown sage smudging
After some dancing around local labyrinths and rambling through forests we made our way home for fried-egg sandwiches all around. An excellent start to the new year…
Every summer I marvel at the beauty of the Oxfordshire poppy fields. I drive through them on my work commute. Not stopping to wonder why farmers are growing poppys. Not until today.
The Daily Mail tells how the poppies are supplying the NHS with the morphine to overcome the shortage caused by the Afghanistan war. Afghanistan was a major poppy producer. NHS Morphine grown in the UK is now used for soldiers injured in Afghanistan. Now these fields remind me of Dorothy falling asleep in the flower fields before the Emerald city, Kansas, the USA.
There are some ornamental poppy’s in the wendy house garden. I had been pondering on how to use them beyond ornamentation. Poppyseed bread perhaps? Some athlete’s who failed drug tests due to trace levels of morphine have blamed poppyseed bread for the drug’s presence.
While searching for ways to use my poppys I was suprised to find very detailed instructions with photographs describing how to harvest and refine opium. I wont be piloting these instructions. Honest, really, no really….
Halfway up the Thames Valley’s infamous Streatly Bobsliegh run the Reading team stop to discuss
how best to use their cardboard sled
advanced tree-stump avoidance tactics
healthcare provision
The commute to work down the icy back roads of Oxfordshire has been spiced up by the occassional snow flurry and the black ice. Clearly there is some form of adult bumper car game going on. Some drivers drive slowly so as not to take part, others get frustrated at travelling slowly and indulge in risky overtaking. Others just head for the treed hedgerow…
…..BOING!….
….then wait to be flown-out, like this little black number. Thomas just pootles along at a reasonable speed trying not to harrass the cautious or impatient drivers, its a thin line.
Thin black ice
Whilst concentrating on driving home through the outstanding Oxfordshire countryside I am everywhere-aware and nowhere. The journey lasts as long as a daydream, a CD, 15 Johnny Cash songs, 20 miles. Suprisingly, Thomas didn’t warm to Johnny Cash, on the other handbrake, Dusty definitely pumps his petrol Diesel.
Dusty Springfield bounced us to In the middle of nowhere
Thomas swirls along roads built to bounce him and give me lots of steering opportunities, through violently yellow rapeseed fields, between hedges who’s vaulting arms meet above us.
Thomas purrs and whirrs
Wendy curls and twirls
