Men are from Mars ...

I feel a fantasy book coming on

Picture Credit with thanks: St Giles, Oxford

This afternoon we sat in the Eagle & Child pub in Oxford, particularly famous as the place where CS Lewis and JR Tolkien met as members of The Inklings. The Wikipedia article is interesting. The old pub is pretty ordinary once inside, but is one of those places where 'if the walls could talk' we'd be entertained for years. There was a trio of students at one table discussing some finer points of bio-somekindofengineering, and across the way there was a particarly important lot of professor types sounding awefully awefully important as they discussed something and pulling faces at people coming in and letting the cold wind in with them. For the season, one of the ales on sale today was called Yule Fuel!

Wake up and smell the coffee

Looking for a good cup of coffee when walking around Oxford? Puccino's is a goody, but there are loads of great coffee shops within easy walking distance of the centre of Oxford. Here is a link to a list of them: Oxford Coffee Shops

More Birthday Celebrating

This massive celebrating of Rose's 50th hit day ten with (what Mark hopes, and what his bank insists is the last of) another fine meal out - this time with daughters Julie and Ashleigh, and their boyfriends - Ed and Liam. We ate Chinese, at a place called Opium Den ( I think) in Oxford, near the central bus station. Been there before, perhaps a year ago, when we were but tourists passing through. And so we finally got to meet Liam.

First snowball fight

Ashleigh hits a bullseye!

On the same day that we experienced our first English snow, Ashleigh had her first ever sight of the white stuff. The picture is breakfast-time before work, in Oxford, and she has just thrown a snowball at Julie, who looks really happy about the bonding experience. The location is their garden. Photo by Ed

Girls will be girls

Julie (the blonde) and Ashleigh (the purple)
in their wigs for a fancy dress birthday party in Oxford
this past weekend. I think they were going as
Marilyn Monroe and Cher, but not in those
clothes... I imagine.

El touristo Oxford

Today we are using the CitySightSeeing bus to have a look around the City of Oxford.

We will see most of the university colleges, the Bridge of Sighs (no we do not think we are in Venice) and William Morris's old workshops.

William who?

This William Morris, that's who!

The Trout

The Trout is a pretty pub on the Thames, near Oxford, where we had lunch on Saturday. Many meal scenes in the long running TV series, Inspector Morse, were shot here.

First day in England - Oxford

Our first day in England started with expensive coffee and croissant at the Heathrow bus station, a pleasant bus ride to Oxford, and then a wonderful day around Oxford. Great meal at The Trout, a pub on the Thames where many scenes from Inspector Morse were shot in the past, and a walk through The Meadows.

PODCAST is word of the year

The New Oxford American Dictionary have named podcast as their word of the year, beating other words like bird flu, persistant vegetative state and squick in the process.

Erin McKean, editor in chief of the New Oxford American Dictionary, said: "Podcast was considered for inclusion last year, but we found that not enough people were using it, or were even familiar with the concept. This year it's a completely different story. The word has finally caught up with the rest of the iPod phenomenon."

"Choosing the word of the year is incredibly difficult," said McKean. "Not just because of the enormous amount of data we look at-everything from blogs to technical journals to suggestions sent to dictionaries@oup.com-but because everyone has such strong opinions about what makes a word Word of the Year material. You'd be amazed at how hard our editors campaign for their favorites. I'm surprised nobody tried to bribe me -- except that the only thing I really want is more cool new words!"

You can see my recently updated (big time revision) of my website PodcastSA or you could listen to my own podcasts: Reflections and Paradise Lost.

Snow in Oxford

Today was my mother, Marlene's 72nd birthday (she in Harare) and Julie & Ed sent a photo of snow on their car in Oxford the same day Rob Ellis sent other photos of snow in Derby, UK. The picture sending to and fro reminds me of my neighbour in 1979 (Keith Taylor, no relative) who working for the then PTC in Salisbury, excitedly telling me of the great hullabaloo they had when they started receiving pictures for the newspaper by telephone line ... grainy black and white photos that took all night to download! Toay we snap, zip, and upload from our cameras or phones just like we've always done this!