Thesisizing

It is gorgeous now. The temperature is hovering around 70 F and I have pulled my sundresses out from the back of the closet.

This change in weather coincides with the final month of writing my thesis, which is due at noon on the 6th of May. I have been hopping between libraries, working through my literature review piece by piece. From my spot here on the third floor of the Rothermere American Institute, I can see students lying in the grass; she has taken her shoes off and he shields his eyes with his forearm.

So I can't believe it, but I am going to pray for rain. Beg for clouds. Plead for fog and damp and grey. I quite disliked Landes's Wealth and Poverty of Nations, but today I subscribe to the climate thesis: some places, be they warm and sunny and hospitable, simply undermine the production of hard work.

Bring back the dour, baleful cloud! For it is what has made Oxford great!

High Table

The culmination of Jess's visit was a formal dinner at the College. Though held twice a week throughout term time, they feel special. The night begins with wine and sherry in the Observatory Common Room; everyone is dressed up and the room is particularly beautiful at night. And the night ends there too - coffee and chocolates before heading home.

Here we are dressed to the nines; Jess was particularly excited that the College Fellows were in their academic robes.

Oxford Spring

I have promised Nonnie to put up a few images from Jess's trip.

We were absolutely obsessed with the flowers, buds, and yellow-green willows. In the weeks since Jess has gone the daffodils have erupted, magnolia buds now look like mauve cigars, and bluebells have taken the place of crocuses and snowdrops amidst the headstones of the old cemeteries.

But we were there on the cusp - on the very edge of spring and its profusions.





We thought of Wordsworth:

I wander'd lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.



Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the Milky Way,
They stretch'd in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.



The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed - and gazed - but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:



For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

Tassie

In the few weeks before my camera died, I was able to take a few snaps of Tassie. An absolutely stunning landscape - a rougher, more alpine Maine; beaches of fine white sound out of the Caribbean with Antarctic waves; and Hobart's rose trimmed, Victorian cottages with cast iron 'lacework' framing the porches. And with the type of climate where everything seems to thrive; I have never eaten so many cherries and ripe apricots.

The first pictures are from the Boxing Day hike up Hartz Peak, to the west of Hobart. Almost everyone in the party of fifteen or so had brought leftovers from the Christmas meal, and we washed down ham, turkey, and sweets with champagne. The final picture is of Friendly Beaches where we camped (wonderful shore birds). It is good to look back; despite the stresses of the holiday it was a beautiful place, and one that I am lucky to visited.

Hamstrung

Lindsay won a ham. He is not sure how it happened (the win that is); the actual arrival of the ham was itself quite clear and abrupt, as Lindsay, on his way out the door was foisted a ham by the office manager. “Happy Christmas, Cheerio!” It was so heavy that he had to put it down.

A huge, repellant ham. I am convinced that it should not be eaten as is.

Yesterday afternoon I went to the butchers in the slightly upscale neighborhood of Parap. “My boyfriend won a ham. It looks like that” – pointing at another insipid, shrink-wrapped monstrosity, milky ham-liquid collecting in the vein-like folds of plastic – “what do I do with it?”

The butchers turned around from their bench, father and son perhaps. The look was distain. I am in a country where pubs raffle off trays of meat, rolled out supine on movers’ dollies. I do not belong.

The ham is taking up an entire shelf of the refrigerator. Nat and Gary wont take it. Nor will Mal and Amanda. Richard and Ainslee have already left. I fear the shelf will crack.

Pictures of hams – I am Googling “smoked leg bone in ham” instead of writing my Masters thesis – look as tanned and glossy as burled walnut. Mine is an Englishman’s thigh.

The Internet complicates the issue by suggesting that what I am missing is a “ham bag.” The Internet then suggests that if I don’t have a “ham bag” I should use a pillowcase; should I use the sweetly stripped one that my mother sent me off with? Does this have to do with hobos? In Parap, I see a store selling a ham bag (no stick). It was too heavy to be carried that way anyhow.

I call Claire. Heidi answered. “Yes, you can tell her that Kate called about The Ham.”

Claire has not called back.

I call Jess. “Why don’t you cut it up like a mango so that people can pull off little cubed pieces.” She makes a disgusting reference to erasers. I cannot reach mom.

I am running out of time.

Tomorrow we eat the ham. I have no ham bag. I have no ham plate, or ham sauce, or ham plan. All I know is that when we are arrive at the party, when the hostess meets me at the door, I will – bending at the knees, not the waist – hoist it towards her, saying in perfect synchrony: “Happy Christmas, Cheerio!”

My day in five photos:

1. Riding out! The ducks are always there.

2. As it is paper time, treated myself to coffee and a breakfast bagel at G&Ds.

3. Off to the college for more work and then lunch.

4. Leaving the Social Science Library. Not one of Oxford's treasures.

5. Biking home to do it all again tomorrow...

Around Bristol

Bristol Temple Meads station and St. Andrews Park.

Halloween!

Another Halloween with Heather in Bristol. Out for trick-or-treat with her nephews; drinking tea in the kitchen; shiatsu in the morning. A wonderful dose of home-life while here in England.

I went to a "bop" - the Oxford term for a college party - on Friday. My costume? Black and white striped dress + paper signs = a humped zebra crossing. I think that only non-Brits really appreciated it.

Pic: Some of our favorite lanterns.

Scopimera inflata

One of my favorite things about walking on the beach in Darwin: the abstract creations of Sand Bubbler Crabs. Taken this September on my way out of Dili.

They're back!

I just had the first arrival at my window bird feeder here at Oxford. It is Friday, it has been a tough week, and it sent such a thrill through me. It is a feeling I can't get from finding money in a pocket, or new music, or a free snack - its the unmooring intensity, the tunnel-vision of watching.

My new apartment is up high and flanked by one of Oxford's many canals to both the north and east. I see regularly ducks and the usual moorhens, but also a grey heron. I am pleased by such a radically different ecology amongst the towers, sandstone and otherwise. It is a packed, medieval city - unusual to find this heretical breathing room.