Alma Mater

The University Club is a modern, even a new building with a friendly atmosphere. Where else would one be met with the greeting from the receptionist "Are you Pam?". Of course I replied "Yes. Are you Rose?". Its membership averages half my age or less and appears to consist of postgraduate students, junior members of the University staff and their families. The members are of the 'hearty' rather than the 'aesthetic' persuasion and the Bar and lounge areas, with their glazed balconies, obviously serve the purpose of a cricket pavilion during the summer months. As I write I can hear people kicking a ball around beneath my window and children laughing.

The rooms are small, clean, functional and more than adequate. The bedroom area on the top floor is designated a quiet zone and overlooks the playing fields. Beyond the cricket pitch and football pitch is a road with some attractive mature trees and apparently further playing fields beyond that.

To revert to this morning, I arrived via a park-and-ride facility on the northern outskirts of the city. Oxford is probably the most car-unfriendly of all European cities, with the possible exception of Venice. The park-and-ride, however, allows me to leave my car outside the city and suburbs at no cost and take a bus to the city centre, from which it was a quick trundle of my overnight case to Mansfield Road. The city itself, at least the parts one would wish to visit, is no more than the size of a small town and all parts are easily reached on foot.

Having quickly settled in, I headed first for Keble and especially Keble Chapel, where I spent some quiet time and took some photographs, including Holman Hunt's 'The Light of the World'. From Keble it was a short trip across St Giles to the 'Bird and Baby' (Eagle and Child), where I drank half a pint of refreshing local beer in homage to the Inklings - CS Lewis, JRR Tolkien, and of course our own dear Hugo Dyson. After that it was but a few hundred yards to the basement cafe of the Ashmolean and a light lunch. I explored the newly improved Ashmolean, revisiting old friends among the exhibits, and expanding my range beyond the third floor, which was the limit of most of our earlier visit, with Carol in her wheelchair.

I then set off down the Broad, briefly visiting the original Oxfam shop, then down the Turl where, in the Oxfam bookshop, I bought a paperback about The Book of Kells. Down the High, investigating various shops as I went, then back up Longwall and Holywell to Blackwells, where among the books I found a welcome coffee shop and an even more welcome leather tub chair in a small Georgian room with an open window overlooking the Sheldonian.

This was a special open day for the University so I could have visited several colleges, even without the use of my Alumni Card (horrid word), but I did little more than put my nose into the occasional quad.

By five o'clock I was ready to come back to the club and relax on the bed listening to the sound of a ball being kicked around. I really enjoyed the reunion and especially the time with Jen and Dave, but this little bit of peace doing my own thing has restored me.