It’s been 20 years and 20 weeks since I stepped off a bus in Oxford for the first time. My fellow history students from the University of Georgia would be spending six weeks at Jesus College, right in the center of one of the most beautiful cities on earth. Those weeks changed me dramatically, I returned to the states not only more versed in the goings on of the English Civil War and the Restoration of the monarchy, but much more aware of the kind of person I wanted to be. Not only that, but there was one night there that I reached out and grasped something that stays with me to this day, however that is another story for another time.
Against this backdrop, we grabbed a taxi from the train station and dropped off our ridiculously heavy suitcase on the top floor of an old school guesthouse on the south side of town. It was much closer than it looked on the map (the town really was as small as I remembered), so we set out for Christ Church Meadows and the accompanying college.
You may not know that Oxford University is actually a collection of somewhat independent colleges in the same area. As I said, when I was there, I attended Jesus College, but you will also find Trinity, Hertford, and about 20 others, each with a list of acclaimed alumni. It was a close run for most famous until a few years ago, but now Christ Church is easily the biggest draw to outsiders. The fame that once rested squarely on the shoulders of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (a.k.a. Lewis Carroll, author of a couple of books about a little girl named Alice), is now overshadowed by the backdrop of their Great Hall. Yes, eleven prime ministers took their meals there in their college days, but none of them are as famous as the Gryffindors and Slytherins who ate there in the first two movies of the Harry Potter series.
It costs 12 pounds for a family to walk through this college to see Harry’s dining room (which is only barely recognizable among the numerous paintings of Christ Church alumni that returned to the walls after filming). The supplemental draw of the hall is the stained-glass window containing tiny characters from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland that is just about too high to even see, much less get a good picture of (it’s in the gallery, have a look for yourself). Adjoining the college is the cathedral, a very impressive structure in its own right, but when you add the two pianists that were preparing for the night’s concert, it is rather overwhelming.
CLICK HERE FOR THE PICTURES AND VIDEOS FROM OXFORD
We continued on from Christ Church to Jesus College to rouse some dormant memories for Papa Glenn. It felt good to walk the paths and to see our own Great Hall again. I realized that I couldn’t quite remember how to get to the classroom where we studied, but my dorm and the college looked exactly as I remembered. We tromped around past the Bodleian Library and some of the other areas in my old neighborhood, and then made our way to Carfax Centre where the best fish and chips in the world were no longer being sold from a little hole in the wall. Carfax is all chain stores and generic now, too bad. We grabbed some Italian at the English version of Olive Garden and headed back to the guesthouse.
I wasn’t done however. I let the family hit the sack while I trudged back to town. I had a mission. If you read the Golden Compass books by Philip Pullman, you might be aware that a central theme of the book was that there was a portal in Oxford to other worlds. I’m not completely crazy, but I thought it was worth a look if I was here. At the very least, Pullman lives in Oxford, and I wanted to run into him and tell him the story about what had happened to me here in 1990. Long story short, no portal, no Pullman, but I did run into a couple of Canadian rescue pilots that were over for simulator training. We had a great conversation about the area, and they told me about a meteor crater in northern Quebec that I had never heard of. Portal? I’ll keep you posted.
I awoke slowly, and we had the inclusive full English breakfast at the guesthouse. In case you are not familiar with the English Breakfast, it is always as follows: bacon (which we would call ham), a sausage link (which is mushier inside than ours), an egg (usually poached-ish), toast (which is often fried in batter to make it less good for you), and, believe it or not, regular old baked beans that run all over everything. To this you can often add a cooked to-mah-to and mushrooms, if you’re insane.
After breakfast, we had to get out of the guesthouse by 10, but our train didn’t leave until 2:30 -- the perfect window to finish up the Harry Potter theme in Oxford. The new movie was released the night before, and there was an 11:15 showing. It was great. We got to the train on time, and were home around six on Saturday evening. This gave us a nice day off Sunday so that I could start writing these two books you have been subjected to over the last couple days.
We’re having Thanksgiving for the ASU students Thursday, but we will not be able to watch any football. This will be the first time this has happened to me in ever. On Friday, we get up and head south again, this time to see “the living rock of Stone ‘enge” (cue the dancing dwarf Spinal Tap fans!).
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