On Port Meadow with Alan Trinder and friends
I’d been invited by Alan Trinder to watch him fly. “I’ll be at Port Meadow between 7.30 and 11.30 in the morning,” said the email he sent the night before.…
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Tambours, Grilles and Unicorns
This was ‘real tennis’, played with a net that sags in the middle, on a funky inside court to a complicated but intriguing set of rules more akin to a game of ‘quidditch’ than that played on the lawns of Wimbledon. And although today I am heading to the one surviving court in the city, it seems the game is still alive and kicking.
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Dan Arnold and his Harris hawk
Every so often while out walking I will come across something or somebody that takes me by surprise. Stops me in my tracks. And so it is on my regular route to the University Parks when I encounter Dan Arnold and Trigger.
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William Stokes and the art of vaulting
I am delighted to present for your amusement some engravings by George Glover from William Stokes’s book ‘The vaulting master or the art of vaulting’ in the hope that they will amaze and entertain you as much as they have me.
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St Catherine in Oxford
I’m standing in front of the huge window at the east end of Balliol College dining hall. There in prime position, right at the top is a burning wheel. It…
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The Swift Hotel
I cannot count the number of times I have been inside the Oxford University Natural History Museum. A short walk from my home, I come to marvel at its glorious…
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A walk in Oxey Mead
Exactly this time last year my neighbour and go-to flora and fauna guru Beatrice Groves took me to the Lye Valley in search of the elusive flower, the Grass of…
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Darwin and the kissing bug.
The date is 30 June 1860. The location is the new University Museum (now the Oxford University Museum of Natural History). Upwards of 500 people have squashed into the first…
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Oxford’s Marvellous Magnolias
Today I take advantage of a break in the cloud and incessant rain to snap a few pictures of Oxford’s marvellous magnolias. The blooms arrive suddenly in March, full blown…
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Tambours, Grilles and Unicorns
When I was researching Oxford tokens for a previous ‘Sausage’ post, I came across a coin that had been struck in the mid 17th century with the sign of a…
