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.
Firm believers in art made for public spaces, they were also keen that their work was accessible, sensory, tactile, carving the polysterene moulds by hand using household tools like potato peelers and nutmeg graters to produce a variety of concrete finishes.
It’s extraordinary to see what is achieved in such a tight space – Masoud and his team navigating the area, taking orders, scooping, cutting, frying, filling, it’s like a tightly choreographed ballet.
What I hadn’t fully understood was this was to be an immersive Christmas experience. For Cordelia doesn’t do this season by halves. First, I am treated to a tour of her Christmas crib collection. She has 74 of them.
It’s at this time of year, after the clocks have gone back, and the evenings draw closer, that I like to don my coat and scarf and set off for…
Kazem Hakimi has run the fish and chip shop at the far end of the Iffley Road for the past 36 years. It’s an old school takeaway. A narrow frontage…
Once upon a time there was a sad, unloved, alleyway. It was overgrown with weeds and brambles. And strewn with cans and broken bottles. Shopping trolleys, mattresses and building rubble…
It’s easy to miss them as you glide up to the top floor of the new Westgate Centre. But glance to your right and there on the wall is a…
We have the Reverend Carteret Fletcher to thank for saving Carfax Tower. Since the 13th century, this landmark building has stood at Oxford’s central crossroads, themselves the final confluence for…
I am standing at the scene of a crime. Not far from The Oxford Sausage headquarters in front of the side entrance to The Ashmolean Museum on St Giles. It…