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On Saturday, I played 'Au Clair de la Lune' on Janet's piano with more than one finger.
On Sunday, I identified a horse chestnut and a cherry tree using an Usborne guide.
Today I am 31 years old, and not, as you might infer, eight. It's a start.
It's not enough, I've decided, that ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
j4 shares my birthday: being 30 was so much fun that I shall do it all over again.
So: birthday party, Saturday 10 May, Oxford. (No need to reply here if you've already commented there.)
I'm a sucker for smart advertising. What I particularly enjoy is clever appropriation of the outdoors: the 'ambient' advertising that many people find particularly objectionable. A company logo on the risers of a staircase, say, or a voucher printed on the reverse of a bus ticket.
HOVIS
Originally uploaded by addedentryThis week I found and photographed three 'ghost signs' in Oxford - faded advertisements painted on walls. Each one promotes a business I assume to be long defunct. I reckon that any proposal to overpaint these signs would be strongly opposed, despite their intrusiveness. The distinction of age offers ads the sympathetic attention of Past Times or a nostalgic museum.
I once wrote that 'the countryside makes me uncomfortable because it isn't labelled'. j4 has a thought experiment of a retreat from text, some place where you wouldn't see letters on signs, or packaging, or anything to read; it would be surprisingly difficult to guarantee. But I don't believe that taking down billboards and shuttering shopfronts would provide a neutral public space, not while libraries, and mosques, and fountains, and so on present their own values.
Apparently weddings don't organise themselves. Six months on, we've got as far as confirming that it won't be possible to hold the reception at my employers' place. That's a pity, though it's not as if Oxford wants for pretty backdrops.
More pressingly, where can we go for an Easter weekend that isn't threatened by rail replacement buses and heavy snow showers? (We are a no-fly zone.)
It is the LAW that EVERY band, local or not, MUST attempt to think of a name one night in the pub, and the first idea will ALWAYS be "Let's call ourselves 'Free Beer'! Then we'll get a really big audience!" Other suggestions will be "The Band With No Name", "Cancelled", "SEX!!!" and "To Be Confirmed" ... [MJ Hibbett]
This theme continues in a mildly diverting article about bands with lame names by Mr Broken Family Band in today's Guardian. I post it because j4 bought me the Oxjam Reading Mix Tape with contributions from groups doomed to be forever local: Hello Wembley, Gonzo & The Razz, Jones Radio, Heartwear Process and (the least excusable) Kev Barz & Springboard to Badinage.
To my surprise, they're not that bad at all. It is for charity. And no punctuation marks were abused.
One of many things I like about Oxford is the cluster of obscure villages each side of the A34: Binsey, Wytham, Godstow, the Hinkseys, all a comfortable walk away. Late one August evening, j4 and I wandered through the fields behind Botley, up the hill towards Cumnor. The A-Z showed a wooded hill crowned with "Cumnor Folly", which was an obvious destination. But we couldn't find the folly. We found the trig point and a spooky shack made of branches, but no folly.
Another lovely walk this weekend took us into Wytham Woods (owned by the University, which issues permits). We noticed that the map names one of the fields "Follies", but without trespassing all we could see were two low pieces of stone.
By this time I had a hunch about our folly. The OED confirms a rare sense of 'a clump of fir-trees on the crest of a hill', and a dialect dictionary localised this to Berkshire (where Cumnor and Wytham belonged before 1974). So we'd been looking round for an architectural folly when all along we were standing inside it. The open Web knows nothing of this, so I may as well record it here.
In the meantime, I'd also consulted Headley & Meulenkamp's directory of follies. It drew my attention to a little-known proposal in central Oxford:
In 1975 John Madden, an undergraduate, submitted plans for a 450ft (137m) pyramid to be built in Christ Church Meadow. The submission was properly drawn up and presented: it would have been necessary to freeze the Thames over for seven and a half years in order to excavate the 100ft (30m) deep foundations; then a further 16½ years and 18 million tons of stone from Headington Quarry would be needed to build the thing. Labour was no problem—there was to be compulsory secondment of second-year undergraduates—but the question of finance was delicately avoided. The intention was that the pyramid should serve as Mr Madden's mausoleum, and his application got as far as the City Planning Committee, where it was defeated by the narrowest of margins—five votes to four—after the city engineer pointed out that street lights would have to be kept on all day because the sheer bulk of the monument would keep the city in perpetual darkness.
What do you think, gentle reader? I won't be fooled again.
A few years ago verlaine observed how little we know of each other's lives at work, or rather, since we all talk about that part of our social life that happens at work, how little we know of the detail of the work itself. To rectify this, he invited us to post some text, or some jargon, or some account extracted from our working days. Alas, I can't find the entry again, but fivemack reminded me of it by posting a photograph of his desk. So here's ( my desk, for the next fortnight. )
The railway line between Oxford and Cambridge has been dug up. There wasn't enough demand for the Sky Commuter light aircraft. But now World SkyCat is looking for capital to support an airship service.
There's a new Highway Code. I have a practical driving test booked for November 1, so I thought I'd better buy a copy. According to various press releases, it has 29 new rules. I wonder what they are?
I know about the trouble over cycle lanes and the further deprecation of smoking. I've found the text of debates in Parliament about the revision. But will I have to compare the new edition with the last rule by rule?
j4 and I have spent a fabulous week in Dublin. (Here are the holiday snaps.) We'd intended to go there for some time now but hadn't actually planned anything: accommodation booked three days before and travel booked two days before (ten hours by train and ferry for 54 pounds each with SailRail). We stayed in the Bridge House on Parliament Street, immediately opposite the Porterhouse and its 200 beers. Dublin is such a walkable city: down the four flights of stairs from our room - no lift - and we were right by the river. The Liffey divides the city so neatly for navigation that we would have kept returning to it even if it hadn't looked so grand and wide.
We had expected to spend much of the holiday reading books and playing Scrabble in cafes and pubs while watching the rain. But the weather stayed dry, which let us do a lot of exploring on foot together. We walked out through the villas of posh Dublin 4 to see the National Print Museum, and took the DART train along the seaside to see the James Joyce Tower, where Janet paddled in the cold water. We were, also, often in cafes and pubs, and in a restaurant by the river where we agreed to get married.
It's nearly three years since we started going out. We've been through London and Cambridge and Oxford and are ready to stay in one place. Janet makes me laugh and makes me think; and she spurs me to make more of myself. I think love is not so much an uncontrollable passion than something which can be nurtured and shaped, and that a relationship is not only a meeting of minds but a decision. We've made a decision to share a future.
It's a decision that needed care, yet one of the easiest decisions I've made.