Wednesday 1 August 2012

Last of Oxford

So back in the Magdalen Auditoreum, I dove into the morass of people shuffling to reach the student holding their subject plackard. Myself, I had a choice between the Classics sign, and the Classical Archaeology and Ancient History one, since although it was CAAH which was of particular interest, yet I had a sneaking suspicion that I had in fact been booked in for Classics.

Never mind, I did some shuffling of my own to reach the CAAH-wielding person (they also had the Ancient History lot). There were about fifteen other people standing there and I had no idea how it would work, so I was pleasantly suprised when, having dropped us all off in a classroom, the student suddenly asked it there was anybody actually interested in CAAH hanging about.

Just me.

I was taken to a separate building (hang on, I have a photo). I think it's 17th century? A bit later than all the others. But please don't quote me on that, it's probably wrong.


And then up the stairs to a room. The student (afraid I've forgotten her name) was reassuring me that the tutor was lovely and that there was no reason to be terrified (can imagine that I looked it, certainly feeling not a little apprehensive), then knocked on a door which swung promptly open to reveal the CAAH Professor, Dr Alfonso Moreno.

He was good enough to put up with me for -I think it was- over an entire hour. Among other things he told me about, I was shown a genuine, bona fide squeeze brush (used to bash squeeze paper into inscriptions, naturally) and meanwhile managed to excellently display my complete and utter lack of anything resembling a notion on all things archaeological. Ah well, suppose you can't have it all. Somehow I still found that I enjoy myself... at any rate I recall walking out with a bit of a buzz.
Having reached as far as the base of the stairs, I promptly (and almost literally) bumped into the Classics Professor whom I had been molesting earlier at the Centre for Classical Studies and was lucky enough to be able to chat to (interrogate) him for a further fifteen or so minutes.

At this point I had to sprint away to catch Papa and Lyov, whom I think I was already a tad late for... they were both waiting patiently outside the Auditoreum from which we lugged my bags to our B&B for the night (well, I did some lugging, then legged it off to snoop around some colleges and left them to it. Good strategy.).

I've lost track a bit but I might have mentioned already that I had poked a nose briefly into Corpus Christi, I now returned to the scene of the crime and although it was almost packing-up time, they were nice enough to let me slip through, even lending me a thoroughly knowledgable guide.
It's such a beautiful little college, I'm sad that I didn't take any pictures, however Papa tracked this down over youtube later, and I would quite like to share:


This is a thing to aspire to.

Following this, I toddled along the road to Merton, to be shown around by a Classics student. The gardens are incredibly beautiful and first year student's accomodation at the bottom of those. They also say they are the oldest college, from 12somethingsomething (should probably be looking this up).
Everyone was very friendly and it was with a reluctance that I finally made off in the direction of dinner- a thing I never thought I'd say.

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Some pictures from our after dinner exploits.







Here abruptly endeth the text.

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