Oxford: The Literary Edition!

I was cheated out of a proper weekend by classes on Saturday morning. This was especially hard, since the pub crawl was Friday night and I didn’t exactly get a full night’s sleep. Nevertheless, I was in class, though I was a little bit quieter than usual. At least I have the two morning classes, so I was free after lunch, and Maria came for a visit from Greenwich!

We had lunch (second-lunch for me) at the Eagle and Child. This pub was frequented by two of my absolute all-time favorite authors, J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis. According to Wikipedia (so it must be true) “The Inklings was an Oxford writers' group which included C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, Charles Williams and Hugo Dyson. From late 1933, they met on Thursday evenings at Lewis's college rooms at Magdalen, where they would read and discuss various material, including their unfinished manuscripts. These meetings were accompanied with more informal lunchtime gatherings at various Oxford pubs which coalesced into a regular meeting held on Mondays or Tuesday lunchtimes at the Eagle and Child, in a private lounge at the back of the pub known as the 'Rabbit Room'. The formal meetings ended in October 1949 when interest in the readings finally petered out, but the meetings at the Eagle and Child continued, and it was at one of those meetings in June 1950 that C.S. Lewis distributed the proofs for The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.” The Eagle and Child has very good fish and chips, some even say the best in Oxford.

In other Inkling news, Peter Jackson has released a picture of three of the dwarves wearing their costumes for the new Hobbit movie. The one on the right is Dori, played by Mark Hadlow, whom Josephine and I met in Wellington, New Zealand.

After lunch, naturally we had to have dessert, so we went to George and Davis, the absolute best ice cream maker in Oxford (according to wikitravel). They make all the ice cream on-site, and the flavors are certainly interesting. I got Oxford Blue, which is blueberry flavored. I have to admit, it wasn’t the best ice cream I’ve ever had, but I’ll give it another shot. Plus, there’s probably a reason I’ve never even seen blueberry ice cream before. My new theory is that blueberries are much better than blueberry-flavored things. This is not true of peanut butter. Peanut butter cups and chocolate peanut butter milkshakes are way better than just peanut butter, but blueberries are pretty good alone.

We had another stroke of luck. On my way to the bus stop to get Maria, I was handed an advertisement for a play. I usually reject these things, but I’m trying to get the full Oxford experience, so I took it. The play was Macbeth, so Maria and I decided to see it. We tried to buy tickets, only to discover that Macbeth isn’t starting until next week, and the only show was Midsummer Night’s Dream. So we got tickets to Midsummer Night’s Dream! This country is so wonderful. I think they show about one Shakespeare play a year in Columbus, and here it’s one a week! Plus, the play was outside in front of part of Oxford Castle. I got to see a play outside in front of a castle! It was really cool! Since lots of other people were taking pictures, I took some too:

It’s so easy to see good theatre here cheaply. My ticket only cost 11 pounds, which is about the same as my ticket to see the new Harry Potter movie at midnight. I repeat, in this country you can see a Shakespeare play for the same price as a movie. It’s awesome! Granted, the movie theatre has comfortable chairs, and I was sitting on a cushion on the ground for the play, but I was in a castle!