+ Oxford has a lot of books, and only a hundred libraries (impoverished, darlings). So, until somebody conveniently dies and leaves them a Georgian mansion/Camelot/historical burial ground, they are keeping some of the lesser-needed books somewhere off site.
In Cheshire.
In a salt mine.
I have absolutely no comment, save to raise the point that 'Librarian/Salt Miner' must be the oddest combination on any CV in the history of existence. 'Can Dewey Decimals And Dredge Drains!'
(The best bit was when the librarian, somewhat sheepishly, said that this would mean 'the books would take a lot longer to be ordered. And possibly smell a bit strange.')
+ There is a Heraldry Society, a Society For Lesbian Rugby Players, and a Society Of Bibiophiles, which takes tours to remote and beautiful libraries and is run by an Italian Count with an omnipresent cape.
+ Nowhere should this amount of people be allowed to wear this amount of tweed blazers without somebody, somewhere, raising a red flag and hollering YOU'RE OUT.
Other facts:
+ Placing sixteen aspiring writers in the one place appears to lead to an almost rabid mutual support. Everybody is wonderful and lovely and talented and coos over one another's dogs. I suspect this is a communal reaction against the OTHER possibility of putting sixteen aspiring writers in the one place, which would end in fourteen ruined egos, one death, and one glorious victor crouching bloodstained on the roof crying to the moon.
What I am trying to say is: Everybody in my course is very nice, and I suspect it is because a) we're very nice, and b) we're all god damn fucking afraid of one another.
+ Feeding aforementioned sixteen two three-course meals, tea, afternoon tea, and breakfast every day will not result in carbohydrate-powered excellence, but it may well result in decent Oxford Masters Programme Pate after the second year.
+ Putting off a dinner because you want to go talk to the cows in Christchurch Meadow is perfectly acceptable.
+ Reading to a bookshop-full of other students, a New Generation Poet, miscellaneous Old Important Oxfordians and a six-foot Swede is made considerably easier if you read a piece about skinning cats. Nobody in England actually likes cats; I suspect the Queen has an exercise gallery deep in Buckingham Palace where she can go and burn some calories by kicking them.
+ 'Australian' occasionally seems to translate as 'Rochester's mad Creole wife Bertha in Jane Eyre'. This was only demonstrated once, but it resulted in me being asked if I could speak Vanuatu pidgin.
+ I cannot speak Vanuatu pidgin.
+ The Hagrid Hut is beautiful, and spacious, and clean, and backs onto a methadone clinic.
+ Oxford really does look like Arthur Rackham and the Roman architect Vitruvius had a conference, drank too much rum, and made themselves a fantasy town. It's a fairytale. Like Bruges.
