September 2010

Coffee and Danish

TonyOX3

I don’t want this to be a rantblog so I promise to limit myself to no more than one a week. Mostly.

The thing is, Mrs T and I like a good black coffee and a fresh Danish pastry somewhere with a pleasant atmosphere if we’re out around the town in the morning. It doesn’t seem too much to ask. But the number of places in Oxford where you can get such a thing is limited. For now, Blackwell’s Café Nero fits the bill though it can get a rather congested later in the morning. The Queen’s Lane coffee shop too has been reliable for a coffee and cinnamon Danish.

This morning we headed for the Coconut Café in Friar’s Entry which I mentioned in a tweet the other day. Sad to say, we didn’t stay because although they had various cakes and muffins the only thing resembling a pastry was some twisty thing smothered in icing sugar. And it was uncomfortably hot inside too. I’ve lived in Denmark so I recognise a Danish pastry when I see one, and although I’ve never had one anywhere else that’s as good as those you can buy in almost any local bakery in Denmark, I’m prepared to accept a good effort. So whatever the Coconut may be like as a café in general I’m afraid it doesn’t hack it in the coffee-and-Danish stakes.

On our way to Queen’s Lane we thought we’d look in at The Vaults (behind the church in Radcliffe Square). We’ve had afternoon tea there which has been OK, but whenever we’ve looked in the mornings they’ve had cakes but no pastries. Cake is for the afternoon: the morning demands Danish pastry. But Lo! Croissants and pains au chocolat! Two americanos and two pains au chocolat duly ordered and served.

And rejected (the p’s au c: the coffee was fine). Stale, hard, and burnt on the underside. The staff reacted with disbelief, giving the impression they thought we were being fussy. “How could it be?”, they said. The pastries had come from Gatineau in Summertown only this morning. (Gatineau is a place we’ve never shopped so can’t speak from experience, but it describes itself as an artisan patisserie and appears to aim at the affluent North Oxford market.) My suggestion that Gatineau had passed on yesterday’s left-over stock after a quick reheat in the oven didn’t seem to be thought helpful, but a refund was rather grudgingly offerred and willingly accepted.

So the search goes on. There are some other places which are, how can I put it, kind of OK but rather functional and dull. If anyone has any recommendations please let me know.

Oxford Open Doors

TonyOX3

Once a year the less-privileged get the chance to look inside some of the Oxford buildings closed to them for the rest of the year. This is the Oxford Open Doors scheme sponsored by the Oxford Preservation Trust and the University of Oxford. There’s a huge list to choose from, though sadly not all the Colleges and other University institutions take part – although some have good reasons such as major building projects.

Working down the list we chose the Old Indian Institute on the corner of Catte Street and Holywell Street, Rhodes House on South Parks Road, Blackfriars (the Dominican Priory on St Giles) and for Sunday, All Souls’ College.

The Old Indian Institute (so called because it used to be the Indian Institute, so nothing to do with ancient Indians) is now the home of the James Martin 21st Century School. The building dates back to the 1880s and was the place where young men were trained for the Indian Civil Service. There’s not a lot to see these days, though there are some splendid carved wooden decorative panels and doors. And they were giving away a few corporate 1Gb USB memory sticks because the School is about to rebrand itself, so their current freebies are out of date. Which can only be good news for us early casual visitors.

Rhodes House was interesting, with very attractive gardens. Built in the 1920s with money from the Rhodes/de Beers diamond fortune it is the Oxford base for the Rhodes scholars. It’s not used much but these days, espacially since the American part of its extensive library of American and Commonwealth material was transferred to the new Rothermere American Institute just down the road. They were doing coffee and cakes, both of which were good. You can hire out their dining and other rooms for your private functions.

Rhodes House gardens

Then it was over to St Giles for Blackfriars. We joined a guided tour led by a delightful Irish friar who was completely happy to talk about the religious life of the ‘Community’ with sympathy and humour. We saw the chapel (bigger than many churches), the refectory, library, common rooms, in fact almost all of the establishment. We didn’t get his name, but our guide was one of the people who gives the religious life a good name.

Blackfriars Church

After lunch we walked down through Southfield Park flats to the Cowley Road and back up the lane that leads to Bartlemas Chapel, House and Farm. Bartlemas Chapel is a 14C chapel built originally as part of a leper hospital site well outside the city boundary. It’s dedicated to St Bartholomew (Bartlemas). Inside it’s small, plain, tranquil – a little gem. The house, now private, was earlier a set of almhouses.

Bartlemas Chapel

We had only one visit planned for Sunday – All Souls College, open from 2 to 5pm. We arrived about 2.30, directed around the corner by a notice on the High Street door, to find a queue outside the iron gates on Radcliffe Square. Inside access was restricted to the 18C rear quad, the Chapel, and the Codlington Library. The Chalgrove brass band playing in a corner of the quad made an incongruous contribution to afternoon’s atmosphere. It was impossible to enjoy the experience through the noise and the throng, though we did spend a few minutes in the chapel among the flashing cameras. We declined the long queue for the library.

All Souls Chapel

As a respite we headed down Brasenose Lane to Jesus College, a haven of tranquillity after All Souls. Two quads, dining hall, chapel, and a new building tucked away at the back. A pleasant end to the weekend.

Following me following you

TonyOX3

If you’re reading this because I’ve started following you on twitter, let me explain why. It seems a bit strange to me that Oxford doesn’t have a very strong presence in the twittersphere especially when compared with parts of London and some other cities. While there’s a good number of Oxford-based organisations and individuals who run twitter accounts, I haven’t found anywhere where Oxford is discussed as a place to live, work or study (with the possible exception of the Headington & Marston e-democracy forum).

So I’m interested to see if it’s possible to start and maintain a network of people who live in and around Oxford, who are interested in what’s going on, and might from time to time like to share thoughts, experiences, ideas, whatever, with others. I’ve no idea if it will work or if anyone’s going to be interested. No rules, no membership conditions, just the standard twitter etiquette. All welcome. If you want to give it a try and decide to follow @TonyOX3 you can unfollow whenever you want (but you knew that anyway).

That’s it. There’s no more structure than that – just a try-it-and-see. There are a few items on this blog already and I’ll add more when I’ve got something to say. Meanwhile if you’d like to share the films you’ve seen, books you’ve read, cafés and restaurants you like or loathe, your views on Tesco v. Sainsburys, concerts, gigs, exhibitions, lectures, bus services, council spending cuts, the best and worst pubs, what that new shop called POD opposite the Queens Lane bus-stops sells, anything and everything probably but not necessarily Oxford-related, then why not give it a try? If it works we can join the burgeoning world of hyperlocal social networking. If it fizzles out in a couple of months we can forget about it and move on.

Thanks for reading.