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away a few corporate 1Gb USB memory sticks because the School is about to rebrand itself, so their current freebies are out of date.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.

Lunchtime disappointment

TonyOX3

The only time I’ve been to La Cucina at The Plain/St Clements was about a year ago while I was moving to Oxford. A friend and I went early evening and each had an excellent pizza in a comfortable, lively and friendly atmosphere. Now settled in Headington, Mrs T and I decided we’d go for lunch. Shock horror – it’s closed for a week’s holiday! Damn. It was open when we went past only a few days ago.

Mrs T suggested an old favourite, the Café Noir in Headington. We got there about 12:50. It was busy but there were still a few tables. We sat down and by 12:55 had ordered our meal (main courses only). Half an hour passed. 35 minutes. Now it’s half past one and we’re hungry. Other people were enjoying their food. The waitress came over and said ours would be another 10 to 15 minutes as “the chef had a problem in the kitchen”.

Now you know when the pilot says “we’ll be delayed for 20 minutes but we’ll be off as soon as we can” you can settle down for at least an hour’s wait. We knew that 10 to 15 minutes would almost certainly turn into another half hour before we finally got our food, so we decided to cut our losses and leave. The staff did the right thing and gave us the one glass of wine and bottle of mineral water we’d had while we waited without charge, but we left disappointed and hungry. Café Noir’s loss was Subway’s gain.

Sadly it’s not the first time we’ve had a very long wait in the Café Noir at lunchtime, and it will put us off going again unless we risk it and go very early which is a pity because the food’s good and the people are nice. But they need to get their lunchtime offer sorted out – not many people can afford such a long wait at that time of day.

Still, La Cucina reopens next Tuesday, so we’ll give it a try next week. Here’s hoping.