Quintessential

Friday 9 Oct

Over the last few days I have had encounters with one of the previous occupants of the office I am using. He’s a friendly fellow, a retired prof who still does work on a number of important projects. I have to confess, though, that he made me laugh a little to myself: he was almost a perfect match for a caricature of an Oxford don. He was slightly crumpled, cheerful, seemingly dissociated from the mundanities of reality (I know this can’t be entirely true, because of the projects he has been involved in), and absent-minded … and just conveying an aura that was ever-so-frightfully Oxford.

This is the trouble with places like Oxford: since the cliches are based on a reality, when you see that reality you can’t always take it seriously because it seems so cliched.

This evening—once Friday had been declared ended (by John and/or Anne) and the weekend begun—we headed out into the countryside to a lovely English pub in the seeming middle of nowhere. It, too, was almost an archetype, with whitewashed walls decorated with horse-brasses and hunting rifles, dark beams, a low ceiling, proper handles for pulling beer from a variety of quality niche breweries (which is all of only academic interest to me, but it gives you an idea that it was a special kind of place), and a fire burning in the grate (once the chimney started to draw properly). The bonus—and disturbance to the archetype—was that it had a French chef, and so the food was excellent. It was a really enjoyable evening, with wonderful company in John, Anne, and Sue (an Australian who is working in the Department of Education), and good conversation (from silly banter to the deeply philosophical (the origins of “purpose”) to the occasional bursting forth into song (and it wasn’t always me starting this, which may come as a surprise to some of you!)). In short, it was a great way to start the weekend.