A Very Merry Harry Potter Christmas

My friend Olivia came to visit me for Christmas! And of course when you find yourselves spending the holidays in the closest approximation muggles have to Hogwarts, the most appropriate action is to theme your Christmas accordingly.

Fittingly, I took the Oxford Tube down to London and met Olivia at Platform 9 3/4, King's Cross Station.

We spent some time wandering around London before catching the night bus back to Oxford.

We took the official tour of the Bodleian and generally explored Oxford.

The Divinity School in the Bodleian, 

the oldest part of the Bodleian and where they used to hold final exams

The Convocation House, adjoining the Divinity School.

Parliament was held here during the Civil War and the reign of Charles II (1642-6; 1665; 1681). 

Oscar Wilde, amongst other misbehaving Oxford students, 

had to attend disciplinary hearings at this table.

This chair was constructed from pieces of the Golden Hind,

Sir Francis Drake's ship.

The courtyard of the Bodleian is looking festive!

Exploring Oxford

The SJC chapel, all dressed up for Christmas. 

Our humble, homemade ornaments-decorated MCR Christmas tree!

On Christmas Eve and Day, Olivia and I had fun doing low-key activities. We played chess in the SJC chess room. Yes, we have a room for chess. Because why not?

Unsurprisingly, Olivia won. About ten minutes before she checkmated me, I looked at the board and said, "You've killed me. I know you have. I just don't see how it's going to happen yet." And let me tell you, knowing you're doomed but not knowing the when or how is the worst feeling ever.

Crackers, paper hats, groan-worthy jokes, à cappella Christmas carols in the kitchen, and homemade feasts abounded.

Christmas morning brought stuffed stockings and pain au chocolat!

United in Manchester

My friend Will invited me to visit him in Manchester for my birthday! Manchester is a great city, very fun and packed with friendly people. I don't know what southerners are grousing about; it's like people who roll their eyes and scoff at my home city and when you ask them what parts of it they've seen they sheepishly admit that they've only taken the freeway through.

Will knows how to throw a birthday celebration. The first thing he did was find us a delicious lamburger stand, after which promptly took me to the historical John Rylands Library, where he was a very good sport while I ooh'd and aah'd over everything from the beautiful architecture to the extensive rare book collection. We trolled the Christmas markets for macarons and toffee and then embarked on a best-of-Manchester pub crawl.

 An old printing press!

Off to the Christmas markets:

Last pub of the night:

Recalling Puritans

As a result of burning the candle at both ends for far too long, I have managed to contract strep throat. Knocked me flat. I finally dragged myself to the college nurse, who, in addition to recommending a few over-the-counter medications, strongly encouraged ice cream. She then put me on "telly only" bed rest for the next two days. I thought I would take the opportunity to catch up on the BBC's rendition of Wolf Hall and update this blog.

Thanksgiving

Several of us gathered at another American's flat and had a potluck.

That's one end of the table. I was seated roughly in the middle, but unfortunately the photo of the other end turned out even more blurry.

Watching the Brits' -- and other nationalities' -- reactions to the various foods was entertaining. Green bean casserole, the standard kind with cream of mushroom soup and French onions on top, was a massive hit. The loved green bean casserole. Everyone wanted to write down the recipe and scrape out the dregs in the baking dish. The concept of eating fruit salad with the meal rather than after the meal, on the other hand, completely weirded them out. They couldn't do it. Not a single one. And when I told them my family usually makes marshmallow fruit salad instead of plain fruit salad, they just about lost their stuffing. Finally, when the guy hosting the event stopped everyone's conversations and said that it was time to go around the table and say what each of us was thankful for, the Brits got deer-in-the-headlights looks and one of them exclaimed, "Wait, you actually do that?" Well, yeah. It's Thanks-giving. That's the point: to give thanks for what you have. Even if your family doesn't ritualize it, what you are thankful for ought to be foremost in your mind that day. Sure, it's about food, family, and football, but taking a moment to be thankful is the most important part. And being able to pursue a D.Phil in a subject I love here at Oxford with a loving, encouraging family back home, I have a lot for which to be thankful.

Old Library Open Day

The head librarian at SJC opened up the Old Library and put together a 'winter display' of rare books and materials there to kick off December.


 

This is the Old Library. It was built in 1596-8 and was the first in Oxford to be designed with pew-like seats and desks between the cases. Most of the books were chained to the shelves until the second half of the 18th century to prevent thievery, as books were valuable goods.


Here are a few of the 'winter' books that were on display. They included everything from a medieval Book of Hours to an 18th century book on arctic exploration with engraved pictures of the captain and crew's findings.

Here is a Christmas ghost story written by Robert Louis Stevenson.

This vintage Christmas card from Alec and Merula Guinness 

was sent to the then-president of the college.

I encourage you to read the description for this early 17th century manuscript. Ellie and I tried to convince the MCR (Middle Common Room -- the SJC graduate student body, in charge of, amongst other, more serious things, grad student parties) to bring back the tradition of the Christmas Prince/Princess. That would have been a proper #tbt (Throwback Thursday). Maybe next year!

Since I'm talking about our library, I thought I'd throw in a few other photos of it. This is the Oriel window at the top of the stairs. Directly behind me is the Old Library, and to the left of me is the Laudian Library, where I do a fair amount of studying when I don't want to walk to the Bodleian. 

 The chest belonged to Thomas White, our college's founder. That is one of the most fascinating locking mechanisms I've seen. The object to the left of it is a cannonball. Oxford has always been a Royalist institution. When Oliver Cromwell overthrew the monarchy in the mid-17th century, he laid siege to Oxford, and that cannonball was one of the ones fired through the front door of SJC. The roughly life-size statue of Charles I gracing the front of the outside of the library probably didn't go over well, either.

This is the Laudian Library, where the humanities books are kept. They are doing construction on the far end to make the library wheelchair accessible. As it currently stands, the entrance to the library is up a couple steps and through a door so narrow I have to angle sideways a bit to fit my shoulders through. You've seen my photo on this blog; I'm not a very big person.

The Laudian Library was built in 1631-5, but the bookcases were installed in 1838.

Standing next to the cannonball:

Standing where the guy in the blue shirt was, looking back:

One of the desks, overlooking Canterbury Quad. It's actually quite light in there; the camera makes it look dark but it's really bright and cheery.

The sciences and maths library is on the floor below the Old Library, but as it was built in the 1970s it isn't much to look at. There's a law library somewhere nearby as well.

Whatte the Swyve?

I have spent the past few weeks holed up in the library wading through a massive amount of texts, and so don't have much in the way of snazzy photos or exciting Oxonian anecdotes to share. What I can offer is a series of stick-figure comic strips illustrating a few of the more ridiculous things I've found in my medieval readings. This is one of the aspects I love about medieval literature: even when the authors are being serious (and they joke a lot), you're laughing.

There is an early medieval Irish manuscript detailing how a king ought to spend his days. Sundays are for drinking ale, Mondays are for judging, Tuesdays are for board games, Wednesdays are for hunting with hounds, Thursdays are for having sex, Fridays are for watching horse races, and Saturdays are for a different kind of judging (the distinction between the two is unclear, but there was a lot of judgement flying around).

The Romance (Tale) of Havelok the Dane, which is sort of Lion King meets Snow White with a lot of blood-running and bone-breaking. Havelok is kidnapped by his evil uncle and given to a fisherman and his wife so that they will murder him, but when they see magical light shining out of his mouth while he's asleep, they realize that he's the true heir. Logical. They lie to the evil uncle and raise him themselves. When Havelok grows up, he wages war against the usurper and reclaims the throne.

Sir Tristrem, temporarily exiled to Wales for sleeping with the queen, fights a giant and wins a particolored baby for his efforts. Sort of like getting handed an armoire-sized stuffed animal for shooting targets at the fair and then trying to figure out what on earth you are going to do with it. So he decides to send the weird baby to his queenly true love as a gift and token of his affection. Gee, thanks. Not awkward at all.

I love those moments where I've been reading and reading and reading all day and then suddenly come across a section like these and my brain says, "Wait, what?"

Night at the Museum

Last night, the Ashmolean Museum put on Egyptomania, a celebration of the 1920s discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb and craze for all things Egyptian. I met up with some SJC friends and we spent the night roaming around the Ashmolean after hours. People were asked to come in Britain-in-Egypt '20s and '30s costumes. Every room had a different event, from live jazz bands and Charleston and Lindy-Hop dancing to reenactments of 1890s-1930s Egyptian-themed British plays to an old-fashioned (Victorian lantern) slideshow of antique photographs of archeological digs. Plus cocktails, of course.

If you haven't tried it, find an opportunity to wander around a museum at night. It's a completely different experience, a much better one, and definitely a little eerie. Less eerie once the bands started jamming and people began showing up in flapper dresses. The whole thing made for a fantastic Halloween.

Photo next to one of the exhibits! In costume, too. Wait, is that my sub-fusc ribbon repurposed? Why, yes it is. Waste not, want not.

Tonight we're having a decidedly less cultured Halloween party in college. There will be plenty of normal sophomoric shenanigans, rest assured.