Forgive the excitement but it seems that the charming yet overpriced, much-missed Bakehouse is to be replaced with a Starbucks!!!
M&S food, Costa coffee and starbucks…the anti-glob hand-wringers might get in a tizzy but I predict that like Costa, the place will be full all day from day one.
Summertown has a lot of caffeine-hungry people! There’s all the year 11s and older from Cherwell, the mums-with-babies, the big-haired lads and lasses from Teddy’s, the Oxfam and Oxford Uni employees.
Not to mention the itinerant authors with wayyy too much time on their hands.
I hear that JK Rowling has been spotted writing in cafés again. Good onya, Jo. Get cracking. I don’t see why being a squillionaire should get anyone off the hook, when there’s a hungry audience waiting for the next fix from a creative mind.
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Can you believe we blew off the weekly visit to the pool in favour of a trip to the temple of doughnuts…?
And you know what else? I’m not even going to feel guilty about it.
Because it turns out that I actually lost a couple of pounds over the break. There weren’t all that many bloatation opportunities after all.
I’m in a ridiculously good mood.
My best friend just texted me from Havana, where she’s having a great birthday with her Cuban boyfriend.
And the Waterstone’s website has ‘The Joshua Files: Invisible City’ listed in their ‘Coming Soon’ selection.
The only downer is that the Oxford Krispy Kreme plays non-stop 80s’ music. Well, I didn’t like it much the first time around.
Next to me a crowd of Spanish women are having a grand old gossip. They haven’t worked out that I’m listening to every word. Muahaha.
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If we’d got our act together and organised a babysitter we could be looking forward to a sizzling New Year’s Eve party tonight, at Vauxhall’s Club Colosseum, chez Salsa Republic.
But…pfahhh…London. Who’s got the energy?
So it’s a quiet night in with our youngest whilst Teenage Daughter stays up all night with her mates.
We’re going to close Costa…they’re trying to grab the chairs from under us.
Happy New Year, y’all. Hope I get to meet some of you in 2008.
Well, there’s just the present wrapping to do and we’re done!
Very tempted to go to midnight Mass. But not sure I can handle a third late night! We were all out yesterday at a friend’s house where we got together with mutual friends for drinks and munchies. At around eleven we had the idea to get our children (eight between us) to entertain us by playing their musical instruments. We tried this last year and they all grumpily refused. But this year they were happy to do it! We sat around for two hours, dazed and proud watching as the kids aged between 9 and 15 played piano, violin, recorder, trumpet, guitar and bongos – all from memory – the clever little poppets. It ended with a jam session on ‘Take Five’.
“This is what I dreamed it would be like to live in Oxford,” cried London-born Jane in delight.
That’s what I’m talking about. Make those music lessons pay!
Luckily they didn’t ask the grown-ups to perform.
Blog readers – I hope you all have a lovely Christmas break with your families and/or friends.
Here’s my favourite Christmas carol, sung by those fab choristers from King’s College.
For me, Christmas always begins with the Physics Department Carol Service in the Church of St. Mary the Virgin. Organised by atmospheric physicist, my old pal Jim Williamson and the former Secretary of the Bodleian Library, Charles Mould (who played organ at my wedding!), the impromptu choir consists of Jim’s friends from the Christ Church Cathedral Voluntary Choir, people from St Cross College like Becs and I (and indeed, Jim and Charles), and some physicists. We get together at 2.45pm for a very tightly managed rehearsal and the carol concert starts at 4.30pm. Afterwards choir and audience troop upstairs to the wood-panelled upper room and have wine and warm mince pies. It’s very seasonal!
The service is traditional style Lessons and Carols, like at King’s College Cambridge (but we have only two lessons). The Vicar of St. Mary’s takes the service, which always reminds me of my great affection for the Church of England. (I went to very High Church Anglican schools until I was 16.)
Thankfully I’ve been singing in this choir for about 19 years now…since I was a graduate student at St Cross. Only the fact that I’ve sung most of the difficult music before saves me, because as a sight-reader I am terrible!
This year though, Jim managed to pick a bunch of pieces I hadn’t sung before, or not for many years. Including the motet Hodie Christus Natus Est by Poulenc. I think we did it once before and I barely scraped through…
We also sang the motet O Magnum Mysterium by the sublime Spanish renaissance composer, Tomas Luis de Victoria. Victoria is one of my very, very favourites, in my opinion he’s better than Byrd, Tallis and even Palestrina. In fact, when I die, I want Victoria’s Requiem sung, with the deliciously gloomy Taedet, please, thank you very much, and lots of tears from my grieving relatives, okay?
Here’s the Taedet from Victoria’s Requiem sung by the brilliant Gabrieli Consort, including my friend the Chilean tenor Rodrigo del Pozo…who appears as a character in Joshua Book 2! (bringing some important and very surprising news to Josh and his mother…)
And here are the wonderful, sorrowful words in which someone asks of God – “What the heck do you know about our suffering? And who are you to judge?” – a thought that even the most devout believer will have at times of difficulty. I admire the lyric for its brutal honesty.
(translated from the Latin)
My soul is weary of my life;
I will leave my complaint upon myself;
I will speak in the bitterness of my soul.
I will say unto God, Do not condemn me;
show me wherefore thou contendest with me.
Is it good unto thee that thou shouldest oppress,
that thou shouldest despise the work of thine hands,
and shine upon the counsel of the wicked?
Hast thou eyes of flesh? or seest thou as man seeth?
Are thy days as the days of man?
are thy years as man’s days,
that thou inquirest after mine iniquity,
and searchest after my sin?
Thou knowest that I am not wicked;
and there is none that can deliver out of thine hand.
And for another treat, here’s the O Magnum Mysterium performed by a Spanish choir.
