I'M FUCKING DONE

shakahislop

Well-known member
I quite like Oxford as a city, albeit one with very little to do in it once the pubs close. The old buildings and stupid one way systems remind me somewhat of my adoptive home of Lisbon. I'm sure I'm in an enormous minority here but I like those comfy olde worlde pubs such as the Kings Arms or The White Horse or.... whatever.
I was born in Swindon, the village I grew up in was in Berkshire then but they redrew the lines at least once and now it's in Oxfordshire. I guess that area.... Wantage, Didcot and so on will always be part of me, for better or worse. Like everywhere else some bits of it are really good if you're the right kind of person and in the right place to benefit from it. If you're not.... well....
we are from the same endz bruv. want to start a postcode war? yeah there's loads to like. loads and loads. blessed part of the world i always think, but obviously its hard to be at all objective about it.
 

shakahislop

Well-known member
I can't speak for Kidlington as I've never been there, but my gran lived in Didcot, and I've been to Banbury a couple of times, and they are both hideous unplaces.

But then, we've all got to live somewhere, and Oxford rejoices in being the most unaffordable city in the UK, quantified as the ratio of house prices or rents against median income. (Cambridge apparently isn't far behind, probably second.)
hideous yeah. but finally this is what the south of england is like if you're poor, this is the kind of place that you live, places like didcot and banbury. if you're from here this is what you inherit. or if you need to be in oxford but aren't pretty rich and want to buy a house, this is where you go to live.

here's a sticker that i'm amusing myself by plastering around nyc

1641640849155.png
 

shakahislop

Well-known member
we are from the same endz bruv. want to start a postcode war? yeah there's loads to like. loads and loads. blessed part of the world i always think, but obviously its hard to be at all objective about it.
just for the record @IdleRich, i don't have any of the skills necessary to be much use in a postcode war
 

luka

Well-known member
we are from the same endz bruv. want to start a postcode war? yeah there's loads to like. loads and loads. blessed part of the world i always think, but obviously its hard to be at all objective about it.
I've never quite nailed down which county @Corpsey is from but he's from the Chilterns too. so is Simon Reynolds (Hertfordshire).
 
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luka

Well-known member
See the source image
 

luka

Well-known member
People have been trespassing on a former quarry and swimming in its "highly toxic" water pools.
Residents complained to Henley MP John Howell about antisocial behaviour and parking obstructions near Old Kiln Lakes in Chinnor, Oxfordshire.
Mr Howell said "gangs" had visited the fenced off site "without any concern for social distancing".
Owners of the former quarry Taylor Wimpey said it had deployed security guards with dogs to patrol the site.
A spokesperson told the BBC it shared concerns with residents that people were "illegally accessing" the land and said it was "carrying out daily fence repairs".
Old Kiln Lakes

Image caption,
Thames Valley Police said the site "should not be visited under any circumstances"
They said a small part of the site, which has been owned by Taylor Wimpey since 2010, is a publicly accessible nature reserve and the remainder is fenced off with warning signs.
The quarry's steep edges and deep water in its fenced-off section, named by locals as the "blue lagoon", presented a "number of health and safety risks", a statement said.
Thames Valley Police warned the water, which contains high alkaline substances, was "highly toxic and can cause serious health issues".
Mr Howell said it was "absolutely appalling" that "gangs of people were out trying to make merry without any concern for social distancing" following the easing of the coronavirus lockdown measures.
A police spokesman said it was working with the landowner to "disperse those who have accessed the site".
"A Section 34 dispersal order is in place and will be enforced where necessary to tackle anti-social behaviour," the spokesman said.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
hideous yeah. but finally this is what the south of england is like if you're poor, this is the kind of place that you live, places like didcot and banbury. if you're from here this is what you inherit. or if you need to be in oxford but aren't pretty rich and want to buy a house, this is where you go to live.

here's a sticker that i'm amusing myself by plastering around nyc

View attachment 10115
I used to play against Didcot at football, they always used to beat us;.
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
I grew up in Oxfordshire, at the foot of the Chilterns. From my teenage years until very recent years I thought of it as a non-place/cultural backwater, etc. (albeit with nice scenery and all the sentimental attachments of friends and family).

I still think it's pretty boring but as I've matured (or rotted) I'm become more attracted to the quiet life – walks in the hills, riverside pubs, etc. Oxford (and yes I'm thinking really of the more picturesque parts, and especially in spring and summer) seems like a much more appealing place to live than it used to, although of course I'm totally unable to afford to do that.

I didn't apply to Oxford or Cambridge, although I could have I suppose – can't remember why now but I was probably just applying to the same places as my friends, really. (That's why I ended up going to Nottingham.) Now I naturally regret this, being plagued by thoughts of "What could have been" (while knowing that what would have been would have been a lot different than my quasi-Brideshead visions).

What Shaka said about the architecture, although I like it much more than he does, it's true that it's childish and like something from a fairy-tale – and for precisely that reason I often think it must be a quite magical place to go and study when you're still half a child, and especially if you've never been there or anywhere like it before. (I suspect that academic life at Oxford is also a bit childish – like Hogwarts with booze.)

Although in certain subjects (on paper at least) I was among the cleverest people in my school year I do wonder if I could have even hacked an Oxbridge degree. From what I've heard it involves a fuckload of work, even if you're studying a dosser's subject like English Literature – which would either have made or broken me.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
I grew up in Oxfordshire, at the foot of the Chilterns. From my teenage years until very recent years I thought of it as a non-place/cultural backwater, etc. (albeit with nice scenery and all the sentimental attachments of friends and family).

I still think it's pretty boring but as I've matured (or rotted) I'm become more attracted to the quiet life – walks in the hills, riverside pubs, etc. Oxford (and yes I'm thinking really of the more picturesque parts, and especially in spring and summer) seems like a much more appealing place to live than it used to, although of course I'm totally unable to afford to do that.

I didn't apply to Oxford or Cambridge, although I could have I suppose – can't remember why now but I was probably just applying to the same places as my friends, really. (That's why I ended up going to Nottingham.) Now I naturally regret this, being plagued by thoughts of "What could have been" (while knowing that what would have been would have been a lot different than my quasi-Brideshead visions).

What Shaka said about the architecture, although I like it much more than he does, it's true that it's childish and like something from a fairy-tale – and for precisely that reason I often think it must be a quite magical place to go and study when you're still half a child, and especially if you've never been there or anywhere like it before. (I suspect that academic life at Oxford is also a bit childish – like Hogwarts with booze.)

Although in certain subjects (on paper at least) I was among the cleverest people in my school year I do wonder if I could have even hacked an Oxbridge degree. From what I've heard it involves a fuckload of work, even if you're studying a dosser's subject like English Literature – which would either have made or broken me.
It's not just the amount of work, but the fact that it's squeezed into shorter terms than most other universities. Plus there's a huge emphasis on final exams, rather than on coursework, although that may suit some people better, and it may have changed in the last 20 years anyway. (I'm going mainly on what my GF has told me about her English degree, which she did in the early 00s.)
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
I still think it's pretty boring but as I've matured (or rotted) I'm become more attracted to the quiet life – walks in the hills, riverside pubs, etc. Oxford (and yes I'm thinking really of the more picturesque parts, and especially in spring and summer) seems like a much more appealing place to live than it used to, although of course I'm totally unable to afford to do that.

When I was young I thought that the idea of being an academic - someone who was actually paid to delve deeply into a beloved subject, who lived in free accommodation in a lovely old building in Oxford or St Andrews or something, surrounded by others who truly loved knowledge for its own sake, ate dinner in the grand hall every day and drank so much free red wine that he developed gout - was basically the best life imaginable. Then I discovered music, drugs, girls and stuff... and also, more importantly, I realised that those people I was idolising or simply envying were - despite likely being world leaders in their own incredibly specialised and obscure field - basically overgrown children who had chosen to be eternal students with the chance to play dress up at formal dinner once a month and be looked up to by kids - no doubt perving on any of the girls who gave them half a chance - instead of ever going out into the real world (whatever that means, it's definitely not this) they were indeed embedded in their own kind of fairy tale (the well chosen descriptor that someone appositely picked above).

What Shaka said about the architecture, although I like it much more than he does, it's true that it's childish and like something from a fairy-tale – and for precisely that reason I often think it must be a quite magical place to go and study when you're still half a child, and especially if you've never been there or anywhere like it before. (I suspect that academic life at Oxford is also a bit childish – like Hogwarts with booze.)

I know what you mean about the architecture I think. It's almost like a caricature of a picturesque English village but bigger (obviously I'm talking about the "good" bits here), such a good example that it seems unrealistic and thus childish. But I also think that you could kinda say the same thing about certain parts of Lisbon... and that makes me suspect that it's true of any city that is a too-good-to-be-true example of beautiful old architecture.

Certainly it has quite an effect on people seeing it for the first time. There was a long period during which I was going out with this girl who was doing her phd or something there and I was back and forth between London and Oxford almost every week. One time though (I forget why, maybe there was a party or something) I took a load of my friends from London down with me, I think we even went into her college somehow and for some reason (it's the one with the famous unicorn statue with a hilarious penis above the dinner table) and... well, most of the group of people I was with were native Londoners who lived in Bow at that time and it was really funny, they were gawping at everything like yokels in the big city (except in reverse) ooohing and ahhing at every college or overly ornate sandwich shop, and they almost lost it completely when we actually went inside (what's it called now, it's near the library and so on, kinda opposite that posh light blue coffee shop) her college. That was fascinating for me to see, cos it was something I'd taken for granted for my whole life but these worldly wise Londoners found it overwhelming. I'm thinking maybe @Mr. Tea was there too, does that ring a bell with you?

Another time we had a friend visiting from Germany. In fact he was Russian but lived in Dusseldorf and had a business trip vaguely near Oxford which meant that we were able to concoct some scheme whereby we registered my parents' house on AirBnB, set the price per night as the absolute maximum his company expenses would cover and then split the payments between us he he he... er, where was I, oh yeah, but the point is, one day we enticed him to come into Oxford and spend a day punting - two ideas that he responded to with extreme scepticism, in fact he almost flat out refused.... but, much as with the Londoners (in fact more so cos although they were clearly impressed they were also very cynical, bitter and negative about everything at the same time) he was captivated by the architecture and the town's beauty. He simply hadn't known that there were places like that in the UK and by the time he was ensconced in the punt with a glass of champagne in one hand and a punnet of strawberries or equivalent in the other, a massive blissful smile on his face (admittedly this last may have been aided by the enormous quantity of heroin consumed prior to casting off) he looked like a native, three hours there had made him into Sebastian Flyte. After a day spent punting, wandering around those corny olde worlde pubs, drinking lots of CAMRA approved type ales (and, yes, smoking heroin in every single one of the toilets) I was almost expecting him to invest in a blazer and start looking at houses for sale in Jericho.

I'm not trying to sell the place here by the way, I could never live there and there are loads of things I hate about it, I just think that these reactions were noteworthy.
 
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IdleRich

IdleRich
It's not just the amount of work, but the fact that it's squeezed into shorter terms than most other universities. Plus there's a huge emphasis on final exams, rather than on coursework, although that may suit some people better, and it may have changed in the last 20 years anyway. (I'm going mainly on what my GF has told me about her English degree, which she did in the early 00s.)
You know what? Those shorter terms were one of the factors in my decision... I wanted to get away, Cambridge terms were only 8 weeks and three of them added up to less than half the year. I wanted to be away for as much of the year as possible.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
The Grand Cafe in Oxford is the posh looking one the name of which I was trying to remember above. Despite its appearance I doubt it was there when the Inklings or whoever were meeting to do whatever it was they used to do at their meetings.


the-grand-cafe.jpg


the-grand-cafe.jpg


Cafe Brasilia in Lisbon is a famous one where radical intellectuals used to meet and plot the downfall of the government.

a-brasileira.jpg


1641680624067.jpeg

I have a strange feeling that somehow certain types of cities can't help but growing to look like each other in certain ways.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
@IdleRich I'm not sure I can remember that one particular outing, but yeah, there were a fair few that we had, either while I was still in London or then in the Netherlands for a while, before I lived in Oxford itself (well, Headington) for three years or so.

The Inklings mainly used to meet in the Eagle And Child on St Giles, I think, which tastefully cashes in on, er I mean commemorates, its status as Tolkien's favourite pub with a plastic statuette of Gollum lurking above the bar.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
For my money, the best pub in Oxford isn't in 'town' at all, but is the White Hart in Headington, which I used to live very near to (a 45 second walk, as it happened). Fantastic massive beer garden out the back, good beers, not generally full of either tourists or students.
 

william_kent

Well-known member
I've been to Stephen Hawking's "favourite" Chinese restaurant in Cambridge, was "OK", but nowhere as good as the one as the other Chinese one down the road, on a corner diagonally opposite some playing fields, which was excellent - I find that there is a lot of trading on former glories in these Oxbridge places

The Simon Raven novels ( @IdleRich will know.. ) are especially hilarious when dissecting the Cambridge culture...
 
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