Light drizzle

The light drizzle continues. There is some respite tonight, and there is a promise of a fine week. But the last month has been miserable.

We had a taste of Oxford life on saturday. I had a 5-a-side tournament in the drizzle, interspersed with raining-cats-and-dogs, which turned into a lovely mud wrestling tournament. But afterwards, we scraped off the worst of the mud and headed up to the Turf. Now Oxford isn't your average uni, rather than a campus it is a city with colleges and faculty buildings throughout. So there are many pubs throughout. The Turf is hidden down a walkway, not advertised at all from the street. It has two large beer gardens (part covered, the drizzle don't you know), surrounded by ivy covered walls and glimpses of spires, and murals of famous politicians getting up to mischief (Bob Hawke used to drink there, and set some record). And it has much pretension, brought by the students in their academic garb and large scarves.

And we were there during the exam period. Apparently they celebrate finishing exams at Oxford the way we celebrate finishing high school: muck-up day. Except they do it continuously everytime someone finishes. So the pub was full of younguns in academic gown, covered in glitter, shaving cream, bubble wrap, ballons, and strange mushroom hats (for someone studying fungi). But we had fun soaking in the 10 minutes of sunshine that came along at 8 o'clock at night.

From there we headed on to a very interesting little bar, again hidden, this time behind high wrought iron fences, past the porter's office, and then follow the signs for the library. It was a women's college bar, where you could get a beer for a quid. The sixties decor and the sneaking past the porter made it feel like we were in a boarding school movie, and that we were going to get in trouble for having boys in after lights out.

Ahh, Oxford.