wayfaring tree, happy new year!!!!

Wayfaring tree in flower, near Buckland, west Oxfordshire, 31st December 2017.

Happy New Year!!!!

blackcurrants

This Christmas we've been eating some of the blackcurrants that I harvested in the summer.

Though they've been frozen they are as piquant and as blackcurranty as the fresh ones - or at least that's how they seem in the depths of winter, with their taste of hot summer days.

whizzing s1, shortest day, raleigh park at dawn, robin singing

On the shortest day, the S1 bus whizzed from Witney to Oxford and I had a lovely walk to work from Botley.

Took this photo from Raleigh Park looking towards the city centre, which was completely obscured at dawn.

Fifteen minutes before - when it was still dark - I recorded a robin signing in Cumnor Rise Road.

☆♡☆♡happy christmas!!!!♡☆♡☆

☆♡☆♡Happy Christmas!!!!♡☆♡☆

Allotment beetroot soup!

witney market square, fantastic christmas lights, concluding seminar, lingering snow, christmas day beetroots, blue danube/shetland black lucky dip, can't wait for the christmas holidays!

Set off for work early, yesterday. Took this photo of the fruit and veg stall in Witney market square as I was waiting for the S1 Oxford bus. The Christmas lights in Witney are, incidentally, fantastic this year - including the long tassly ones hanging from the trees.

My concluding long fiction seminar on Thursday night. As I think I mentioned this is the tenth anniversary of when I started teaching this course on the University of Oxford Undergraduate Diploma in Creative Writing programme. I really enjoyed the discussions we had about experimental fiction and narrative shapes.

The snow is still lingering, although the temperature is significantly higher today and the rain has washed much of what remained at dawn away. The ice on our frog pond will take a few days yet to totally disappear, I suspect.

Went to the allotment before a late breakfast to harvest the beetroots for our Christmas Day soup and some chard. I was worried that the beetroots would have gone soggy in the frost but they seem OK.

Going to have either Blue Danube or Shetland Black spuds with lunch today - or a mixture of the two. There weren't that many of either variety when I harvested them, and they looked distinct at that stage, so I thought it wouldn't do any harm to put them in the same sack... I think I've managed to separate out the latter and it's these I'm imagining we'll have. But they all look pretty similar now they're dry!

Can't wait for the Christmas holidays!

snowy walks, the snow-muffled land, widford church, an unmissable walk

Walks from Burford over the weekend, including one through the snow on Sunday.

It was as if we were the only people - with the only dog - in the Windrush valley.

The snow was thick and the going tiring.

Sometimes I felt afraid - even though we were never far from one of the villages. The snow-muffled land can be a lonely place. There are just the animals and birds and the crunch of your steps. Once, the sound of a branch falling from a tree under the weight of the snow in a nearby wood.

A few minutes later we passed the 13th century church of St Oswald and the ground where once was the medieval village of Widford.

I wouldn't have missed that walk for anything.

More photos on Instagram.

finished digging, chard for lunch, chomping deer

Finished digging the allotment today.

Most of it, I did in the early autumn but three beds remained till last weekend, when I dug two of them.

I was fortunate that it hadn't got too wet. Some years it would be waterlogged by now.

Picked some chard for lunch. The plants that were sown this year are still going strong, although the self set ones have been chomped by deer...

Oxford full term is over. A very busy eight weeks it has been!

portrait unveilings, wio competition winners, outrageously beautiful views

I was pleased to be invited to the unveiling of the portrait of the Bodleian's 24th librarian, Sarah Thomas. The event took place in the gorgeous, fan-vaulted Convocation House, where the Lords sat during Charles I's Oxford Parliament in 1644. The portrait was painted by New York artist Ted Minoff, who gave a speech explaining some of the techniques he used and the portrait's underlying themes.

Not having been to portrait unveilings before, this is the second in a month. At the end of October, I attended the ceremony at St Antony's at which Benjamin Sullivan's painting of Professor Margaret MacMillan, the college's fifth warden, was unveiled by Lord Patten.

A fascinating tradition, this portrait unveiling.

Meanwhile the winners of the Writers in Oxford Young Oxfordshire Writers competition are celebrated on the WiO hompage. I've been enjoying re-reading the winning stories.

More outrageously beautiful views of Oxford on my walks to work this week, which the picture above only does partial justice to.

stupendous sunny days, tumbling bay, twenty pound meadow, monkey puzzle, wio 25th anniversary party and competition winners

There have some stupendous sunny days - in between the rainy ones - this last week.

The photo above was taken from the Thames towpath looking upriver towards the entrance to Tumbling Bay where there used to be an attended open-air swimming pool, now long gone. On the left bank are the Twenty Pound Meadow allotments, where we had a plot when we lived on Osney Island.

I remember one day at the Monkey Puzzle cider house in Worcestershire chatting to the landlady's father, who it turned out had grown up in west Oxford and used to swim at the Tumbling Bay pool. He said that as schoolboys they had crossed the railway tracks just to the north of Oxford station to get to the old chain ferry that used to cross the part of the river shown in the photo. He recalled how the drivers of the shunting engines used to open their throttles with the brakes on so that the wheels revved round menacingly, but without the engines moving forward, to give the kids a scare.

Really enjoyed the Society of Authors and Writers in Oxford party at Balliol. Lovely to see old friends and to find out the winners of the Writers in Oxford twenty-fifth anniversary Young Oxfordshire Writers competition. Will link to the competition page when the winners are posted there. I was part of the judging panel and was fascinated to learn the identities of the winners - there were no names on the stories when we read them, just numbers.

The above photo is the latest jtns photo to be posted on Instagram. See: https://instagram.com/justthoughtsnstuff.