Oxford

I went to Oxford yesterday, to ease myself into getting out of the house and going places other than work.




Oxford Canal. I thought it was just a myth, but people really do go "punting" (a bit confusing for an Australian since punting means something a bit different to us) along the river/canal.


There are lots of lovely buildings all throughout Oxford, unfortunatey you can't see them for the mobs of tourists on walking tours taking photos (and the buses. So many buses!)


All I can say is ... ouch. I had to walk everywhere in the gutters because the olde cobbestoney paths were certainly not designed with faux-converse in mind. (Still, everyone rides bikes in Oxford, so the gutters were the safest place to be)


The good thing is, if you turn down a few sidestreets (and stay away from the big-name colleges) you can find pretty little streets and churches and courtyards everywhere, where you can sit and have your lunch without being run over by a tourist bus, or having people asking you to take photos of them.



And then if you take another turn you end up ...

(I won't knock that shopping centre, though. It might not look pretty, but it had a massive Primark and I bought a lifetime's supply of underwear for 7 pounds).
Or ... Mormons recruiting in front of the bank:


I went to the Oxford Museum of Natural History (University Museum) and Anthropology (Pitt Rivers Museum). They were AMAZING.
The University museum was this huge high-ceilinged room full of skeletons and stuffed animals and all sorts of good fun (I patted an otter. It was lovely).




Least convincing platypus I've ever seen.


(Hero in a half-shell. Unfortunately, everyone else there was either 15+ years younger than me, or 10+ years older than me, so they didn't get the joke when I started singing the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (or tortoises I suppose) song to myself).

The Pitts Rivers museum was strange. It was dark and cramped, and there was so much stuff in there that I couldn't really take it all in. I'd need a tourguide and at least a week to even scratch the surface.

Day-to-day Life in London

A ridiculously-high proportion of my time is spent on public transport. I did want to do a sort of 'day in the life' photo post for you all, but the funny thing is that in these modern times, the London Underground and Public Health Laboratories (who happen to have stockpiles of nice nasty bugs) aren't all that keen on people standing around taking photos of them. In fact, someone recently just got in a lot of trouble for filming London landmarks out of a minicab (he did look like of Muslim though, so of course he must be a terrorist. I'd probably be allowed to do the same thing because I'm white and female and therefore completely incapable of being a terrorist (of course, I am completely incapable of being a terrorist, but that's a personal issue not anything to do with my skin colour or gender)) so here's what I ended up with:



The tube station near work. Seriously, that's one of the more flattering shots I took. It's nto a pretty area. On the upside, as soon as I say the word "Colindale" to anyone who has anything to do with healthcare/medicine/science they get very impressed. As I found out on Friday, if you call up a company like BioMerieux or Oxoid and mention that magic word "Colindale" you can demand a discount and they give it to you.


I pretty much live on this bus. I spend more time on it than I spend at home.


The bus stop near my house. I seem to have moved into an area that will be fantastic and refurbished in a year or two, but at the moment is all road works and detours.


Daisy the cat, climbing up the side of the fridge because I haven't fed her yet. I've only accidentally called her "Curry" three or four (hundred) times.


Apparently "possibly" means "not at all" according to Katy who has actually tried these kebabs.

At the Pop Art Pirate Party

Yorkshire

I meant to post these photos ... um .... quite a while ago, but it's a long weekend so I've finally got around to doing it.

About 5 or 6 weeks ago I went to Yorkshire for the weekend. I was a bit lazy with the photo-taking, but here are a few that I did bother to take:

We went to "Bronte Country", and up on the moors. I don't know what everyone is always complaining about, the moors are quite pretty (...on a lovely summer's day).




It was quite strange - up on the moors, on the side of this big hill with nothing around except grass and heather, they had a cricket pitch (still surrounded with a stone wall, like everything else in Yorkshire is). Cars drove up from the towns in the valleys to play the match on this pitch in the middle of nowhere.


Yes, Aussies, this is how they barbeque over here. At first I was dubious (and I still wouldn't use one at home), but it actually worked really well.