oxford

My notes on my 3 days in Oxford:

Never stops raining. It’s still beautiful, however; a good test of a city, does it look good in the rain? Stone responds to the light and air, to rain. Concrete just stays concrete, i.e. dead.

Americans everywhere. Exchange students, no doubt. You can recognise them from afar – the males in their shapeless baggy shorts, the females with their permatans and lustrous blonde hair and empty eyes. Then the voices. They never shut up, trying to stamp their hideousness on Oxford like graffiti. Vermin, sweep them aside with my expandable baton. Carrying on outside my window till 0200. Stupid bitch screaming: “UCLA baby!” after midnight. Tempted to stick my head out and call out, “i say, a chap’s trying to sleep here, what what?” Then go out with my baton and beat them to death.

i wander down New College Lane. Deserted in the rain. i hear a woman singing, piano, i stop. i am back 10 years in Durham on Palace Green, walking by the Music School, hearing music washing out into the rain.

i see a mirrored window and preserve my foul image for posterity:

Very few chavs. They congregate on Cornmarket Street near McDonald’s and the like. They are repelled by the old stone, the colleges, the chaps in waistcoats. Dalrymple was right, the lower man is not merely indifferent or oblivious to beauty, he hates it. Same at Durham, there were generally no lowlifes (except students) on the Bailey or Palace Green. They feel out of place there, as i would in a shopping mall or ghetto.

The sustained rush of pleasure, at being surrounded by good old stone, buildings from a better, bloodier age. i could happily run through these streets with a spear, killing.

Damn rain. Damn Americans.

Aha, a tobacconist’s. Go in, confess i wish to take up smoking to cock a snook at Nu Labour. A grizzled old warrior behind the counter advises me on the right pipe. i am now equipped to deal a great blow to the Government. Soon i shall saunter through the hospital with my waistcoat and pipe, i shall beat the Smoking Patrol Officer down with my expandable baton, stroll into a ward and offer my diagnoses of the patients, puffing away on my pipe while the buxom nurses sigh and gaze at my waistcoat, and later say, “now that was a real doctor! He had strong teeth.”

The Eagle and Child, Tolkien’s local. Full of tourists but ‘literary tourists’, fellow Tolkien-buffs no doubt, though i dare say the occasional paedophile CS Lewis fan ends up here too, the filthy animals. Despite the tourists it feels like an old pub, nice staff. A good ham pie for £7. Lots of mashed potato. Hmm, mashed potato – Viking warrior food.

The Grand Cafe on High Street. Swanky as Bertie Wooster and no mistake. My waistcoat feels at home here. Scones with cream, jam, butter, and a pot of Earl Grey. Satisfaction, unbearable joy almost,

No Gregg’s nor Sayer’s visible, a blessed thing indeed. If i had my way McDonald’s would be closed and replaced by a MILF brothel for discerning chaps. All MILF would wear waistcoats.

i find a copy of Beckett’s Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable trilogy for £3 and read it in various dens, pubs, cafes and restaurants escaping from the rain. Sample glories from Molloy:

The more things resist me the more rabid I get. With time, and nothing but my teeth and nails, I would rage up from the bowels of the earth to its crust, knowing full well I had nothing to gain. And when I had no more teeth, no more nails, I would dig through the rock with my bones.

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and here is Moran sending his son off to buy a bicycle:

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I shouted his name. He turned again. A lamp! I cried. A good lamp! He did not understand. How could he have understood, at twenty paces, he who could not understand at one. He came back towards me. I waved him away, crying, Go on! Go on! He stopped and stared at me, his head on one side like a parrot, utterly bewildered apparently. Foolishly I made to stoop, to pick up a stone or a piece of wood or a clod, anything in the way of a projectile, and nearly fell. I reached up above my head, broke off a live bough and hurled it violently in his direction. He spun round and took to his heels. Really there were times I could not understand my son. He must have known he was out of range, even of a good stone, and yet he took to his heels. Perhaps he was afraid I would run after him. And indeed, I think there is something terrifying about the way I run, with my head flung back, my teeth clenched, my elbows bent to the full and my knees nearly hitting me in the face. And I have often caught faster runners than myself thanks to this way of running. They stop and wait for me, rather than prolong such a horrible outburst at their heels. As for the lamp, we did not need a lamp.

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Later, a strange man finds Moran waiting for his son to return from his bicycle-buying trip:

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How long have you been here? he said. His body too grew dim, as if coming asunder.  What is your business here? he said. Are you on night patrol? I said. He thrust his hand at me. I have an idea I told him once again to get out of my way. I can still see the hand coming towards me, pallid, opening and closing. As if self-propelled. I do not know what happened then. But a little later, perhaps a long time later, I found him stretched on the ground, his head in a pulp. I am sorry I cannot indicate more clearly how this result was obtained, it would have been something worth reading. But it is not at this late stage of my relation that I intend to give way to literature.

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That’s the stuff all right. Stop briefly at the Bodleian. i refuse their guided tours but observe their doors:

i refuse all guided tours. i walk in the rain as a damp ghost stinking of wet dog. i gaze at Christ Church, Corpus Christi, New College, refuse to enter. At Durham i could enter any college at will, as a god. i will not pay and see some famous gallery or two as a tolerated outsider. Feel very Jude the Obscure. Rejected for PhD at Edinburgh, Cambridge, and Durham. Weeping. i collapse into the gutter and raise my hands to the skies and bellow: “Why?” Passers by urinate on me. i fall onto my face and perish.

Enough self-pity. Stop at the Grand Cafe and eat a stout breakfast.

By the time i have finished this i have grown mutton-chop whiskers. Later i see my ideal house and weep again: