All entries for Thursday 04 November 2004

Election Night in Oxford

Norwood has set up this blog so that we can give a few of our impressions of our time here in England and keep all of our friends back home up to date on what we are up to. Enjoy! Kerry

Norwood and I spent election night in Oxford. Our friend Laura, who is also a fellow in the history department here managed to get tickets to a panel discussion about the election at the Oxford Union. The union also had a tv set up to show the election results. The panel was interesting but by the time the tv room was set up the place was packed. Luckily we ran into another friend who is studying at Balliol College who invited us to come watch back at a lounge in his college's dorm, which was much better, plus they could get CNBC and CNN. We also got a quick sneak peek at Balliol, the oldest university at Oxford (though at least 3 other colleges claim the same prestige) which was neat all of the colleges are gated at night and only students are allowed in. Since results didn't start coming in after midnight here I ended up napping through a lot of it. Finally, by 6:00 a.m. we gave up on the increasingly dismal results and headed back to the home of a Warwick University professor who lives in Oxford and let us stay at her place when we were done. It is a beautiful large house and we were really thankful to have a place to stay and sleep for a few hours. The next morning with the results more or less conclusive we gathered to commiserate and bitch. Norwood went to the Bodleian Library and said the traditional pledge to become a reader there—basically some mutterings about not setting the fire to the place. I decided the best cure was to go shopping and bought a few Christmas presents and just generally walked around. I really like Oxford. If I ever got a job in publishing here I think I would prefer to have it in Oxford actually rather than London. Besides being slightly less expensive than London, though from what I understand Oxford can still be somewhat expenisive, it seems a bit smaller and nicer (in the center anyway) and of course as Norwood said "It's academic Valhalla!"
Kerry

: 04 Nov 2004 19:48 |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Hey there, world!

Welcome to a series of occasional comments on eclectic topics by me, Norwood, and by Kerry. We're here at Warwick only briefly, but hope to make good use of this, our little platform. Come embark with us upon our journey into the future.

: 04 Nov 2004 17:40 |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem