Box of Rain

An ex-friend said that she had found Paradise and invited me to visit her there. I spent three days driving from Wisconsin (on the northern border of the US) to The Villages in Florida. Sixty elderly people strumming guitars and singing “Puff, the Magic Dragon” is not my idea of Paradise. When I returned, it took me days to recover from the shock and horror, which I shared with everyone I knew. That experience was recently called to mind by Sam Kriss’s article in The Lamp, “Shadow on the Sun: A Tour of the Villages.” I left it open on a tab, maybe months ago, and found it while searching for a recipe, somewhere on another tab that I could not find (so much for the leek with Gruyère tart). Where did this article come from? It must have been a link in one of the Substacks that I subscribe to. I wondered if I had subscribed to Sam Kriss’s Substack, Numb at the Lodge. Sure enough, I found him in the list of 112 Substacks that I currently read (as well as a dozen other newsletters that are not on Substack).

This is not a good beginning for a post, as I have now sent most if not all my readers to a long article that is better written than what follows and The Villages and Paradise have nothing to do with morning routines at Oxford. However, now that the readers have left the room, I can be a bit indulgent and wander around, semi-coherently and half awake.

I have no morning routine, no alarm clock, and no night-before preparation, but I am not as spoiled as Belinda in Alexander Pope’s Rape of the Lock. For I must pretend to be the servant Betty and make up a tray of tea and toast for myself, which I take back to bed.  I heard the postman deliver a letter, but I would have to go downstairs to retrieve it. Best to stay in bed and read what is within arm’s reach or write some Morning Pages. Belinda’s lapdog Shock leaps up and licks her face to wake her up. My dog Rose was too chill to do that. She would sleep with her head on the pillow like a human. On waking, she would do a downward dog stretch before jumping off the bed.

I designed my own sheets and sell them at Spoonflower. The design is called “Box of Rain” inspired by the pattern of raindrops on my window.

Box of Rain sheet set by Lynn de Anne

The title comes from a song of the same name by the Grateful Dead on the American Beauty album. I never owned the album. My friend John Rhodehamel left the vinyl record at my house back in 1975. If you are too young to remember this song, it is well worth a listen “for this is all a dream we dreamed one afternoon long ago.”

My mornings do not follow any patterns. At various times, I would read a chapter from Thomas à Kempis’s Imitation of Christ or The Rule of St. Benedict or Oswald Chambers’s My Utmost for His Highest or A. J. Russell’s God Calling. When I was living in the college chaplain’s cottage, I read the Daily Office. At other times, I read Ryan Holiday’s Daily Stoic or Sarah Ban Breathnach’s daybook Simple Abundance: A Daybook of Comfort and Joy. Today I read Andy Beer’s Every Day Nature, published by the National Trust, for a daily dose of nature. Actually, I love books that have a daily reading.

It was the same when I was at Oxford though my choice of music had changed. There were no habits or routines.

“Oxford, Saturday, October 24, 1987

I woke up at 9:30 in the morning, after three hours sleep, and it’s a gorgeous day. One of those sunny, golden October days in Oxford when all the trees are russet and yellow. The whole town is the color of Keble College bricks. Everywhere it is just magnificent.

I got up and made buckwheat pancakes, bacon, and loads of coffee. It was wonderful. I have the glass coffee table right next to the bed; I indulged myself and bought a soft, fluffy pillow. So, I have two pillows on my bed, plus the triangular green one, so I can read in bed very comfortably. In fact, I spend too much time in bed. I turned on the tape player and listened to classical music while I was having breakfast. It was lovely.”

Morning Routines at Oxford before the Twentieth Century

My daily religious reading was in keeping with the morning routines at Oxford prior to twentieth century. These are described in Andrew Dunning’s paper on St Frideswide and Jesus College: “If you were a student in Oxford before the twentieth century, you were expected to be ready to go before sunrise every single day to sing a service of morning prayer called matins. It forms a true workout for the mind. You would have been expected to memorize the entire book of psalms and many other sung texts for the occasion. This exercise front-loaded the day with a range of texts used for instructional purposes. It focused on a combination of biblical texts, patristic commentaries, and saints’ lives. The medieval version of matins lasts for about two hours, but it became much less complex after the Reformation. Nonetheless, the 1622 statutes of Jesus College [Ruby Granger’s college] still specify that it is to begin between five and six in the morning.”

Ruby’s Morning Routine at Oxford

The 6:30 a.m. Oxford morning routine of Ruby Granger on a day with classes is very structured, as you would expect from a woman who sells daily planners (rather than bed linens). She says “I’m definitely a creature of habit,” as she proceeds to make tea, brush her teeth, put in contacts, and do facial care. No going back to bed for Ruby. She makes her bed and puts on her clothes while listening to classical music. Then she sits at the desk and drinks her tea while studying Latin. One thing that you will notice about Ruby is that she multitasks.

“The morning routine” is almost a genre now. Here is another Oxford University morning routine that was posted by Ewa Hanna in November 2020.

I hope that these videos are still around in fifty years. It will be interesting to see the old appliances, technology, and clothing. They are documents of the ordinary.