Summer Came Late

I did not go to Oxford during the first week of term. Instead, I took a long walk in the village of Blockley. The summer was chilly, and finally in October, we had a day that was warm enough to go outside without a coat. The plan was to walk a circular route south and west through The Warren, then north to Norcombe Wood. A sensible person would use an Ordnance Survey, but I preferred the Tolkienesque hand-drawn map for my exploration of the unknown territory.

All of the photos from Blockley were taken by Lynn Childress on October 10, 2023.

I walked south through the village until I reached a dirt path into the woods. Whoever planned and built the village had a painterly eye.

The path ran along a hillside with woods to the right and a marshy wetland to the left. A two-minute recording on the Cornell Lab’s Merlin app identified six birds: Chaffinch, Great Tit, Goldcrest, Crow, Robin, and Wren. As the path turned westward, there were large pits in the hillside, probably where rock had been removed . . . maybe centuries ago.

When the path forked, I turned north into high, rolling farmland. The track ran along the edge of a field with rows of three-inch green shoots of what looked like grass (probably winter wheat). But somehow I got lost and didn’t realize it until a woman on a horse appeared. The horse was walking slowly. I remembered what Peter Ackroyd said in his book Revolution: The History of England, Volume IV. Ninety-nine percent of the people in seventeenth-century England walked everywhere and so did the horses. I backtracked to the farm and used the compass on my phone to head towards Blockley down a path that was not on the map. Within five minutes, I was back in the village—though when lost, I thought I was miles from civilization and wondered if I could walk far enough to make it back.

The successful completion of that adventure called for a treat: lunch at the village café. I sat outside at a curious table attached to the stone wall and ordered baked Camembert with sourdough roll and a pot of Earl Grey tea. The meal was served on a plank with a side of candied pecans. There were two sprigs of fresh rosemary, lightly toasted and crispy in the perfectly melted cheese. I did not expect to find such food in a small village. (Yesterday, at the local library, I was leafing through Oxfordshire’s celebrity chef Raymond Blanc’s cookbook Simply Raymond: Recipes from Home and saw a recipe for Baked Camembert [p. 248]. And there it was—with sprigs of rosemary in the cheese, sitting on a plank with sourdough bread.)

When I fail to complete a circular path, I start at the other end to try to connect from the opposite direction. So, I headed to Norcombe wood along the path that ran behind the school. There were seventeen pheasants in the field that flew away squawking as I approached. They (the males at least) are likely hunted, so their fear is understandable. The path opened out into a beautiful panoramic rolling green grassy hill and valley, with a folly and other hills in the distance.

No one was there. I took off my shoes, sat in the grass for several hours, and wrote this poem.

Summer Came Late

While the world sweltered in July/August,
English temperatures remained robust.
Then Summer remembered us in England,
where grasses, long and green, on hilltops stand,
sad, awaiting the appointed meeting.
When Summer came to say she was cheating—
she had decided to live with Autumn.
We threw off coats for a moment of sun,
walked in the lanes of honey-stone Blockley,
pocketing a rose petal from the scree.
But carrion crows were hungry for death,
so, Autumn impatient sent a chill breath.
Then ring-necked pheasants cried out and took flight
and we to the café for warmth that night.

Meanwhile in Oxford . . .

I love Ruby Granger’s excitement about her first day at Oxford and that she captured one of the best days of her life in this video. It contains some beautiful footage from the interior of the Radcliffe Camera. This library is not part of the Bodleian Library tour, so only university members would be able to see the inside.

Both Ruby Granger and I (not consciously) are creating images of Oxford by the selection of certain details. Even the above description of Blockley would be altered if I had mentioned that a certain BBC TV program had been filmed there (fortunately, I did not know that until someone told me on bus going home).

I did not recognize the building where Ruby says that she has quite a few of her classes this term. In 1986, the classes for the English MSt. were taught at the English Faculty building at St. Cross. This is also where the English Faculty Library was located. The books that English majors needed were kept in this library and could be borrowed (unlike the books in the Bodleian). That library was quite drab and institutional in appearance, suitable for a local community college—and not the image that one would choose to represent Oxford. Since the video was made on Ruby’s first day, there is a possibility that she had not been to the English Faculty building. However, it is also omitted in the video that she made about her first week at Oxford (see below). In that video, she goes to the stunning Taylorian Library. When I was at Oxford, only Romance Language majors could use the Taylorian. I had to get a letter from my tutor saying that I needed one of its books before I could go there. Now I am wondering if the St. Cross building is still in use.

One thing that has not changed is the academic gown that is required for Matriculation and formal dinners. For a description of my 1986 trip to Walters, see Turl Street, Not Exactly Diagon Alley. You can see from the picture in my post that my gown is the same as Ruby’s; however, I chose a soft hat rather than the mortarboard. Like Ruby, I also picked up some college paraphernalia.

The title of Ruby’s video, “First Week Living and Studying in Oxford,” is slightly misleading. This is an account of Noughth Week (week 0 before term starts). She has lunch at the dining hall at her college, meets the people on her course, and continues to frequent Pret. Prêt à Manger did not exist in Oxford when I was there. They opened their first shop in London in 1986. The café that I went to was Brown’s in the Covered Market. If it is still in business, it would be the closest tea shop to Jesus College.

Photo by Lynn Childress, taken in 2007.