Oxford Cases

We revisited Oxford today because last time we promised ourselves we’d come back to see more. We drove to the nearest Park and Ride and caught the bus into the city. Today Oxford was sunny, warm and packed with tourists and families come to see their children graduate. As we got off the bus, Lyn was observing everything in her usual manner - as I have said before in this blog, she likes looking at people, and misses nothing.

First visit was to the Ashmolean Museum for coffee and a free highlights tour. The guide loved her work. When last here I’d concentrated on the ancient artefacts. The tour gave us the chance to gain an overview of the whole collection including two favourites: the Alfred Jewel and Uccello’s ‘The Hunt in the Forrest’.

Then we headed for the Natural History Museum which was full of wonders, from stuffed animals to dinosaurs.

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Adjoining this extraordinary collection was the Pitt Rivers Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. Pitt Rivers was a pioneering archaeologist famous for meticulous observation and recording. You could spend days here discovering things. I’m sure the curators aren’t sure about what they own. (Half the labels are handwritten - in fountain pen - probably when they were first acquired.) There are glass cases and drawers full of everything imaginable: Inuit clothing, Nigerian charms, Venetian beads, Samurai armour, shrunken heads, model boats - arranged by type rather than by civilisation or chronology. I can’t really do justice to this priceless museum of knick knacks but Lyn, no museum fan, was fascinated. I even found an early version of table-tennis.

Already in overload, the only solution was a quick lunch and a pint at an Oxford pub. We chose The Lamb and Child. This place, like every Oxford pub, can lay claim to a famous past. The sign on the back of the toilet door was a reminder that Oxford is now multicultural.

At 2.00 we met our tour leader for a guided walking tour of Inspector Morse’s Oxford. For those who don’t know, Colin Dexter wrote a series of novels which inspired three TV series: ‘Morse’, ‘Lewis’ and ‘Endeavour’. Lyn has read all the novels and watched many of the TV episodes. All are set in Oxford, hence the themed tour.

We looped around Oxford for two hours, seeing the sights and being regaled with Morse trivia. Heidi, our guide, could have filled a glass case in the Pitt Rivers collection with Morsemania. It was great fun but we were the only foreigners. Inevitably we got shown the pub where Bob Hawke held the drinking record, and where Bill Clinton, “did not inhale”. 

Finally, after a last cup of tea, we caught the bus back to the Park and Ride. Lyn, after an afternoon of Morseology, was in fine form. She looked at me seriously and said, “You see that woman and her daughter. They were on the bus this morning. The mother was wearing high heels and the daughter had boots. They’ve swapped! The mother must have got tired feet so she’s wearing the boots. You can see the high heels don’t fit her daughter properly.” What can you say? Both Pitt Rivers and Endeavour Morse would have been impressed.

A quiet day tomorrow I think.