Out & About in Oxford - A Gloriously Riotous Mess

I had a great morning mooching around Oxford!  The afternoon will be dedicated to gardening - yet again! but the weather is good and I had an enjoyable morning, so am ready for some heavy duty slashing & burning.  I dropped by college and picked up my post, which included my newly purchased gardening gloves.  Not the wimpish sort available in gardening centres, which are of no use whatsoever against the inch long thorns of pyracanthas, but the sort used by people who have to pick up needles and glass shards. Usually they cost £150 (yikes!) but Ebay obliged with a pair for £15 including postage, so I look forward to gardening without shredded hands for once.

Around the corner from my house is a patch of land dedicated to weeds, and it never fails to cheer me up when I pass it on my way to work or my breakfast Cafe.  A few weeks ago the dandelions dominated, this week it is buttercups.

Walking down St Clements I stop at the local grocery store for The (Manchester) Guardian and a chat with the knowledgeable grocer, then turn into the High Street, and dip into Valerie's for my currently favourate breakfast - poached eggs and smoked salmon.  You have to go early, after ten the tourists and sleepy locals arrive and the place gets crowded.

View from the window of Valerie's

After an hour or so I donate my newspaper to the next customer and slither down Cornmarket, ending up at the heart of town, St Mary Magdalen's Church.  It is surrounded by a beautiful churchyard, full of rakishly angled gravestones and flowering weeds.

The church was quite busy this morning, because the bishop is coming to visit tomorrow and everything was being prepared for his visit, so I did not stay long.

Following my nose, I meandered down St Giles and decided to pay a visit to Jericho, near where I used to live as a student, thinking I might buy some wool in a wool shop in Walton Street.  I discovered, alas, that the shop had closed down - oh well, there is always Ebay.  I did discover that St Sepulchre Cemetery was open!  I used to go there all the time, twenty years ago, and remembered it as being a glorious riot of untidy gravestones and waist-high weeds.  Well, it still is!  Buildings have sprung up all around it, but the cemetery remains as messy and disheveled as always.  Long may it remain so!

Queen Anne's Lace and Bluebells - Glories of an English Spring!

Show down at St Sepulchre!