First of all, to address those of you who accuse me of having too much fun and not working enough: I'll have you know I wrote an entire piano piece and accompanying essay in under two weeks. It's simply more fun to tell you about my punting adventures and harrypotteresque high table banquets than it is to describe myself sitting in my dorm room of an evening, nose three inches from the computer screen, puttering away at the midi keyboard.
So besides that, some of my accomplishments these past two weeks include making the pilgrimage to Christ Church to see the "real" Hogwarts (and forgetting my camera), seeing a play, and having two weekends-full of choral monkey business.
The aforementioned play was a spontaneous outing last Saturday afternoon with two friends to see The Picture of Dorian Gray at the Oxford Playhouse. Despite committing the almost unforgivable sin of being a play without music (I should say "without songs;" there was a small string ensemble perched above the stage that provided mood music from time to time), Dorian Gray was marvelous. Behold the trailer:
Oh, I picked a church. It's the cathedral in the college called Christ Church (but woe betide ye who try to call it "Christ Church College," for ye shall be smote. Smitten.). Last Sunday was "Bible Sunday" (it's a Church of England thing, don't ask me) and the sermon was mostly about various translations of the Bible. The priest had unearthed some really fantastic King James passages that talked about children issuing from Abraham's bowels and souls being plagued by "a superfluity of naughtiness."
On Monday I had a dinner in the hall. This was the Introductory Dinner, so it was the only one we don't have to pay for. Ergo I went. Dress code was "smart" with robes. It was multi-course and candlelit and all that, with an army of waiters buzzing around making sure everyone's plate landed on the tablecloth in perfect synchronization. I found the food a little strange--the salad, for instance, was a bowl of hot stringy smashed beet goo (Dwight Schrute would be proud), followed by a main course of exceptionally dry chicken and culminating in a tiny dish of cobbler next to a great wad of whipped cream--but it was hot, and as I said before, FREE. And I got to wear my dress. Huzzah.
There was a bit of unscheduled excitement on the hall the other night...a neighbor of mine came into the hall just after 1:00 am, presumably drunk out of his mind and swearing loudly. He began to be loudly and violently sick, swearing and hollering the whole time. This went on for about an hour and a half. I stayed in bed and heard the entire performance. I will say in his favor that he was up early the next morning scrubbing the bathroom with great dedication.
At the complete opposite end of the fun scale is all the choral debauchery that has gone down in the past two weeks. I've learned that wine seems to be really integral to the basic structure of the Wadham College Chapel Choir. The chaplain came into the choir common room one night deeply concerned that we didn't have any wine and bearing fresh bottles. He himself solemnly vowed to keep us well supplied. "I shall never let you run dry," quoth he. Last weekend we saw a celebrity in a pub. I vaguely recognized him from Love Actually. Apparently he and another guy host shows over here like "Britain's Got Talent." They're known collectively as Ant and Dec. Didn't mean much to me, but the rest of the choir was all atwitter and trying to nonchalantly take secret pictures of him. The guy on the left in the striped sweater is the one we saw in the pub:
Last night after choir rehearsal was another absolutely wonderful evening of choir shenanigans, beginning with a potluck dinner (the concept having been imported by a Lutheran from Michigan and rechristened by an Englishman as "a bit of a knees-up") and concluding much later in the King's Arms pub. Hopefully pictures will be up on Facebook soon, but I didn't take them so I'm not in charge of these things.
This coming week is packed full of choir events, so look for another report maybe next weekend.
Linguistic notes from this week:
- The term "restroom" may or may not lead you to a toilet.
- Math in England is plural. Here at the University of Oxford one studies "maths."
- And the coup de grâce: whipped cream is called "squirty cream."
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