This Saturday I took the plastic cover off of the burgundy ball gown I got four years ago in Vienna, pulled on a pair of flat black shoes and ivory ruched opera gloves, and sat in front of the mirror for about an hour while my lovely friend Serena pinned my hair on top of my head in a chaotic tangle of twists and curls and braids. I met Andy (in white tie) outside, and off we went to the ball.
Yup, the ball. As in:
(Look out for the couple at about 0:17 with the woman in a blue scarf.)
His Excellency the Austrian Ambassador Dr Emil Brix brought himself and his impressive title here from London to host the Grand Viennese St Valentine Ball in the Oxford Town Hall. We waltzed and polkaed and quadrilled and marched and galloped and polonaised and mazurkaed as a vivacious orchestra frolicked its way through three hours of Strauss and company. It all evoked the strong sensation of being in Vienna again. I danced two dances--a staggeringly athletic polka and waltz--with a French friend, and spent the rest of the time hanging out with my date, dancing and having a wonderful time, enjoying the fabulous music. We ended the night dancing to An der schönen blauen Donau.
Just like that time four years ago in Vienna when I went to the ball in the Hofburg palace with my roommates, I have caught myself in the days after the ball absently humming songs like "I Could Have Danced All Night" and "Shall We Dance." I've earned some odd looks, but have made no effort to do anything about it. I intend to hang onto this sensation of having visited a fairy tale for as long as possible.
The photo album is here on Facebook, and there are two more very short videos from the ball: waltz and polka.
This is a short post, so I will now provide you with an appendix of relevant youtube videos so that you can waste as much time here as you normally would if you were reading one of the long effusions I usually write. The following three videos sum up Saturday night quite nicely:
The evening gatherings in pubs are becoming less like events worth recording and more a routine part of this surreal life in Oxford. They're not any less joyful, but they are less surprising. There is less of an urge to document every moment so that I can relive my time here later--which is kind of a problem, because when I'm not here, I know I'll want to relive every moment.
My two biggest accomplishments since we last spoke have been submitting my DPhil application to Oxford and turning twenty-five, both of which happened on the same day. Doing battle with an online application system does not the best birthday make, but I had a lovely evening out with friends and saw War Horse in the cinemaaaaaa. And as we all know, watching a horse movie DOES a great birthday make.
The next day I attended a gripping recital of my supervisor's compositions, and that weekend my mom arrived for a ten-day visit.
One event I will document in gory detail is the Burns Night dinner at Wolfson on the 26th. A brief context for the benefit of the Great Unwashed:
Robert Burns was an 18th Century Scottish poet who has since become a national hero and the inspiration for a glorious holiday. Those who require more historical detail may take advantage of the bibliography at the bottom of this post, but what I want to talk about now is the dinner and what followed.
Burns Night is a highly scripted ceremony that is observed with a strange combination of self-deprecating amusement and almost religious reverence. The guests followed a bagpiper into the hall where long tables were laid out for a formal dinner. After we found our places, the bagpiper established himself directly behind me and blasted those ungodly notes for all he was worth. This led me to the conclusion that bagpipes, while delightful, are really an outdoor instrument. Next a nearly-intelligible prayer was recited:
Some hae meat and canna eat,
And some wad eat that want it,
But we hae meat and we can eat,
And sae the Lord be thankit.
It was now time for the pinnacle event of the evening: The Piping In of the Haggis.
I mean, really. We start with the heart, liver, and lungs of a sheep ground up with some oatmeal and onions, and this is all smashed into the poor sheep's stomach and boiled. Which pretty much sums up the philosophy of British cuisine, as far as I can tell: when in doubt, mash it up and boil it.
(I hope my English friends will forgive me for that. I love your country--I really do!)
So this bulging sack of boiled sheep guts is plunked on a silver platter and paraded around the perimeter of the hall in a procession of bekilted men, lead by our favorite bagpiper, who is still honking away from the bottom of his plaid little heart.
Oh, don't worry, it gets better. Now we address the haggis. I am NOT making this up. Robert Burns wrote a lengthy poem, not about some haggis but rather to a haggis, in the same non-English as the above blessing. I understood about four words of it. Maybe if you record it and play it backwards it turns into English...it's worth a try. Or maybe it's the same backwards as forwards. I don't know.
Having said all those nasty things about haggis, the food was actually really good. I decided to go in a spirit of adventure and eat whatever landed in front of me on my plate, which turned out to be cock-a-leekie soup, a flap of beef, a pile of haggis with neeps and tatties, and typsy laird for pudding. Don't ask--I have no idea what most of that is. After finding out what haggis was, I decided to stop asking "what is this?" and just eat it in blissful ignorance. Eating the haggis was more of a mental exercise than anything else. I can honestly say that I enjoyed it.
After the meal, a few more people stood to perform various poetry recitations and toasts. The highlight was the traditional Toast to the Lassies. A Frenchman and an American put on their best Scottish accents and delivered this raucous tribute in the form of a hilarious poem that was rather determined to rhyme. Our friend Sneha retaliated with the Toast to the Lads.
We went upstairs for coffee and returned to the hall before long for the ceilidh. Rather than make you give yourself a hernia trying to pronounce that, I'll just provide the IPA:
['keI lI]
This is essentially a Scottish squaredance. The band played folk music while the announcer called out the steps and we all hopped and spun around the dance floor. I think the announcer was a little mystified by our general inability to follow the dance steps. The great minds of Oxford found it extraordinarily difficult to form a square.
Make world-changing discoveries and publish them in academic journals? Sure!
Stand in a square with three other couples? Easy there, skippy, don't let's get carried away.
Figure out how to do-si-do right shoulder to right shoulder? No one can live at that speed!
It was another one of those enchanted Oxford nights. Any day now I'm going to wake up and find that I've been working in a car wash all this time and happened to doze off and dream up this unbelievable adventure.
Well, that's enough for tonight. Sometime I'll have to tell you about the classical music pub quiz, Spamalot, Iron Chef Wolfson, and the Wadham Choir ladies' night, but this is plenty for now.
Well, it's been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon. I've had a week of quietly wonderful Christmas followed by a week of solitude in Oxford, and now the friends are starting to reappear. English Christmas #1: success.
With the end of Michaelmas Term came the mass exodus from Oxford. Undergraduates were forcibly ejected and replaced with townies who buzzed around doing their Christmas shopping downtown. There are Christmas trees and lights everywhere, and the town is lit beautifully at night.
There were several gatherings of friends and outings for tea, and one at a time most people eventually went home for Christmas. I spent the week of Christmas in Ipswich, which is in the east of the country. The city was beautiful, the week restful, and the company excellent. I stayed in a vicarage with the vicar and even weaseled my way into the church choir. Unfortunately by that point I had been suffering from the Plague for about two weeks, so my voice was in shreds, but we made it work.
Christmas Eve brought the midnight mass. I put on about seven layers of robes and gowns and medals and other assorted choral garments and came out looking like one of the Vienna Choirboys. The experience led me to a new theory: It is now my belief that Anglican folk wear this getup less out of ceremony and tradition, and more out of a desire to stay warm in those freezing stone churches. Twentieth-century heating is only marginally effective in these ancient buildings, but after putting on about fourteen wool dresses with nine hundred buttons down the front, you start to feel quite cozy.
Thusly attired, I followed the Initiated into the back of the church and, having had a total of an hour's experience with the entire repertoire and no idea of the choreography, sight read my way through the service. There's no experience quite like winging it in front of an audience. One feels...awake.
The service on Christmas morning was a bit easier, but there was still a fair amount of sight reading. The choir director made a fascinating choice in repertoire that morning when, upon being presented with a choir of about fifteen women and exactly two men, he decided this was the perfect opportunity to sing the Byrd Three-Part Mass, which was written for all men and has a bass part, a tenor part, and a treble part. Imagine, if you will, the scene in the vestry as we hastily rehearsed this, with fifteen church ladies screaming for Jesus, and one tenor and one bass each singing for all he was worth. I volunteered to double the size of the tenor section by joining it myself--I was sight reading anyway, and it looked like fun. So we did that.
We returned to the vicarage for the rest of the Christmas Day routine. The menu:
Presents and soup crackers
Christmas dinner (with Christmas crackers, paper hats, bread sauce, and Brussels sprouts being among the essential ingredients)
The ceremonial Christmas Nap
A walk in the park
The Queen's Christmas speech on TV (absolute silence and appropriate reverence are required; my singing of the lyrics of "My Country 'Tis of Thee" to the instrumental performance of "God Save the Queen" was unwelcome. From every mountainside let freedom ring.)
The eating of the Christmas log
The skyping of the family in St. Louis
Downton Abbey Christmas special on ITV. Andy seemed less enraptured than the rest of us and slept through most of it.
There was one note of sadness throughout this wonderful day. My little dog Kaiser, my precious friend of ten years and the treasure I longed for since I was about five years old, had to be put down unexpectedly on Christmas morning after a very rough night. He was the best companion I could possibly ask for: cheerful, playful, always happy to see us, getting joy out of the simplest things, doing his best all the time; a creature without sin, and I loved him. I am grateful that we could help him by making his suffering stop.
The rest of the week in Ipswich was just as good. We had a second Christmas on Boxing Day with the rest of the family. One highlight of the week was a day trip we took to Bury St Edmunds to see the remains of a huge abbey pulverized by Henry VIII. My inner eight-year-old was indulged as I climbed over and around and through the eerie landscape.
Oxford has been quiet in the week since I returned, but the solitude has given me a chance to deal with Kaiser and talk with my family a lot. Friends are now starting to return, and everyone is gearing up for Hilary term. I'm ready: let's do this.
Now look here, I turned my back on you for ONE MOMENT (okay, two and a half weeks), and suddenly we're in the middle of Thanksgichristmahanukkwanzikoxmas! What is the deal?
It was a fulfilling Thanksgiving. We gathered at Wolfson College for a potluck feast, organized by an American but attended by an assortment of international folk who were collectively stunned by the glorious gluttony laid out on the table before them. We began by going around the table and saying something we were each thankful for, which the uninitiated found to be a painfully awkward ritual. Then we stuffed ourselves full of tryptophan, and afterwards, through the haze of food coma, some in attendance began to air grievances. It was everything a good Thanksgiving should be.
The following Saturday Andy and I went to the New Theatre to see the Welsh National Opera do Il Barbiere di Siviglia in English. Linguistic transgressions aside, it was a great production and a delightful evening. At dinner beforehand we found ourselves sitting next to two dudes who were actually in the opera.
Voilà:
Sunday the 27th was the Wadham carol service. We really need to import this 9 lessons and carols thing to the land of the free and the home of the brave. An hour of alternating carols and Christmas-related readings? Yes please. I sang the solo on Once in Royal David's City from on high in the organ, which was a thrill. Writing about this evening can't do justice to it. It was a little bit magical.
Nine Lessons and Carols were followed by a party at the director's house, where I realized I hadn't been in a house for two months. An odd revelation. Alex Martin* was there.
During the following week I rode Harbo(u)r the Substantial, heard Mozart's Requiem live for the first time, auditioned to direct a community choir, finished Michaelmas term, and generally had a pleasant time with friends and Alex Martin. That Friday (Dec 2) was the Wadham Christmas dinner, where Alex Martin, as a regular member of the bass section of our choir, sang. Most of the debauchery that went down that night doesn't bear description, so I'll just tell you about the Twelve Days of Christmas and leave it at that.
We performed three times that night (twice from a balcony above the hall), for three different groups of merry diners, and we ended each set with the Twelve Days of Christmas. Now, I had been told about this event by Alex Martin and other people ever since I first joined the choir, but nothing prepared me for what actually happened. Every time--I'm not exaggerating, EVERY TIME--we sang "five gold rings," everybody (including those at the high table) stopped eating, stood on the tables, and hollered out the words with arms in the air. Every time. They pounded their fists on the tables and counted down with us: "Eight! Seven! Six! FIIIIIIIVE GOOOLD RIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIINGS!!!" It was wild.
The next day I went caroling in town with Alex Martin and a few other friends from the choir. Let's just say it didn't do anything at all to eradicate my lingering fantasy about what an English Christmas is exactly, which is based mainly on Charles Dickens. God bless us, everyone!
I've just realized how many events I have yet to cover in this post. I'll abridge things and present them in the form of a dull bulleted list.
On Sunday the 4th the choir (with Alex Martin, for he had not yet gone home) repeated our Nine Lessons and Carols service for Wadham alumni.
On Monday we celebrated the end of term in St Cross by watching a movie I highly recommend called The Fall. Watch it, it's super cool.
On Tuesday we sang the St Cross carol service in the stunningly conservative borderline-Catholic Pusey House, which is the chapel adjoined to but never (apart from the annual carol service) associated with St Cross. I sang with the volunteer choir for that, which squeaked by on a grand total of five hours of rehearsal. Alex Martin is not in that choir.
On Wednesday there was a choir-ish party (Alex Martin had gone home to the North by this point). The highlight of that event was the impassioned performance (lip synching and interpretive dance) of several Abba songs by a few men of the choir.
On Thursday I flitted around town with Andy** and his mom (mum, sorry) and had a marvelous time. This was repeated on Friday.
And here we is on Saturday. Not quite sure yet what tonight will have in store, but whatever it is, it's bound to be fun.
I leave you with this final notice: I have started my application to stay here and do a DPhil. World without end, amen.
*Alex Martin, you are hereby mentioned by name.
**My vow to Alex Martin is realized and fulfilled. You have both been mentioned. Merry Christmas, Alex Martin.
I've promised you a gloomy post, and here it is. I need to get it done today because I think I'm about to have a really fun Thanksgivingy end of the week and weekend. I'd better be gloomy while I can. Watch this to get yourself in the right state of mind:
Now that you're appropriately forlorn, I give you: Things That Don't Work.
Me. I don't work. I don't work at all. I am bruised and pulled and generally broken. Yesterday I walked to a riding school to be assessed for dressage lessons. They presented me with a 17.1hh-ish dark bay Warmblood gelding named Harbor (although they probably spell it Harbour because they're weird like that). He was a good old schoolmaster. He was very pleasant, and he expressed to me that if it was all the same what he'd really like to do was walk along the rail with the full weight of his head and neck resting on the bit. It took a lot of muscle power to inspire him, but he was obliging as long as he was convinced that I was putting forth more effort than he was. We got some good work done, and I really liked the instructor.
Oops, I've gotten cheerful by accident. I'll try again: With the exception of a single ride in October, it had been two months since I'd been on a horse, and all evening yesterday I could feel my back and legs slowly tightening, like a vice gradually clenching down on something. I woke up this morning, sat up on the mattress, and it hit me like a brick wall. OW. Every muscle in my arms, legs, shoulders, hips, and especially lower back hates me and would like me to know it. I feel about 90 years old. So...when do I get to ride again?
Next on the list of things that don't work is the shower. On my first morning here, I stumbled into the shower room, which would be nearly big enough for one person to stand in if the door didn't open in, and turned on the shower. It was icy. As in, hurts-to-hold-your-hand-under-it cold. I waited for a good ten minutes, and nothing changed. So, slimy from a two-day journey from the US, sore from my first night on the world's worst mattress and a pillow that a flight attendant would blush to give to someone, and mired in a haze of jet lag, I stood outside the minuscule shower and stuck my head under the frigid water to wash my hair. I decided at that moment that I hated this country--a position which I have since substantially revised.
Immediately after my "shower," I called maintenance, and to their credit the guy came in just a few hours. He tested the shower, and--it was fine. So then we went through the routine of him explaining to me how a shower works. I couldn't quite communicate to him that, yes, I do understand the concept. It was really cold this morning. I don't know why it's not now. But I do actually understand how to use a shower. Ah well. The water is hot now. You still can't actually adjust the temperature, but the one it's settled on permanently is acceptable. The only remaining issue with the shower is its size. Upon stepping into the shower, the temptation to say "Beam me up, Scotty!" is almost irresistible. Like the small space in the shower room outside the shower, there is nearly room for one person. The water pressure is, I would say, enthusiastic. True, it's better than too-low water pressure. But when you turn the water on and the pressure is so high that the shower head pivots up and slams itself against the wall with the water rocketing sideways into the opposite wall, well above your head, a shower then becomes more of a challenge.
We have a thief on our hall. Two weeks after I got here, things started disappearing from the kitchen, including my plate and fork, someone else's knife, and someone else's chopsticks. Despite days of passive-aggressive post-its all over the kitchen door, my plate and knife haven't reappeared. The really awkward thing is that we're pretty sure we've figured out who it is, but we don't quite know how to broach the subject. I mean, what do you do? Knock on the door and say "Hey there flatmate! How's the coursework going? By the way, you stole my plate and I want it back now." That's just a level of uncomfortable that I had hoped to be done with at 24. On the very unlikely chance that our thief reads this blog, however, I'll just write a quick note:
Dear Thief,
Give me my dang plate and fork back.
Love,
Anna.
Lastly, I shall tell you about my skylight and how it doesn't work. Everyone who comes in here admires my skylight--if only they knew. It is the bane of my existence. Complaint 1) The shade on the skylight is both made of paper and torn. Ergo, when the sun comes up, my skylight says to me, "GOOD MORNING ANNA IT'S DAY WAKE UP!" and it gets really very bright in here. Complaint 2) My skylight is broken. It won't actually close all the way. I came back from London early in the term one Saturday to find literally dozens and dozens of bees crawling around in my bed and coming in through the cracked skylight. It was the first cool day of fall, and they were coming in and dying in my bed. The best part was that there is no one around this place on the weekends except resident students, so I had to wait all day Saturday, all night, all day Sunday, and again all night before maintenance got my message of distress. So I invested in some duct tape and spent that lovely weekend picking bees out of my bed and laundry and carpet and...everything. Maintenance came on Monday morning to "fix" the skylight, but I still think the duct tape is the only real barrier between me and nature.
That's probably enough gloominess to counteract all the cheery things I've been writing, don't you think? The next time my happiness gets out of hand, I'll tell you about the radiator and my closet door. But for now I think this is sufficient.
You should all move to Oxford. Seriously. I worry this blog might get dull because every time I write I just talk about how great everything is. I'll think up something gloomy to write about next time, but in the meantime, I give you two and a half brief tales of joy:
1. My dear Florianne came to visit me on Sunday. For those of you who don't know her, she came from France to spend a year at Jewell while I was an undergraduate there. We were there together for the fall semester of that year, and then I spent the spring semester in Vienna. We kept in touch through Facebook and Skype and email, just waiting for the next opportunity to come along, whenever that might be, when we would be in the same place again. We hadn't actually seen each other in four years. Well, now she's moved to the UK, and we're only about an hour and a half apart! We had a wonderful day of wandering around Oxford and catching up. I'm so glad to have an old friend near.
1a. After Flo-Flo went home I had choir (always a good thing), and this was followed by a truly stunning performance in the Exeter College Chapel by Schola Cantorum of Oxford. Lots of Bruckner. Yummy. Bravi to Sam and Bex!
2. I just got home from an especially marvelous C.S. Lewis Society meeting. We read a series of unpublished love sonnets by Joy Davidman (Lewis's wife). I thought they were extremely well-written, but surprisingly violent and tormented. Also, apparently Lewis had a thing for blondes--or at least, Joy thought he did. We went to the Eagle and Child for a bit afterwards to discuss. I made some new friends, including an ardent Wagner fan and non-musician who professes to hating all musicians and once produced an opera based on Lewis's Perelandra. Sort that one out.
Tomorrow will be a long day spent cloistered in my room working, but tonight was a night to feast on some of the great things Oxford has to offer.
If anyone out there is still in doubt about how much I love choir, you live under a rock. This week was a week of much choirness, and it was glorious, despite the constant procession of migraines that came with it.
On Monday (Halloween) we sang Evensong at Christ Church. I recorded part of our rehearsal on my camera. Wha-bam:
Audio quality is terrible, but my camera was both designed to take photos and buried in my purse.
After that I got together with a few friends to make pizza and watch Young Frankenstein in honor of the holiday. Halloween = complete.
Tuesday was a long day of lectures culminating in a very fun dinner out. On Wednesday the choir sang yet another service, this time in our home chapel for All Souls' Day. It was a somber service, but remarkably well done by our chaplain Jonathan. We cheered ourselves up afterwards with dinner and a performance by Out of the Blue, an Oxford men's a cappella group who recently made it to the semifinals of Britain's Got Talent. Click here to see them on Britain's Got Talent. One of them lives in the same college as a couple of the Wadham choir members. They performed in a little ice cream parlor that was stuffed so full of human that the windows were completely covered with nasty human sweat fog. We stood outside in the fresh air and listened through an opened window.
On Friday I heard the Oxford University Orchestra perform Stravinsky's Symphonies of Wind Instruments and Mahler's Fifth Symphony. It was an impressive performance. That Mahler likes his brass and percussion. I can only imagine the cacophonous performances he must have given as a toddler with the pots and pans in his mother's kitchen.
On Saturday we remembered remembered the fifth of November, gunpowder, treason, and plot. All day long fireworks could be heard throughout the city. I went to the party at Wolfson College in the evening. The headmistress initiated the festivities by climbing into a bulldozer with a glass of champagne and giving a speech about horoscopes and construction in ancient Rome. I didn't really follow it. A mighty fireworks display over the punt harbor sent traumatized ducks fleeing for their lives, and a HUGE bonfire thoroughly dehydrated all the surrounding trees. It wasn't a good night for nature. But it was a great night for us, so who really cares about the ducks. Burn the traitor!
Yesterday was truly enjoyable--I heard two services at Christ Church in the morning, then had lunch with friends, then enjoyed the brisk Autumn day with a long walk, then had a very relaxing tea, and off to choir for rehearsal and Evensong we went. After Evensong and dinner the choir went back into the chapel for--guess what--more singing! For the next two and a half hours or so we stood around the piano and sight read through a vast quantity of choral anthems. We started out making some really nice music (Rachmaninoff's "Bogoroditse devo" and Bruckner's "Os justi" were lovely), but by the time the Christmas carols came out, the situation had devolved and we sounded more like geese a-laying than anything else.
It was quite the sight reading exercise. Many of the carols and even more of the words were new to me. When "Good King Wenceslas" was requested, there was a gleeful cry of "Ooh, can we sing all the sexist lyrics??" What sexist lyrics? thought I. Oh...right. I see.
By this point I think we had more men than women singing soprano. There's a really special modulation at the end of this one:
It took a good hour for my larynx to come back down from on high where it had gotten stuck after all that singing. One of these days I'll get a good recording of our choir. That day is not today.
This week's English as a Second Language notes
A sweater is a jumper. A jumper is also a sweatshirt. And a hoodie.
A vest is a tank top. A tank top is a vest.
A wife beater is definitely not an article of clothing.
Now: I dare you to tell me what this is called:
