The week after we got back from Rome, Rodney went to the Swanley office (in Kent, I’ll let him write about Swanley) of his company for some meetings. I had a busy few days here in Leuven with giving English lessons, volunteering at the library and Dutch pronunciation classes then joined him later in the week.
Before heading to Kent on the train I watched a matinee of Les Miserables in London. There is a great ticket booth in Leicester Square where you can buy last minute discounted tickets, so I got prime seating for less than half price! The musical was fantastic, by far the best live show I’ve ever seen. I was still buzzing about it until I arrived in Swanley and met Rodney and he told me not to sing.
After Rodney finished his work in Swanley, we spent the weekend in London. We went to Oxford for the day on Saturday and toured the Old Bodleian library, which dates from the 14th century and is just beautiful. You could picture medieval scholars hunched over dusty leatherbound books in freezing stone reading rooms, trying to make out the text by the light coming through the window (open flames were prohibited so there was no heating or lighting). We also toured Christchurch College (where parts of Harry Potter were filmed - although Rodney put an embargo on any mention of Harry Potter) and had a nice walk through the neighouring meadows and colleges along the river.
Divinity School of Bodleian Library
Radcliffe Camera
We also visited the Pitt Rivers Museum after a great recommendation from friends Gerald and Belinda. It is a an old-style anthropology museum of glass specimen cases filled with peculiarities from models of Siberian tents to shrunken heads. Rodney particularly enjoyed the large collection of guns, swords and crossbows.
Walking around Oxford, the wealth and privilege of the university and associated citizens through the ages is apparent. The buildings are all so magnificent that the whole town could be called a museum. At the same time, I loved walking past Magdalene College knowing that C.S. Lewis had trod the same route, and thinking of other Oxford greats like Tolkien, Evelyn Waugh, Auden and Huxley (yes, this list is very literature-focused).
Great Courtyard in Christchurch College
Christmas table setting in Great Hall, Christchurch College
We spent the rest of our time in London catching up with Rodney’s cousin Kyra at the Camden Markets, meeting other friends for dinner at a pub that we’ve been to on all three visits to London this year (they do meals that are all a pub meal should aspire to be) and wandering through some of the many free museums that London has to offer.
Now we are back in Leuven, enjoying no heating and hot water for the second day running as maintenance works are being carried out on the heating pipes. They are trying to get it back on by tonight though.