Catholic Guilt
It must be my Catholic upbringing but I can't help feeling guilty about stuff that is hardly worth thinking about. If one allows the barbarism of what Russia has been doing in Ukraine for the last 250 days to enter one's mind, of course, we should all be feeling very guilty, and now that thought has entered my head again... I do feel very guilty indeed about my silly self-indulgent football tour.
But enough of all that serious stuff. Let's get back to trivia. Choosing to go to Oxford United v Fleetwood Town rather than Wycombe Wanderers v Port Vale really got to me.
See, before we left for Australia, at the end of 2002, we lived in High Wycombe and had done so for about 16 years. I used to be a big Wycombe fan. I went to most home and away games for years under Martin O'Neill and a few years after. And, being a Wycombe fan, you have to hate Oxford United. No choice.
There were three key factors that made me make the decision to turn my back on them and go and watch the horrible yellows instead.
Firstly, it was this "ground" thing. I've kind of made it a target for the English part of the holiday to try to regain as many of the grounds I "lost" since I reached the 92 back in 1999. As with Wimbledon and Arsenal, I've been to Oxford's old ground, the Manor Ground, before a few times, but I've never been to their their new one, the Kassam Stadium. Meanwhile, I'd been to Adams Park many times and it's not really changed much since then. So, 1-0 to Oxford.
Secondly, there is the "pub" thing. Oxford has so many great pubs and I rarely get the chance to spend a couple of nights there. When we lived in Wycombe we used to drive through Oxford very frequently on the way to Stroud, and we'd often stop for an hour or two, but I've never stayed two nights before. This was a chance to do a proper pub crawl. Wycombe's pubs were always dire and I have no reason to think that had changed. 2-0 to Oxford.
Thirdly, there is the "aquatic ape" thing. Oxford not only has far more in the way of lovely tourist attractions, generally, it also happens to be the intellectual home of several of my scientific heroes. So by choosing Oxford I would have the chance to see some museums and trace the footsteps of the great and the good. High Wycombe... not. 3-0.
So, there's the justification. Once I'd hatched the plan after leaving London, I decided to pop into Wycombe anyway to do a couple of nostalgic visits to the three houses we used to live in and then check out Adams Park.
Adams Park Revisited on Sunday, 30th October
It hadn't changed much, it has to be said, except that the club seemed to have enhanced the fan's shop and made the reception area into a mini-museum with a cute model of their old ground, Loakes Park, and some posters of the glory years.
I met the club CEO and he kindly offered to get one of his staff to show me the ground. It all looked very nice. The away end was now all seater and the advertising boards were all electronic and very flash.
I was pleased to hear that two massive Wycombe personalities back in the day were not only still around but continue to attend matches both home and away. Derek Vere, owner of the furniture company Verco, that used to sponsor Wycombe Wanderers and Alan Parry the rather good ITV commentator are still going strong, I heard. Alan is the only other guy I know who has all of the Rothman's Football Yearbooks from it's first edition in 1970-71.
Talking of books, I also found out that Martin O'Neill, who still lives in the area, sometimes comes along too and has a new autobiography coming out in a couple of weeks or so.
The thought that these three personalities might be at Adams Park on Tuesday night didn't exactly help my guilt though, I must admit.
So, time to shoot off to Oxford and have some fish and chips and beer.
Oxford Revisited
I checked into my half-decent accommodation at the Old Black Horse and realised that a nice fish restaurant I'd been to years ago was just opposite and had good reviews on Google. So that was a no-brainer. Unfortunately the fish was really poor. Kind of like one of those Birds Eye frozen ones we used to get, but over fried so that the batter was like a dak brown crab shell. The waitress didn't ask me "how was everything?", so I didn't say anything. I did leave an honest review on Google though.
Ah well. So, onto the pub crawl. First was the Angel and Greyhound just a couple of doors down the road. Very nice too, comfortable with a nice set of beers. It also had a very friendly barman who happened to be an Arsenal fan. After the inevitable gentle ribbing about yesterday's 5-0, he advised me where to go next.
It started raining as I trundled up to the famous Turf Tavern, which was full of students.
Then it was onto the Kings Arms, one of my favourite pubs in Oxford, with lots of little snugs where you can actually hear yourself talk, if you had company, which I did not.
Then, it was on to the White Horse next to my favorite bookshop in the world, Blackwells. The barman was friendly and I really liked the music play list.
Next, it was onto the Lamb and Flag which was packed with students.
I should say, in case you were getting worried for me, that in each of these pubs I was only ordering a half of the weakest beer they had, although that in itself is getting more difficult as craft beers seem to get stronger every year. The range of beers I had was 2.8% to 4.0% ABV.
On the way to the next pub, the Wig and Pen, I couldn't resist popping in for a quick burger at Wendy's. I thought they'd gone extinct so it was nice to see the same quality burger, with soft buns and nicely wrapped in foil as they used to do in the good old days. Odd that their burgers are now called "Dave's" (not "Wendy's") though.
The Wig & Pen was showing Plymouth v Exeter so I even caught some football. I never cease to be impressed with the quality on display at this level of the game - the third tier, remember.
Then it was onto a strange little pub called the Three Goats Head, a Samuel Smiths tied house - again a thing I thought would have gone out of existence these days.
Then it was on to the Royal Blenheim, with its impressive array of ales, as the rain poured down.
Three more to go, and the first of those was St Aldates Tavern where it was quiz night.
Then, onto the oldest pub in Oxford, the Bear, which is famous for its bizarre habit of cutting off the ends of ties of its guests and exchanging them for a pint. They then frame them and put them on display on their walls.
The last stop was another old pub, Chequers.
So, a very good night was had by me and I only really got a bit tipsy as I was drinking slowly. At the end of the night I didn't even reach my 100g "skinful" limit.
Mood score for Sunday, 30th October: 18-0!
Exploring Oxford on Monday, 31st October
The next morning I walked back into town and had a full English breakfast before doing a bit of traipsing around. I wanted to go to a couple of museums and then see if I could follow in the footsteps of two of my heroes, Elaine Morgan, who was a student here in the war years, and Alister Hardy who was a student around the time of the First World War and then was professor of Zoology here until the late 1960s.
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| Elaine Morgan & Alister Hardy |
I think I'd been to the Ashmolean before but it all seemed new. I always feel overwhelmed by all the art and pottery and sculptures. Are all of these really just stolen from countries that Britain had conquered in their imperial days? It all seems immoral to me, but impressive none the less.
Much more impressive for me was the Oxford museum of Natural History. It's not as big or grand as the one in London but it's very well done and I love the way that single topics are presented in a beautifully clear and concise way. It was great too, to see so many mammalian skeletons next to each other so you could make comparisons.
I trundled off to Lady Margaret Hall next, all the time wondering if this was the route Elaine Morgan took the first time she went there. The story is that when she asked a passer-by the way in her lovely Welsh accent, the local told her and then started chatting. When Elaine told her she was going for an interview, the local assumed she was applying for a job as a cleaner and not a potential new student.
The college had pretty strict security so I couldn't actually go in, not that I was looking for anything in particular anyway. Elaine's not even on their alumni list, unlike Nigella Lawson and Benazir Bhutto.
Next it was Merton Hall, where Hardy taught for many years and where others such as William of Occam are also old fellows. Unfortunately, I couldn't get in there either. Never mind, just walking along the same streets that these two, and so many other greats did, was inspiring to me.
Kassam Chaos
After the tantalizing prospect of intellectual inspiration it was time to get my feet back on the ground and go and watch some football. Before anyone starts to roll their eyes at me being such a pleb here's a very convenient segue.
Question: Who is another intellectual hero of mine, who also went to Oxford?
Clue: He was a student under Alister Hardy, got his "more aquatic" from him and published a best seller that would inspire Elaine Morgan to promote the "aquatic ape" idea for over forty years.
Answer: Of course, Desmond Morris.
Now, not only was Desmond Morris a very well respected animal behavioralist and anthropologist, but he was also a football fan and was even on the board of directors at Oxford United during their glory years at the dubious time of Robert Maxwell.
He wrote the book "The Soccer Tribes" which gave me my first inkling that I might too be interested in anthropology. I did a previous blog post all about this a few years ago.
So, anyway, now following in Desmond Morris' unlikely footsteps, it was time to make my way to Oxford United's new ground for the first time.
The ground is six miles from the city center so I had planned to go by bus. Oxford is, after all, a pleasant city of 150,000 people. United are in the third tier with an average of 6-8 thousand. Google maps offered three different bus routes. This was going to be easy. What could possibly go wrong?
I opted for the route with the least walking distance: Service 3A.
This was the route suggested...
The next bus was due in six minutes and I left my room in good time to get to the stop. A bus (Number 3) came at the scheduled time so I got on. I was relieved that it accepted payment by debit card just like London transport did. I expected it would follow a strange and convoluted route as Google had told me it would, but what I didn't expect was that at one stop everyone got off leaving me waiting on my own. I asked the driver if she was going on to the stadium to which she replied "No. That is the 3A. This is just 3."
Oops. Silly me. 3A, not 3.
She said she'd take me back to the main road and then show me where to catch the next 3A bus, but she didn't know when the next one was. (It turned out to be an hourly service.) So thanks to these brilliant gadgets in our pockets I was able to order an Uber, which automatically linked through to a local cab company and after a bit of confusion about where to drop me off, requiring an extended circuitous route a one way system near the ground, it all went quite well and I eventually arrived at the ground only about ten minutes late. Late enough though, to have missed Fleetwood's opener scored after just two minutes.
I knew the stadium would be very odd looking having seen many photos of it. It has no stand at all at one end of the ground. Close up though, it also looks a bit shoddy too. As aussies might say "it's blady shit house!"
The game itself was shoddy too, at least in the first half, and there were lots of unforced errors. Also, it was bloody freezing. I had stupidly not put on many layers so I was relieved when the half time whistle blew so I could go to the canteen area and get something to warm me up. Some chance. They only had tea as they'd run out of hot pies. The facilities were very second rate, again, nowhere near as good as Wimbledon.
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| Exotic Oxford |
To be fair, the quality of football improved in the second half. Oxford equalized and continued to threaten for the rest of the game. But so too did Fleetwood and either side could have won in the end.
I started to worry about missing the bus back... the 3A right. By now I knew exactly where the stop was. There was a crowd over 6,200 people there. Surely a hundred or so of them would be going back to the city center by bus. Google did offer me an alternative... a ten minute walk across a field to a neighborhood where another bus might be caught, but as it had been lashing down with rain I didn't fancy that. Let's stick with the sensible option.
A Fleetwood player (the one called Rooney, not the one who played for Barcelona once) got badly injured and had to be carried off on a stretcher. The boos for time wasting from the Oxford fans a few moments earlier had been predictable and so callous, but it was almost understandable as the temperature was dropping and everyone seemed to want to get this over with.
The announcement of "There will be a minimum of EIGHT minutes of injury time" was met with groans, not anticipation and I started heading towards the exits.
When the game was finally over (a 1-1 draw) I headed for the 3A bus stop and was soon relieved to find that there was indeed a small band of ten or so waiting for it too. At first, the traffic whizzed by really fast on this road that had to be crossed. And anyone wanting to cross to the bus stop had to time their sprint carefully to avoid being run over. It's incredible that Oxford United and/or the local council care so little about the safety of their supporters. Every hear of "traffic lights"? "pedestrian crossing"? "Speed bumps?" a bus station at the ground!?
Soon though, the traffic ground started to grind to a halt as more and more fans set off home from their parking spots dotted around the ground's grossly inadequate parking. As the cars slowed down, so, it seems, did time. The band of hopeful bus passengers waited and waited in the cold. The schedule arrival time of the bus (9:51 pm) came and went, but the bus didn't arrive One poor lad, clearly a frustrated Oxford fan, started complaining that this bus was always late. Then, twenty minutes later, he announced that according to a public transport app, it wasn't just coming. "My mum says it's just disappeared, and that I should get a taxi." It had happened before, he said, but at least that was an afternoon kick off. When I showed him the alternative route Google had suggested, walking over a field to another route, he said his mum had told him not to do that as it was a through a dodgy neighborhood!
So much for public transport. Great. Thanks, Oxford!
So, we all had to order cabs to leave the ground. Can you imagine it? a crowd of more than 6,200 and not one bus to take any of the fans to the city center.
Maybe I should have gone to Wycombe after all! Ah well. All part of life's rich tapestry. At least I have one more ground back on my list!
Mood score for Monday, 31st October: 8-2. Can guess the two against? One was for the bus debacle and the other for being very cold!
