Oxford Town, Oxford Town

Now WASH your hands

At the beginning of the year I received an e-mail from my friend and Health Images colleague Petra Rohr-Rouendaal. Petra had been asked by Oxfam to do two hundred and twenty five black and white line drawings about water, sanitation and hygiene issues, for use in emergency situations around the world. She’d been working on this for a while, when it was decided that the drawings would be good in colour. In her e-mail, Petra, whose work is always in great demand, intimated that she could do without colouring all these images as well as drawing them in black and white. I replied, rather flippantly, that I would be happy to colour them if she didn’t want to, as I didn’t have much work on at the time.

So, between February and the end of June, that’s what I found myself doing. Seventy five images for Sub-Saharan Africa, the same number for Latin America and a similar set for Afghanistan and Pakistan. People shitting behind bushes, latrines, people washing their hands, preparing food, going to church, mosque or hospital, watching a puppet show, groups talking with each other, women collecting water from pumps and rivers, chains of contamination and so on... More or less every day for four months several hours on Photoshop for me, no exercise, a pain in the neck, an overworked mouse, but feeling that I was doing a worthwhile project, saving the world rather than designing leaflets for music festivals and drama productions. Stamina and deadlines and pleasure from working on Petra’s great drawings.

So, when I got an e-mail from a young Oxford graduate called Sarah-Jane Knock, asking if I would display some Health Images pictures at a conference entitled “Students and Development” at St. Anthony’s College, I gladly accepted the offer of a brief change of scenery. (The other changes of scenery I had had during this period were a short trip to Amsterdam and a couple of visits to the James Paget hospital in Gorleston for uncomfortable tests to see if I had bowel cancer).


In the Rose Garden

A couple of days before driving down to Oxford, Jacky and I attended a reception put on by our local environmental conservation charity The World Land Trust, for whom I’ve done graphics over the past twenty years or so. It was held at the home of Andrew and Alexandra van Preussen in Horham, near Eye in Suffolk. David Attenborough was there and it was nice to see him in the flesh, in his crumpled linen jacket. One of the van Preussen’s pride and joys, of which they seem to have several, is their rose garden. Since one of the WLT’s latest projects is in Paraguay, they had invited two musicians, Alberto Pino and Christoval Pederson, formerly members of Los Paraguayos, to play their instruments, a guitar and a harp, in the rose garden. Terribly civilised on a June evening in rural England, pink champagne and canapes.

Presentations were made in the Great Barn and included a film of David Attenborough in his twenties, on a politically incorrect ‘Zoo Quest’, wearing a dark suit and tie in the rainforest. After the film, Sir David said that he had done everything he could to stop it being shown, even offerring to bribe the WLT. He explained ruefully that even this had failed and commented that this had probably been the first time that the WLT had refused to accept money. Referring to his younger self, he asked, quizically, “Who was he?”.


And so to Oxford...

The drive across to Oxford was uneventful until I lost my way on the outskirts. I passed the huge Cowley car plant where they make some of the smallest cars in the world - Minis. Taking a wrong turn, I entered the village of Sandford upon Thames. I saw two people sitting at a bench outside the village pub, so pulled up to ask if they could direct me to Freelands Road in Oxford.

They turned out to be a friendly couple who were, in fact the pub’s landlord and landlady, relaxing as they had no customers. The man went into one of the neighbours’ houses to ask if they could help. The landlady shouted out to her daughter to come outside. An extremely fat thirteen year old girl came to the pub doorway.

“When you go on the school bus, is there a stop at Freelands Road?” “yes”, the girl replied glumly, “It’s just past the garage that’s closed down”. The mum was then convinced that she knew the place and gave me accurate directions. Then the landlord returned from the next door cottage with completely different directions.

Just recently I’ve been reading ‘Waterlog’ by Roger Deakin, in which he mentions the village of Sandford on Thames, in which I had mistakenly arrived. He talks about Jerome K. Jerome’s ‘Three Men in a Boat’ in connection with Sandford and quotes the author’s description of the Sandford lasher, whatever that is. “The pool under Sandford lasher is a very good place to drown yourself in”.

I met Sarah-Jane Knock at her house and was introducede to her house-mate Jo, a rather serious girl who had just finished her finals in Pure Maths and Logic. I was well impressed and thought how wonderful it must be to study pure mathematics for three years in Oxford when you were young.

A pair of crossed oars were displayed on the kitchen wall. These had been gained by Sarah-Jane’s fiancee, John. “I haven’t got my blades yet”, she explained. They were also into rock climbing and bouldering. I said I used to go out with a girl from Chesterfield and not far from where she lived we used to watch rock climbers. It was out beyond Chatswirth Road, the road in which my former friend lived. “Wow”, expostulated Sarah-Jane, “ I used to live just off Chatsworth Road, in Holymoorside”.
Another small and insignificant coincidence. She then told me that her non-identical twin sister was now working for the government’s Child Poverty Unit, having also done a degree at Oxford, a city partly populated by boys and girls who had done well at school, many having been head-boys and head-girls.

We drove to St. Anthony’s college with the stuff for the exhibition. With the help of her friend Emmanuel, an interesting French boy with a long face who was also studying International Development, we put up the Health Images display.


Another coincidence

In the evening I was on my own, as Sarah-Jane was going off to a ball at Balliol. Before leaving, she gave me directions to a couple of recommended pubs. I walked into town alongside the Thames which is, I think, called the Isis in Oxford. I made my way on the towpath past the boathouses of various colleges and saw the narrowest narrow boats I’d ever seen. Meeting the road by the ‘Head of the River’ pub, I crossed over the bridge and made my way into town, passing several American tourists en route.

When I reached Cornmarket, I was surprised to see, in the distance, a busker playing a harp. I walked slowly past, enjoying the sound, and bent down to put some coins into the busker’s hat. Straightening up, I looked briefly at the harpist and was astonished to find that I recognised him. Yes, it was Cristoval Pederson, the Paraguayan harpist I’d met two nights previously in the rose garden in Suffolk. We laughed and greeted each other. “What are you doing here?”, I asked. “I’m busking”, replied Cristoval. He was staying with a friend in Oxford and would be doing a gig the following night at the Holywell Music Room with a singer called Miriam Scruby.

I wandered past a long queue of students in dinner suits or shiny dresses, waiting to get into the ball at Balliol. Then, down an alleyway, I found ‘The Turf’, an ancient higgledy-piggledy tavern which sells moderately good ale. Next, I partook of another solitary pint of beer in ‘The Eagle and Child’. This was the pub where a literary group, who called themselves ‘The Inklings’ met to discuss literature and have a drink. C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkein were leading members with a religious bent.

Continuing my modest pub-crawl, I called into ‘The Head of the River’ pub, where the TV was showing a European Championship football match between Turkey and Croatia, historical adversaries. At the final whistle, I made my way back along the towpath, finally arrivig at Freelands Road where I read a few pages of Louis de Berniere’s brutal ‘War of Don Emmanuel’s Nether Parts’ before nodding off.

In the morning, I decided to go back into town, so was soon plodding again along the towpath. The drizzle was moderate to heavy and there was plenty of Saturday morning activity in and around the boatsheds. I saw thirty dicks and ducklings all in a line, proceeding in an easterly direction on the river. Several coaches cycled along the towpath shouting at young rowers. “Bury that blade!”, “Wrist flat, arms straight”, “Charlotte, sit up, don’t hunch”, “Not like that”, “That’s better”, “Keep going”,

Up in town, a young man handed me a leaflet I hadn’t asked for. He had a placard that read “Have you met your father yet?”. The leaflet was quite a dark red with black type, like letterpress. On the back it said “A child needs its parent, human beings need the Creator”. I went into the HMV store.

Browsing through the CDs I noticed “Inna Gadda da Vida” by Iron Butterfly and UB40s “Rat in the Kitchen”, the cover of which I designed twenty years ago. It looked like our kitchen at Holly Tree Farm, which hasn’t changed much except that there are now no American jets in the windowframes. The peace dividend that never happened much. I weanted a new CD to play on the journey home but couldn’t find anything among the millions of albums. Funny, but it happens that way sometimes.


Natural History in Cabinet

Heading towards the university’s Natural History Museum, I spotted several empty Veuve Cliquot bottle, presumably discarde after the ball. Headaches this morning, strangers in strange beds. Inside the museum I first noticed a flock of busy bird enthusiasts from the Oxfordshire Ornithological Society. They were nerdlike and may have lived with their mothers.

Just along from the OOS display was a chest of museum drawers with six rows and four columns. On top was a sign that said ‘Natural Histort A-Z’. It was a game for children. On the front of each of the drawers was a letter of the alphabet. U and V shared a drawer, as did X, Y and Z. The bottom drawer contained the answers. Work it out for yourself. In each drawer were specimens from the collection whose names started with the letter on the front of the drawer. I opened a few. In M were shells, for Molluscs. In R was a rabbit, sectioned vertically to exhibit its internal structure. In D resided some very large and shiny Dung Beetles.

The roof of the museum was made of ironwork, rather like a Victorian railway station cum cathedral, complete with pointed arches and upper clerestory. God’s waiting room. The displays took me back to the days when I studied Biological Sciences at university. Familiar words like Phylum Hemichordata, represented in the exhibit by some acrn worms from the Class Enteropneusta. The some arrow worms from the Phylum Chaetognatha and, moving on, the wonderful Hercules Beetle from somewhere in south America, Dynastes hercules. Raising my eyes, I observed an ophicalcite column from County Galway,
before coming to rest in front of a delightful Secretary Bird, Sagittarius serpentarius of the Order Falciformes. “The name comes from its plumed head which resembles old-fashioned lawyers’ clerks with quill pens stuck behind their ears”. The the jaw bone of a tiger followed by the familiar shells of the snail Cepea nemoralis, which is very common in Oxfordshire - tigers are not. Oxford gentlemen academics from the Ecological Genetics Group studied C. nemoralis in the fifties and sixties, wearing tweed jackets and smoking pipes and occasionally engaging in same sex activities with undergraduates who wanted to get on in life. From these studies they concluded that natural selection was happening all around us every day.

Wandering on, I overheard a large American girl say to her friends “Oh, butterflies and moths - I can’t be dealing with insects”. Then a lungfish pickled in formaldehyde, looking very contented.


Pitts River

I proceeded into the amazing Pitt-Rivers museum, muttering to myself “For fuck’s sake don’t start writing a blog about this, you haven’t got the time, you’ll never finish”. Within minutes I was taking notes.

Just to say, briefly, that I loved the huge Haida totem pole from the Queen Charlotte (not the rower) Islands in Canada. It had cost $36 in 1901. And that I found the jumbled cabinets absolutely absorbing, mirrors of human possibilities.....

The first cabinet I examined was entitled ‘ Methods of Making Fire’. The next, ‘Coiled Baskets’, then ‘Trumpets’, followed by’Drums’, after which I looked into ‘Bells, Rattles and Xylophones’. Just fascinating. Next, ‘Spinning and Winding’, to the right ‘Lutes’, then ‘Writing and Communication’. I chatted to the attendant, an old boy with a pleasant Oxfordshire accent, about the subject of the next cabinet - ‘Lamellaphones’. He said that, many years ago, on a late night bus, he’d heard a West Indian bloke playing one. Finger pianos. Top deck.

“Oh shit, this is all getting far too interesting”, I thought to myself, imagining the M25. I couldn’t help looking into ‘Tallies and Counting’, ‘Message Bearing’, ‘Writing Equipment’, ‘Saddlery’, ‘Zithers’, ‘Votive Offerings’, ‘Sympathetic Magic’, ‘Charms Against the Evil Eye’. Apparently, Sumerian records from ancient Iraq going back 5000 years mention the Evil Eye.

Feeling rather enchanted, I made my way through ‘Amulets, Charms and Divination’, ‘Treatment of Dead Enemies’,
‘Betel-chewing Equipment’, ‘Opium Pipes and Equipment’, ‘Smoking Pipes and Water Pipes’. After a short break to look at the ceiling I ventured into ‘Skates and Snowshoes’, Stools and Headrests’, ‘Wooden Locks and Keys’, ‘Objects Used As Currency’, ‘Staves and Weapons Denoting Rank’, ‘Vessels’, ‘Rank, Status and Prestige in Nuristan’, ‘Ornaments of Boar Tusk’, ‘Combs’, ‘Mirrors’, ‘Hair’, ‘Head, Neck and Breast Ornaments’, ‘Ornaments of Teeth, Claws, Quills and Bone’, ‘Tails and Buttock Ornaments’, ‘Trade Beads’, ‘Feather Headdresses’ and ‘Death’.

The attendant handed me a form and asked if I would mind filling in a questionnaire about my visit. I awarded full marks to every category and ticked every box with enthusiasm before moving ever onwards to ‘Buckles and Fasteners’, ‘Umbrellas’ and ‘Games, Puzzles and Toys’. At one point there was a notice saying that this museum had inspired several writers, including Philip Pullman, Penelope Lively, James
Fenton and Colin Dexter.

Gazing into ‘Surgical Instruments - Algeria’, I thought “Colin Dexter’s not a writer”. Then a beautiful Hardanger Fiddle caught my attention, with its six sympathetic strings and four unsympathetic, not very compassionate ones. I asked the attendant if he could show me the smallest object in the collection and he took me to see a tiny doll, made in England and less than a centimetre high. That was enough.

On my happy way back out of the natural history museum I stopped to admire an Emperor Scorpion, Pandinus imperator; a Scarlet Tarantula, Lasiodora klugii; a Whip Scorpion from Peru, Phrynus sp.; and some lovely Sea Spiders from the Class Pycnogonida. There are more than a hundred thousand species of pycnogonids alive, including the one on display, Colossendeis wilsoni from Antarctica. Got to get out of this place....

I walked back along the river with a full head. It didn’t matter that I’d failed to purchase a CD. I hit the road at Donnington Bridge and went into Bridge Stores to get a bottle of water for the drive home. The shop was run by a Chinese lady, whose six or seven year old son said to me “You got a dinosaur on your pad”. He had a slight but most attractive strabismus in one eye and was referring to the notepad I’d bought in the museum. I asked him if he’d ever been there. “I bin to Pitts River” he replied joyously. That was my last small encounter in Oxford before my drive home, which featured ‘Sundirtwater’ by The Waifs, the ‘African Blues’ compilation and the ‘Reggae Love Collection’.