Rain, Walking, status quo preserved.

Today, we rambled about in Oxford and the University Park. The Park is about 70 acres, plus 4 acres that comprise Mesopotamia, the walk we take most afternoons now. It turns out, as well, that the area by the boat ramp (see picture in previous post) is right next to the famous Parson's Pleasure. If you don't know what naughty things go on there... look it up, slacker.

I've been hoping to get a picture of some of the interesting flowers in the park for a while, and today we finally took some photos there.








It's real purty. The little orange flowers at left are tiny and grow very close to the ground. But they look like little birds-of-paradise, or little read beaks. The red ones on the right are velvety purses of flower-stuff. I don't think the purple flowers in the upper right are at all unusual, but they are beautifully colored. The other purple flower is a poppy. For reasons we don't really understand, poppies are very popular (!) here. They're everywhere, including growing wild in cow pastures.

In other news, we noticed two new things about Oxford today:

1. Bill Bryson pointed out, in his book Notes from a Big Country, that Americans aren't so much stupid as out of the habit of thinking. He says this is because we don't have to think; everyone does it for us. I was thinking about this today, when I noticed a small difference between here and there. In the US, if something says 2 for a dollar, that means one item will cost .50. Not in Britain. If it says 2 for a pound, then one will cost you more. Like 75 pence. Because, genius, they want you to buy more than one. That's why it's a special offer. Interesting.

2. For reasons which escape us, there were approximately a bazillion people here today. No idea why. And by people, I mean to include adolescents in hordes, pensioners in tottering groups, wild-eyed undergraduates wearing exam tuxedos and covered in mustard and ketchup (not kidding, don't know why), and families pushing enormous, ten-foot wide strollers with napping children. Why they brought such a contraption to a city so small that the cars have to park on the sidewalk, and how their children sleep through a maelstrom of human activity that would wake the dead (doubtless the denizens of the graveyards here, even those 1000 years old, have taken off for the beach for some solitude), I don't know. But I do wish they would go home. I don't own Oxford, but I can see how much nicer it would be with about 750,000,000,000 fewer people.

Just in case you were worried, by the way, it rained today. And yesterday. And Monday it will rain again. Cheerio!