Oxford...

Just when I had been craving cultural input we get the chance to go to two venues in one week. Yesterday all four of us, plus E's friend, went to Salts Mill near Bradford. It was a treat to see some Hockney work even if it was mainly iPad portraits (and despite the fact that he's not one of my favourite artists).

Today I visited Oxford. it was a tag along arrangement. M was working in the magistrates court all morning and I had three glorious hours to wander. I know all the nooks and crannies, I know all the parks like the back of my hand. I know how to avoid tourists, and boy, there were hundreds there today. I've been to the museums many times over. Today I pretended I was a tourist. It was great. I obviously didn't convince anyone though and got stopped four times for directions. It was just like the good old days when I lived there.

Nothing much has changed. The Covered Market is pretty much the same. It was the right day for the Gloucester Green market. The little side streets with interesting shops haven't changed much either, and thankfully the Natural History Museum hasn't changed. It's still fabulous. There were quite a lot of small children clutching Easter Egg Hunt sheets today and the older children were concentrating on a Dinosaur trail. It took me right back. E loved the place when she was small but wasn't so keen on the Pitt Rivers, which is the bit I was most interested in today. Having had a recent binge on Westerns it got me thinking about all the fabulous beadwork, textiles, clothing and so on associated with Native American Indians. It was hard to take photographs because it has to be fairly dark in there to preserve the artifacts.

M finished a bit early and we had time to sit in an outdoor cafe and watch the world go by. It was so warm I've even caught the sun! There will be further work at this court on the same case. I'll be tagging along again.