Terms, tours, nicknames, birthdays and ships.

Well howdy there people. It’s been a while and I apologise, but it’s going to be another while before I can write anything else, so here goes nothing!

The last you heard was the big beautiful snowfall, which was back in 4th week of Hilary Term. The last four weeks of said term went on with a typical mix of reading, presentations, rehearsals, performances, visitors, dinners... oh, and bops too. Remember that word? This one was at Worcester, preceded by a graduate dinner, and had a “bad taste” theme. No, really.

(Accompanying me and my tie-dye are fellow Rhodents Michiel and Jeni, from South Africa and Sydney.)

My rollcall of visitors since the last instalment has included Bec Wetherall on a European jaunt, Jessie Keath en route to Germany, Jim Partington coming back for more and Gus Lipman all the way from London. It was great to see them all and they seemed to have a good time! Jessie and Jim got dinners in the Worcester hall, a genuine musty-gowned Oxford experience that looks a bit like this:

Jimbo and I shared a girly cocktail beforehand...

... while Jessie made the pilgrimage to the Bird’n’Baby afterwards (the Eagle and Child pub, hallowed watering hole of Tolkien and C.S. Lewis). Here she seemed to hold up better than Shaggy Pete, a microbiologist from Brisbane...

... although she did cut my head off with my own camera (remaining intact is fellow Adelaidean, Tom).

Earlier, Jessie accomplished the rare feat of capturing my halo on film - possibly a result of the virtuous solid day’s work I’d just done in the ‘Bod’ (ancient abbreviation for the ancient Bodleian Library, whose most famous building is just visible through the saintly haze; it’s easy to feel virtuous studying in that place).

Gus managed to make it out of the big smoke to see a concert I performed in called ‘Musicals and All That Jazz’, a fundraiser for the NSPCC featuring many talented Oxford students in all sorts of music theatre tidbits – I got to fulfil a long-standing ambition and belt ‘Stars’ (from Les Mis) at an unsuspecting audience. A huge thrill.

I was also chuffed that my Suffolk cousins made the trip to see the show, as did my former Gallerie Consort colleague Renee and her husband Peter, from Shrivenham. Thanks guys!

Oh, almost forgot about one of Jim’s favourite memories from his visit. Tom Smith has been at Magdalen College far too long and has a room that is far too big – obviously, this makes it an appropriate venue for footy in the wee hours:

Don’t try this at home. I almost lost the ability to father children and Tom’s lampshade will never be the same again. Enough said.

Just so you don’t think it’s all been beer, skittles and soft tissue injuries, I also managed to get quite a lot of work done during the term. Especially towards the end. This included possibly the most rewarding – certainly the longest – oral presentation of my academic life. It was about the modern Darwinian synthesis and it lasted nearly two hours, largely because it kept getting interrupted by the sort of discussion and argument that represents everything good about Oxford. OK, it’s not exactly blog material (sorry!) but it is experiences like that I will treasure because they are, I feel, truly hard to come by.

Many fond memories will also come from my time with Out of the Blue, the singing troupe you may remember I was somewhat apprehensive about joining. While our repertoire still isn’t always to my taste, the fun we have performing is completely infectious, and having just returned from 3 weeks touring east-coast USA, the perks are pretty good too! We sang pretty much everywhere, from the Washington monument

to the Empire State Building

and Times Square.

If nothing else, the tour has left almost all of us with nicknames. We now have a Bags, a Bobo, a Sensei, a T-Turn and a Calamity, among others. Mine doesn’t seem to have settled quite yet; the two names for me with any staying power seem to be J-Bag and Treebeard. Moving right along... Among visits to Maryland, New Jersey, Yale and Boston, a highlight was our two days spent recording in a studio and otherwise lounging around Cornell Uni in beautiful Ithaca, NY. The weather was (apparently unusually) stunning, and I got sunburnt. On the left, standing on a large rock, is Joe, a first-year philosophy student also at Worcester.

Our host choir there – a terrific all-girl group called the Touchtones – took us ‘sake bombing’ at a Japanese bar. Rich shows his apprehension (can you guess what happens next?!):

We also shared a gig with them, which was advertised in true college style.

Our hosts in New York also deserve mention – a hugely talented and friendly bunch of seniors (Year Twelves, roughly speaking) from New Rochelle High School in West Chester. Here are some of them (Rich, Erica, Ross, Julie) after they put us up for an unexpected extra night on our way back through New York. Legends.

The previous night we actually sang as the intermission entertainment at an NHL ice hockey game – wow. If anyone knows how to do spectacle, it’s the Americans. Sadly (or perhaps luckily for my persevering blog readers), my camera was absent. Towards the end of the tour, my birthday was rung in quite rowdily at a party thrown by our lovely hosts in Philadelphia.

Despite the best efforts of my OOTB colleagues, I survived with my dignity intact; video evidence is available on request. Before I move on, if you want to see more of the group in action, check out *this* Sting song from our tour gig at Wellesley College or *this* Stevie Wonder number from the big competition in which we came 2nd before leaving the UK. [Warning: footage may contain traces of choralography.]

In other news, I have decided to use my two years at Oxford to take two separate one-year courses, instead of the two-year course I was originally enrolled in. This seems a better use of my time here (I didn't realise originally that one-year courses were permitted on the Rhodes), so I am transferring into the one-year version of my History of Science masters and I’ve applied successfully for a one-year MSc in Neuroscience for 2007-8. This is reportedly a great grounding in neuroscience theory and techniques, so I’m looking forward to it – though it does mean I will be writing a history dissertation over the coming English summer, so I won’t get much of a holiday. Hard life, I know. Oh – and I’ve also been elected (unopposed – note to self: re-learn how to say “no”) as president of the MCR at Worcester College, starting this term. The MCR is the postgrad student body and this means I get to sit on various College committees and send a truckload of emails. When will I learn?

So: two terms down, four to go (that’s three per year, the English way, for anyone who’s confused). The next one begins in 10 days and is called Trinity Term – appropriately so, because I am going to need the help of all three of them to survive it. Chances are you will escape further news from me until I come up for air in eight or nine weeks, on the other side of 19,000 words’ worth of essays, one 3-hour exam, one play, one major concert and many OOTB gigs, who knows how many committee meetings, and a visit from Anna and Gregor (yay!). They are already in the UK and I’ll leave you with some shots of us in the south, where we went with Aneurin on Monday and Tuesday. He and Gregor braved the Brighton waters, alone...

...and the next day we went to Portsmouth and saw HMS Victory, of Nelson and Trafalgar fame, first launched in 1765.


Stunning weather – now is the time to visit the UK, folks!



Bye for now and congratulations on reading all the way to the end, or for having the good sense to skip the middle. I love and miss you all.