Do forgive my sadly inattentive blogging, but somewhere amongst the tragic rush of packing up and leaving Oxford, my day in London without the internet and sleeping off the time difference now I am back in Sydney, the blog was lost. Which perhaps is a testament to the brilliant time I had on the Oxford Summer Programme rather than my own faithlessness, but heigh-ho, as Rosalind says. 

Home again I am, and with the clarity of hindsight I can say that there was not a disappointing moment in the whole three weeks. The classes were marvellous and the Professors brilliant, the friends were endlessly entertaining and the resources provided for us to use were exactly what we needed. There was plenty to do if you wished, and nothing to do if you preferred. Oxford, and especially Exeter College, were hospitable without exception.

Oxford is a devilishly difficult place to leave. It gets under your skin, and you become accustomed to the voices of the ghosts. We all felt that Oxford was, for those three weeks, our home. 

So if you are considering taking part in the Oxford Summer Programme, I recommend it to you without reservation. It is worth every cent. The academic boost it gives you cannot be equalled, the confidence you gain in managing your own travel and study is invaluable, and the friends that you will make from all over the world are both useful and rewarding. It inspires you to pull up your socks and make something of yourself.

And with that, I sign off, as one who unashamedly has the dreaming spires under her skin.

Tomorrow is the last day of the programme, so we are all getting a little touchy-feely about Oxford. We have had such a brilliant time, and everyone is in love with Oxford, and no one wants to leave. There will be tears on Saturday morning.

But until then, we have a pub quiz tonight in the Undercroft Bar while someone practices on the organ in the college chapel and makes the flagstones in the quad shake with apocalyptic bass notes. Our papers are all in and some handed back, and while the somewhat more stringent Oxford marking system has proven a shock to some, most are happy with their work. The most looming decision is what to do tomorrow, with our last full day in the dreaming spires. This is a very hard place to leave.

A week and a bit into the programme, and everyone seems to have settled into a group. We are sitting at present in the Junior Common Room of Exeter College, drinking cider, eating biscuits, and attempting to write our essays – which looks an awful lot like playing on Facebook, but our intentions are good.

Stratford on Saturday was brilliant. Some of us made it to the afternoon session of ‘The Winter’s Tale’ at the Courtyard Theatre as well as to the evening performance of ‘As You Like It’, and we were all so impressed that we’re going back next weekend for the RSC Open Day. Nothing like a mass assembly of hard-core Shakespeare students to warm the cockles of the heart…

Back to the dreaming spires

This is my third year of the Oxford Summer Programme, and I feel like I have come home. The heat wave has passed and things are civilised again, and Oxford is heaven. The first few days have been spent learning names and faces and exploring the city, as well as going to brilliant lectures and seminars. Today’s lecture was on the history of the dictionary, which is much juicier than you might expect. Many of us are getting ready for a trip to Stratford-Upon-Avon on Saturday, where we will see the RSC perform ‘As You Like It’, and which it seems every theatre company in the country is performing this Summer.

We are also starting to bunk down in the libraries for our essays, but it is hard not to be distracted by the four hundred years’ worth of books surround you in the Bodleian Library – much less by the 9 million or so more stored in the stacks below the streets. Everywhere you look there is something monumental, and I never get tired of it.

London…?

I have sunburnt feet, a mosquito bite, and a steady diet of ice cream – I respectfully suggest that this is not London. My first two days have been spent trawling the sales in Oxford St for more heatwave-appropriate clothing, frying in the sun at a performance of ‘Romeo and Juliet’ at the Globe, and getting comprehensively lost in Harrods – in my defence, they’ve moved some things around since I was last there. It is impossibly muggy at the moment, and the Tube is a steamy nightmare for all concerned, but it is still London, and it is still brilliant. To prove it, I am spending the morning in Regent’s Park, before a tour of the BBC Television Studios and a run down to Covent Garden to see Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellan in ‘Waiting for Godot’. That is, of course, after I have my ice cream breakfast.

London Calling

London – one single word with a magic all its own. And in three days, that is exactly where I will be. The trip I am about to undertake will ultimately lead to the Summer Programme in English Literature at Oxford University, but until then I have four blissful days of London, all to myself. These days will be spent combing Oxford St., getting lost in Harrods, reading under a tree in Kensington Gardens, and applauding the work of the man with all the right words at the Globe. You could spend your life in that city and still not have had enough.  For Australians coming to London for the first time, it can be a dreadful shock – a few red buses cannot always resign you to the fact that everything is grey and wet to a bizarre degree – but London is addictive, and I am hooked.

And it is time for my next hit.