billytheseal

So, I went to Oxford on Saturday and would advise everybody to visit this amazing city if they can. It was for a project I'm doing, and got to hand around Christ Church Cathedral with the Canon. This place is one of the most awesome places in the world. I could literally write a book on all the interesting things in this place, but will limit myself on some of the cooler things.




OK, not exactly interesting for me, but for all you Harry Potter fans out there...



This is Alice's door. Literally the door into Wonderland. Lewis Carroll use to watch young Alice Liddell play in these gardens, and this gave him the inspiration for his books. In the background you can see the tree where the Cheshire Cat use to sit.



This is Humpty Dumpty's wall. And he did indeed fall off of it. But rather than being an egg, Humpty Dumpty was a great cannon/mortar used by the armies of Charles 1st in the Civil War. It was so big that it fell off the city walls, and all the King's horses, and all the King's men couldn't fix the thing.



Tribute to a great man.



Will no one rid me of my turbulent priest? This is one of the few stain glass images of Thomas Becket, murdered (possibly by mistake) by knights of Henry 2nd, and later canonised. The image is so rare because Henry 8th (of the six wives fame) took a rather different view of Becket (even going so far as putting him on trail, even though he's been dead for century's) and ordered their destruction during the Dissolution of the Monasterys.





More random pictures. I could explore the place forever. Just to leave you with a random fact. The entire place exists in a weird Doctor Who time warp. You see, back in the day, time was not standardised, with different places having different times. This wasn't really a problem, until we got a national rail network, when it was thought that having a standard time for the entire country might be a good idea. At the time, Oxford was 5 minutes ahead of London, and the Oxford dons didn't take too kindly to being told they would have to adopt London time. So they decided that, if we have to put our clocks back 5 minutes, then we will just start our day and meetings at 5 past the hour. Stubborn as only old men can be. And this tradition has lasted to this day.

So that was my weekend. xx