LEAVING SPIRES

a farewell to oxford

Oxford has been our on and off home now for the past ten years, and as someone from a family with far more connections to “the other place”, it has taken me most of that decade to come to really like and appreciate the city.

Typically, as luck would have it, my liking of Oxford has more or less coincided with our leaving the city for pastures new.

And pastures don’t come much more picturesque, or quintessentially English than those of South Park on the eastern edge of the ancient town centre.

And as for those famous dreaming spires, there’s nowhere they look dreamier than from the steepling fields of South Park on a late summer’s evening.

This view of Oxford; largely unchanged since Matthew Arnold penned his famous verse; and not that different from when Oliver Cromwell’s besieging army was camped on this very spot; and when this great dead English oak was a foot-high sapling, has gradually ingrained itself into the core of my consciousness, and something I shall carry with me and treasure for the rest of my days.