Never mind, it just meant I lost my messing about time in Oxford, so caught the next train which still comfortably left me enough time to meet my friend in Carfax. So I sat down on the nice round bench there built round a tree to wait for her to arrive. And was promptly shat on by a pigeon.
Having been washed down by Ruth and after picking up her youngest from school we had a cup of tea and a chat and soon enough I was getting into the old dinner jacket and setting off to St Johns for the dinner. And on arriving I found due to a cock up (my fault) with my booking, I wasn't on the guest list. No problem, I got added to the end of a table. But there was no one opposite me, and the person to my left hadn't turned up and, well the idea of sitting having dinner on my own didn't much appeal. But someone further down was stuck at work (yes, that's why I took the day off), so I took their place down the table and from there on in the weekend was terrific.
I found myself surrounded by three undergraduates and they were just the most delightful company. Charmingly they didn't seem to mind me being parachuted into their conversation and even showed (or successfully feigned) interest in my prattling. 4 courses with accompanying wines swept along in no time. Even the speech was rather good. Then back for enough port to ensure I surpassed my week's alcohol limit in an evening (well, if they will set unrealistic targets....). Just spent 4 hours in the company of some the most intelligent and articulate young people in the country, while getting slowly sozzled. What's not to like? Happy evening.
Saturday morning I wasn't exactly up at dawn, but had arranged to have lunch with the son of friends who is an undergraduate at LMH. And one couldn't have really had more agreeable company, even compared to that I had enjoyed the night before. Just so much not the stereotype of a student (you know, lazy, ungrateful, ridiculously left wing to assuage the guilt of their over-privileged background, determined to find a trivial cause that will make them feel better about themselves like a statue or other inanimate object standing as a symbol of a cause won centuries ago, that sort of thing). But no, one is faced with an utterly charming, level-headed, intelligent hard-working young man. Who like the rest of us isn't sure whether we should vote in or out. (Does anyone know?) And who is the first person ever to talk about rowing in a way that gives me an idea why people do it (as opposed to boring me so quickly that all my prejudices are confirmed). So my conclusion is that maybe we old -timers can safely retire to our sheltered housing knowing the country is actually safe in the next generation's hands. So they can sort out global warming and the Middle-East. We are just leaving a decent challenge for them. Nice of us.
Was such a lovely day in Oxford. Such a pretty city. Made me very nostalgic. I have taken (and posted on this blog) heaps of photos of Oxford, so didn't really try this time, except for the graveyard to St Giles. Which was at least tourist free.
We had lunch I Browns, a real Oxford mainstay. Hadn't eaten there in 30 years. And you know what, the buggers had only gone and changed the menu! What was wrong with chicken pie and salad? Well, for instance, in my day they hadn't even invented quinoa to put in a salad. What was wrong with shredded cabbage as a superfood? Indeed we of course didn't have superfoods at all. Unless you counted spinach. Which obviously no one ate as its not much of a food is it?
So I got the train back to London and quickly dumped my stuff before heading off into Town. My lodger was entertaining a young lady so I had promised to make myself scarce for the evening. (How good a landlord am I to vacate my own home?) I had thought of just going to a film, but wasn't sure that would take up enough time, so decided to do a comedy show as well.
James Acaster, having sold out his late night show had put on an early one at 7 too, so I went to that. I have never seen him live before, and I can't say I was totally convinced by what I had heard from him on TV, but he is a well rated, up and coming comic so I felt I should give him a go. Still not totally convinced, but much more favourably inclined than before. Certainly I have a lot more respect for him. Firstly, because he genuinely has a style of his own. Slightly surreal but surreal based on the mundane unlike say, Eddie Izzard. I liked for example his musings on his agnosticism. "So how did life begin? With the Big Bang? But what was there before the Big Bang? God. But what was there before God? I like to think a couple of poppadums, just to keep us going before starting." He also used the audience very well, not in a cruel way, but just very witty and on the ball.
His routine was loosely, very loosely, based around doing jury service. It wandered off nicely at tangents. But what it possibly lacked was enough real gags. The material felt a little bit stretched to me. But a good show. Felt pleased I had gone.
Then I whipped round the corner to Leicester Square to see Deadpool. Have to say that the choice of films was not great, which is how I came to see this comic superhero movie. The superhero movie is definitely not my genre, which is unfortunate given it seems to account for every other film nowadays. But this film is part superhero movie (yawn) and part superhero spoof (Yeah!).
Ryan Reynolds (who was very good) is the hero/antihero who was diagnosed with terminal cancer and cured by forcing his natural mutant genes to go into overdrive, curing his cancer and giving him a random superpower at the same time, which is to be able to regenerate/heal himself of any injury. Apart from the side-effect that he went from super handsome (and this film gives Ryan plenty of opportunity to take off his shirt and show he has the physique to match the uniform), to the complexion of a bubbling pizza. He can't face his beautiful girlfriend for fear of the fright she might take at the monster he had become, until she is kidnapped by the bad guys and he comes to the rescue.
There is lots of action, but also a lot of wise-cracking. Indeed it is very funny, and when one thought about it one realised that the film has probably more violence and sheer sadism than a straight film could get away with. In one early scene Reynolds announces to the small army of machine gun toting goons that he only has 12 bullets left, so some of them will have to learn to share. You either find a slow motion shot of three gunmen standing in a row having the tops of their skulls blown off by a single bullet tearing through each of them, funny, or not. If not, this film possibly isn't for you. I quite liked it.
No comments:
Post a Comment