Hi Everyone,
So when did it dawn on me, after many years of moving around, having lovely homes in multiple places, that I actually have a hometown? No idea really, except over and over again, like the other Sunday morning, I count my blessings—I love my hometown.
I am taken aback by the scenes Oxford reveals to me, such as a spry young paper-girl delivering the Sunday Times to my neighbours. I didn’t even realise that there was such a thing as a paper-boy, -girl, -person anymore. I love the idea that, on a pleasant early-ish morning, upon returning from mass with my Sunday Times under my arm, a lovely young woman—girl—is delivering newspapers. My street dates to the Victorian 1880s, and the girl telling me “I work for the newsagent on Woodstock Road” could be straight out of the 1950s…but this is 2026!
“Just go in and ask,” she says, as I think I am looking at an apparition from days of yore. “I deliver every Sunday morning.” Her sturdy bike with well-stitched saddle bags is parked on its kickstand at an angle in front of my house, as she waves and turns to carry on serving my neighbours.
I like the idea; a paper-person and at a young age. Who of note and good repute didn’t start out with a paper route? Walt Disney, Martin Luther King, Warren Buffett, and even Kathy Ireland, who went on to build a multi-billion-dollar empire? The list is endless, and quite an Honour Roll.
It makes me happy to live in a safe place for a young person to grow up. (Well, relatively safe; Oxford does have its seamy underbelly—not to be written up here.) I have often had to stop my car and gawp. I have swallows diving, blackbirds singing, with ancient trees (the Giant Birch whose silver bark inspired J.R.R. Tolkien and the Hornbeams that inspired Philip Pullman) lining either side of the road in my quiet suburb.
Technically it is not a suburb anymore, as it is referred to, and has been for some time, as Central North Oxford. Yes, I have swans when I least expect it, sailing past my garden along the Oxford Canal with their five grey cygnets. (When will they ever moult and grow up?)
I run my Sprocker Spaniel on Port Meadow and as he tests the Cherwell, as the Thames tributary is called here, I watch the cows wade halfway in. After a coffee at the Perch pub, and a signal to head for home, I am astounded by the vista, unchanged for years. Yes, there are cows wading in the shallow waters that evoke the past, the oxen that once forded this stream, giving Oxford its name.
How have I been so lucky to call Oxford home? No idea. Just a Greater Plan, I suppose, and I am deeply grateful.
Wishing you a full and munificent October, reaping a great harvest, predicated on a gratitude for a Plot Beyond your Control.
Love,