A day out in Oxford with Lewis

Well Summer is now most definitely here. It's unbelievably hot here in West Berkshire, so much so that we're braving a barbecue this evening (the first in a long while). There may be a drink or two as well. But before that I just about have time to post a blog update from my weekend visit to Oxford. We arrived early, before the tourists and before most of the shops had opened, so it was blissfully peaceful, for a short while at least. The first scene we were greeted with was all the punts moored, awaiting their passengers for the day (which seemed to be almost exclusively stage and hen parties).

 Before the punters arrived

We had breakfast on the High Street just after the bridge, and lunch in the University parks below, before walking across the parks to the lakes and rivers on its east side.

Keble College from the University parks

I wish I had taken more notice of the street names as I seem to have various pictures of narrow roads, lanes and alleyways, all of which I am sure have appeared in Morse or Lewis at some stage (but more of that later).

Narrow street, Oxford

Narrow passage, Oxford

The final picture is probably the best of a rushed series I took after we turned a corner and literally bumped into an episode of Lewis being filmed. We must have watched for a good 30 minutes and I'm pretty sure all that was actually filmed was a short car scene of no more than 10-15 seconds. It involved some sort of old sports car, blue I think, but alas I have no idea of make or model. I will however be watching out for this when the next series hits the TV screens, in the autumn/winter I hope.

Lawrence Fox, as Hathaway, on the film set for an episode of Lewis

    

A small glimpse of summer in London docklands

I know it's very British to moan about the weather, but this year has been spectacularly poor. It has however made me appreciate the few glimpses of summer I have been lucky enough to find. The two pictures below were taken just after I had arrived at Canary Wharf and before I locked myself away in a windowless meeting room for the day. The blue skies were a welcome sight in the morning but needless to say they did not last very long.

Canary Wharf, DLR station

Canary Wharf

Fortunately when we broke for lunch, I was able to get a half decent picture from up high, back across London. This will almost certainly be the last time I visit London docklands area for a while now as it's set to get crazily busy for the 2012 Olympics.

View from the Clifford Chance building

I had hoped to be able to photograph some more London mews in the sunlight, but alas the weather has not been on my side. Hopefully we'll get a late summer so I'll be able to do this again later in the year.

In other news, I can't say that I've been able to get out on my mountain bike as much as I'd have liked, mainly due to the weather. My reading of Parallel Lines remains slow, and I've yet to even open Mile by Mile.

On the music front however, I have been quite active. I've bought quite a few CDs over the past couple of weeks. Favourites to date are The Orb featuring David Gilmour - Metallic Spheres, and Pearls Before Swine - The Use of Ashes / These Things Too. As with most of the CDs I buy, these will ultimately end up on my web site as I tend to limit the misc I keep in physical form these days.

Sepia Saturday 133 - Elephanta Caves

Well, I'm now back from India ... back from the Indian monsoon to the great British summer, or not as the case may be as we seem to have 80 plus weather warnings in the UK. Apart from the usual tourist tat, which was not not sepia in the slightest, I did not see anything appropriate for the elephant theme of this week's Sepia Saturday, so instead have used a couple of photos I took during my last trip to India when we managed to get some free time outside of the meetings to visit Elephanta Island. Elephanta Island is just off the coats of Mumbai and is home to a system of cave temples, carved out of the rock. The original statue of an elephant was what gave the island and caves their name, but after an aborted attempt by Portuguese explorers to take the statue back to Portugal, it is now in Mumbai's Victoria and Albert museum. These stone sculptures below are dedicated to the god Shiva.

Stone sculpture inside Elephanta Caves

Stone sculpture inside Elephanta Caves

    

For those of you used to reading my Sepia Saturday posts in my vintage postcards blog or my vintage magazines blog, this blog is dedicated to my various thoughts and musings which don't typically fit elsewhere. So you'll come across some of my other passions here, for example steam trains and London mews.