My five special minutes

Yesterday was the first in a series of days were I managed to get into places that I am really not supposed to be. The included the print room at the Ashmolean Museum, Bodlien Law Library, a post-graduate college for lunch and the main law lecture theatre. So far so good.

I told a very long story at the Ashmolean Museum about what I wanted to see: classical sketches of mechanical things where the image implied movement and especially if the sketch also showed human interaction with the machine. I was particularly interested in Italian drawings and like it best when they had something to do with architecture. The reason I wanted to see this was because I was interested in fabric printing and was looking for some ideas. I had to present this explanation four times to get in. (The only way to get in is to describe exactly what you want to see and why.)

When I did there were only three people in the room viewing the sacred stuff and three people working there. The attendant got out a huge felt mat, put on cotton gloves told me where to sit, got a special viewing frame, then went and got the print I had described. It turned out to be a Leonardo de Vinci study for a bigger painting. It was of course the original (this is of course Oxford). It was really beautiful. She then told me that I was now allowed to get out my sketch book and begin. I got out my diary and started pretending and then she gave me a folio of all the things written about this sketch.

Anyway for about 5 minutes I had my very own da Vinci. It was very special. I took some photos without the flash off course and will upload the images as soon as I work out how.

Everybody loves Greta

I have very quickly gone into that holiday time warp where it gets to be 10 o'clock just 5 minutes after if was 9 o'clock.

I have appointed myself Benny and Sandy's wife. They love me for it! My duties consist of reading their recipe books, making suggestions, conducting an inventory of the pantry, acquiring supplies and providing a meal. Last night it was sundried tomato ravioli with roast butternut pumpkin, pine nuts, goat cheese and deepfried sage that I picked from their garden, followed by lemon delicious pudding and cream. Tonight it is pea and ham soup with sourdough bread followed by rum and rasin ricotta tart (the raisins are soaking in the rum as I type). Sandy and Benny are drawing me up a very specific list of the ingredients that I am to bring back from Madrid. So far I have giant green unpitted olives in a lemon and chili marinade, chorizo (there will be very detailed specifications later) and the list has just started. My instructions are to take the biggest bag possible with nothing in it, and return with not a gram less than the onboard luggage limit will allow. No wonder they love me!

My domestic duties are enjoyable and really quite engrossing. It gives me a reason to go into various supermarkets where I stand staring at all the types of butter from Sussex, or Surrey, or Cornwall or Cardiff and wonder who cares. I have had discussions with butchers which go something like this:
Greta: "What is that?"
Butcher wearing a funny white hat: "Pheasant love."
Greta: "What is that?
Butcher wearing giant blue and white striped apron: "That would be a goose love"
Greta: "What is that?"
Butcher with giant hands: "It's a Mallard love."
Greta: "What is that?"
Butcher with apple cheeks: "It's a Christmas haggis love."

And on it goes. The only conclusion I can draw is that everyone here loves me. This has been confirmed by the woman on the checkout, the bus driver, the mobile phone salesman, the girl who sold me a coffee and the very grumpy, snarly woman in the Tourist Information Centre. They all called me love, so it must be true.

Touchdown in Oxford

The flight
The trip was really pretty good. I lucked out and managed to get an aisle seat next to two people who did not want to climb over me to get to the toilet even once, they sat very still and kept entirely quiet. This left all the wriggling and getting up and down to me. We flew low over western China and Afghanistan when it was light. It was a most amazingly beautiful scene.

The money
So far I have spent
£25 on the bus from Heathrow to Oxford
£30 on a mobile
£2 on a coffee
£8 on a taxi
That is about $150
Exactly how it is that people manage to live here is one of the mysteries of the world. And don't go thinking that the wages must be high.

Benny and Sandy manage by both having good jobs, never, (really never ever) eating out, rarely buying take away, walking whereever possible, riding push bikes to work and the boys ride or walk to school including during the depths of winter, not eating meat very often, investing in a baby Gaggia so they can have coffee on a daily basis, buying the daily paper on campus where the usual price of £1 is subsidized so it only costs 30p.

I walked around Oxford a bit and saw an add for a job at £6 per hour which Sandy and Benny say is really good money for a waitress. I think I might apply.

The last word

I have uploaded photographs that we took all the way back through to Cuba. So if you want to back track and see more of Senor Bigotes, or drenched people at waterfalls, or Old Havana architecture, then just go back through the blog.

Adios (look back to January 17 2007)

In the bar, a young woman from New Zealand was also spending her last night away from home before the marathon journey back to the other side of the world. She tried to sum up how she would explain Cuba to people, how she would remember her New Year's Eve, how she had changed. It was a neat conversation because that was what we were dealing with as well.

An yway, our friendly bar tender decided to stand on the bar and pour tequila down the boys throats and we figured that that was about as good as it was going to get.

Mexico - the big issues

The church
The Virgin of Guadalupe really runs Mexico. She is everywhere! Mexico is one of the world's most religious countries in terms of those who practise. We have seen taxi drivers and pedestrains cross themselves everytime they pass a church, wealth is installed in the churches and bells ring to let you know just when to say a prayer. We are quite over it.

I have seen more blind people than you can poke a white cane at. Every train trip I have taken a blind person gets on and sells CDs. Sometimes they are accompanied by a son or daughter who collects the money. But sight is a health issue and praying to the virgin wont make it better. (Comparisons with Cuba are just too easy to make.)

Women
In Mexico the population is increasing. All over Mexico women walk, and work and shop, and run stalls with children strapped to to them. Talk about encumbered! The only people we have seen with a pusher are tourists. But in the whole time I have been here I have only seen one man carrying a child and he did not have the child strapped to him.

There are shoe shine guys on every corner, but I have not seen a woman getting her shoes shined, very few women drive cars and perhaps it is my imagination but when I see couples in public, the women seem to be tending to the men.

We heard many truely terrible stories from tourists about being extorted by the police, but the worst one of all was a Filippino woman who was raped by the police, she realised a few weeks later that she was pregnant and so went to the doctor. From there she was taken straight to jail where she was imprisoned for three months in order to prevent her from having an abortion.

The connection between the church and the position of women could not be clearer.

Little boxes on the hillside

Only old people will recall the 'little boxes' song but that is what Taxco is like. Charles, Josh and I (reunited in Mexico City) took a day trip out to Taxco. (Tony stayed in bed being sick.) It was a great trip to do. The town really reminded me of the Amalfi coast in Italy, but that point of reference only works if you have been to the Amalfi coast in Italy.

We walked up the hill to a beautiful pale pink church, were once again amazed and annoyed at the oppulance and gold installed on the internal walls and ceilings, then wandered around this maze of a town. Taxco is famous for trading silver, so we looked at silver stuff till we quite got over it. I liked a armadillo bracelet that bit its own tail to do up. Charles liked the little fat mariachis and Josh tried to have some taste.

Having taken so many different types of transport on this trip, I figured we may as well finish up with a cable car ride. It was every bit as panoramic as promised. I managed not to be overwhelmed by vertigo. We saw houses cut into the mountain side with only steps leading up. The question of how they get their groceries etc up was answered when we noticed a sort of basket-pulley system.

It gets dark between about 6.30 and 6.45pm. Our bus pulled out at 7, so when we left the town it was all lit up and glowing - just for us.