Sunday Routine - Sun, Nov 2 (UK trip day 82)
Set the alarm to get up by 9am, dress and out the door by 9:45am.
Found a new more interesting and faster route to the Hollywell Music room.
Instead of heading up
St Aldates, we cross the street into
Christ Church
meadow. Between the church and the cricket field we take
Dead Man's
Walk exiting thru a very tight cattle gate. A couple more turns and we
arrive at The Vaults
& Garden Cafe at St Mary's Church. (picture >>>)
Our timing has us ordering and sitting down to eat breakfast with a pot of tea (coffee for Jim) just before the church service lets out and the choir descends on the cafe taking up the 2 long tables thru the middle. Our concert tickets get us free coffee/tea so we just pay for the breakfast - me scrambled eggs with toast and Jim granola, yoghurt, fruit with a side of scones.
We leave the Vaults at 10:40am for the 3 block walk past the Radcliff Camera and Bodleian Library to the Hollywell Music room. We bought season tickets this term so we no longer have to rush to the Hollywell by 10am to get put on the waiting list.
Today there is a notice outside that we're to listen to a different string quartet because the other cellist is sick but will play the same pieces that are in our program. We both love the Hayden piece they play but agree that neither of us are especially Mozart fans. Too bad since we'd recently visited Salzburg with Mozart's birthplace and enjoyed wine in the garden behind his residence. (String Quartet in B flat, Op 76 No 4 'Sunrise' by Joseph Haydn and Sting Quartet in G, K387 by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart)
The printed programs are always so helpful and interesting as it first talks about the group that is performing, then reviews in detail piece they will play generally with some history of the composer or why they and when they wrote the particular piece. Each movement is described so successfully that you can generally recognize the described notes/theme etc. during the performance. (Much more so than being able to recognize the described tastes when sampling wines.)
The instant the concert is finished, generally around 12:20pm we rush back to Campion Hall to have sherry in the common room with the priests before moving to the dining hall for Sunday lunch/roast. Today there were some special guests including several from the Ukraine - students and the Ukranian ambassador to Belguim. There is such a wide range of people and nationalities here making for very interesting table conversations. Now that term has started, the hall is full with students and guests as is the dining hall. When we first arrived there would only be about 15 of us for meals, now it's averaging 35 or more. I sure wouldn't want to be the cook/planner for all these people. In fact the cutoff for signup is 10am each day for dinner and noon on Thursday for the weekend because of the large lunch meals.
We're still figuring out the logistics of eating dinner before heading to
the Harcourt Arms Pub in nearby Jerico for their open-mic night. There
are many restaurants in Jerico but most are not open late on Sunday and we
are not yet familiar with what is available. Today we just ate
sandwiches for dinner since we'd had the pork roast dinner at noon.
The open mic night starts at 7:30pm ending when they close at 11pm. There is a continual stream of very talented musicians, each allowed to play 2 songs. Most accompany themselves on the guitar or the upright piano that sits in the corner. But some are larger groups playing in 2s, 3s or more and most by impromptu invite. That is to say that after everyone who has signed up has played, one or more of the performing regulars will get up to play again and based on the song(s) they pick, invite others - drums, piano, violin, base guitar etc. - to play with them. An absolutely wonderful way to end a Sunday.
We just love our Sundays and will be sorely pressed to find a replacement when we return to Arlington.