Ox and Elephant

I was in Oxford for 3 days this week, for no other reason than wanting a break from the norm. I left with three library books, only one of which I actually read. 

A Brief History of Capitalism according to the Jubilee line, is the last and not the worst but certainly not the best of the series (Penguin Lines) I've read. As a work of fiction it's way too ambitious for the 100-odd pages. Political debate, a life and death situation, historical characters popping up and everything made that much harder because he's done it as a dream sequence. I've never read a dream sequence yet that was convincing. 

I mean, it didn't even have limestone elephants in it. 

Instead of my library books I bought and read The Awakening by Kate Chopin, and Respectable by Lynsey Hanley (both are very good and have made my 'books I enjoyed' sidebar), and bought but haven't yet read Robinson Crusoe (which I need for my next essay), Cathedrals and Castles by Henry James, which is a slim English Journeys paperback, and Vita Sackville West's Garden Book.  

I also went to Rousham Gardens, which are lovely.

You can apparently get the bus from near the war memorial but I took the train because I wanted to go back to Heyford, which I've walked through before when 'doing' the Oxford canal. I even had some thoughts of going into Banbury or strolling down into Tackley to check if it's as pretty as I remember it, but in the end I preferred to sit in the cafe by the canal for an hour drinking tea until it was time to take the train back to Oxford again.

Insert caption about 'Dreaming Spires' here.