Birthday and time in Aylesbury

Seeing as my birthday was this Monday, I decided to go and visit my grandad and mum at grandads house just outside of Aylesbury. I left on Friday at 18:00 from Exeter to go to Oxford (via Reading). Fortunately, whilst I was on the train I ran into Donna, a friend of my old roommate, Matt. I invited her to sit with me and we managed to while away the time on the train, which was running fairly late because of te floods near Exeter (which has washed away a lot of the gravel beneath the railway tracks and has needed repairing!). As a result of these delays, I arrived too late to catch my second train from Reading to Oxford, but fortunately the next one was not long in coming. There I also got chatting to a fellow passenger, a teacher at a school near Exeter, who was going to visit her sister who was studying in Oxford.

The following day we decided to celebrate with a birthday meal and I finally got my new laptop, which I will hopefully be able to start up and get working soon enough, as I'm far more comfortable working with a Windows computer than with a Mac! We went out for a couple of walks, during which I managed to get a few nice photos of the autumnal countryside nearby. We then had a quiet evening in, during which I slowly tried to improve my piano skills. Sadly, however, once I decided to record myself playing just to see how bad I sounded, I realised how bad my playing is. However, as only practice makes perfect, I guess its just a question of carrying on trying to play every time I go home!

On Sunday I packed up all my things fairly quickly and after breakfast the three of us walked down to the bus stop to see me off. The bus arrived at Oxford in good time and catching my train from the station there was fine. I got it as far as Didcot Parkway, but once there, I realised that the next train which I was scheduled to catch was only going as far as Bristol Temple Meads as from there onwards the lines were under repairs from the flooding. I decided to try and do something about it once I had arrived there. There was, however, no alternative way set up to get down south, so I was forced to hang around the station until another train turned up which WAS going as far as Plymouth.

This train also proved to have an interesting passenger - I chanced to sit next to a chap reading a copy of the December 2012 edition of the National Geographic, and as I glanced at it I realised that the article he was reading was all about shamansim in Russia and other parts of Asia. Interested about this link to my dissertation, I inquired what issue it was and pointed out my reasons for wishing to know this. After this initial chat, we got into a conversation. It turned out that this chap, Zach, works as a tree surgeon and thatcher, and had just got back from Hawaii. Eventually, he asked me what I was studying, and upon my telling him, he asked me whether I knew a James Kearns, who as chance would have it was one of my lecturers three years ago, and was Zach's uncle.

Due to the delays, I got back about two hours later than expected, but was still keen to watch Love Actually with the housemates over a pasta dinner. Unfortunately, the weekend took its toll on my ankle, which has once more swollen up and is looking rather more bruised, which meant I was unable to attend a couple of my lectures, and went to the NHS walk-in centre, where a surly man told me that it was nothing to worry about. At least that was some relief.

Just to check out how the river is doing, Ed and I headed down to the quay and got a few photos before heading back, bumping into Rémi on the way. The river had, in any case, dropped back to a normal level, despite my having seen the floods near Tiverton the day before on the train back.

Football on Duckes Meadow

Somehow this week I got roped into playing for the 11-a-side Sunday football team which my housemates have set up as part of the University's squad. Despite not having played football in at least four years, I could have done a lot worse. Despite knowing that the pitches had been inundated a week ago, and we've had bouts of torrential rain ever since, last night we were given the go-ahead by the Athletic Union, which resulted in the four of us calling on as many people as we knew to come and play for us.

Despite this, and in the knowledge that we were going to be playing football on Sunday, Ed, Loz, Nick and I headed over to the Christmas market in town to have a look around and try and spot anything which was worthy of being purchased as a present. Having found nothing which attracted our eye, Loz, and I, who had headed out a bit earlier called the other two and got them to join us in drinking some mulled wine by the cathedral.

Sunday dawned looking fairly acceptable, but for once the weather forecast seemed to be spot on in its prediction. At 14:00, just when we were due to kick-off, the rain started coming down, turning an already muddy field into a wet and slimy hellhole... We had eventually managed to assemble a team of 13 players, two of whom Ed had managed to rope in at the last minute by playing in one of their matches in the morning, one who had been out the night before, and three or four helpless cases such as myself.

I started off on the bench, but was subbing for one of the other chaps soon enough, and managed to get through the second part of the first half. Unfortunately, about 10 or 15 minutes into the second half, I unsuccesfully tried to nick the ball off some other chap, which ended in a collision - his foot with my ankle. After hobbling around the pitch for another 5 or 10 minutes, I took myself off and applied cold water (followed by a bag of peas at home) to bring down the swelling.

The end score was 3 - 0, with us on the losing team. However, finishing did mean that we got to come back round to ours, sit down and watch Good Will Hunting, following in a series of rather serious films, including Saving Private Ryan on Saturday evening.