When we visited Magdalen College earlier this month, I noticed thousands of daffodils bulbs just weeks from blooming, so I thought it would be nice to return today and expected to see a beautiful sight. I wasn’t disappointed.
Here are a few images…
Here is the entire gallery of images…
Another bright but cold day in Oxford, perfect for going outside (well bundled-up, of course) and looking for signs of spring. We walked with Megan along the river, and passed a lovely “tuxedo” cat sitting on a rail watching the passers-by.
We also saw a lovely swan who followed us for some time until he found his mate.
Afterwards, one of our friends took us to visit nearby Waterperry Gardens. It’s too early to expect too much to be out yet, but the grounds were full of snowdrops and the winter colours were lovely. I heard a loud bird singing brightly from a nearby tree, and found this little robin:
I’m looking forward to visiting again in a few months, but here are some pictures of Waterperry Gardens in the late winter.
It was a bright morning, so I decided to take a walk through the town with my camera.
I live a few blocks from the church of St Thomas the Martyr, famous for its role as one of the churches at the forefront of the Oxford Movement in the mid-1800s. I wrote an essay last year titled “Ango-Catholicism in St Thomas’s Parish” which detailed especially the ritualistic contributions of the vicar Thomas Chamberlain to the Tractarian movement. It’s a wonderful old church originally built by the monks at Osney Abbey for the people outside of the abbey gates. Now the abbey is gone, but St Thomas’s continues on, and even today the church is especially known as a “High Church”. As I passed through the churchyard I admired the old clock on the tower.
In the gable above the porch door is a plaque, sundial and coat of arms of Robert Burton, who was vicar of the church in the early 1600s. He was famous for his book ”The Anatomy of Melancholy”.
Here is a wonderful portrait of him from the hall at Brasenose College, I hope to take my own photograph sometime, I think (surprisingly, considering…) that he looks incredibly fun.
The coat of arms and sundial:
This 13th-century priest’s door in the south wall is one of the oldest in Oxford, with original medieval metalwork.
The graveyard was full of snowdrops and crocuses.
Just outside of the church is an archway which is all that remains of the buildings of The Community of St Thomas Martyr, a sisterhood that was founded by Chamberlain in the 1880s, but closed in the 1950s.
Walking into town, I passed the gate to what was until a few years ago the yard of the Lion Brewery, now closed. There are no more breweries in Oxford, which I find really sad, especially considering that it was once a one of the great trades in the town.
These are ornaments on the Oxford Union building:
This is a small statue of St Michael, a guardian in a nook on St Michael Street.
A wonderful old building on Cornmarket Street:
Some details from college buildings:
A statue and some crocuses at the church of St Mary Magdalen.
Magdalen College:
The beautiful gardens at Magdalen College:
The last stop on the walk was Christ Church College. This is the Cathedral at Oxford, it was established at the Priory of St Frideswide just after the dissolution by Henry VIII when he closed Osney Abbey and moved the new bishopric here. Inside there is a beautiful shrine to St Frideswide, the Anglo-Saxon patron of Oxford, here some candles are lit beside the shrine.
Additional images from the cathedral:
Finally, this stained-glass of St Michael and the Host of Anglels, probably my favourite stained-glass in Oxford. Beautiful.
See the entire gallery of today’s images here: http://www.robertmealing.com/photography/recent-photographs/oxford-early-march-2010/
On my “about” page I listed my favourite movie as Prospero’s Books, a 1991 interpretation of Shakespeare’s The Tempest by Peter Greenway. I remember the first time that I saw this movie, it had just been released at the movie theatres and I didn’t really know what to expect other than that it was supposedly “visually stunning”. Well, visually stunning is just my cup of tea, and I was not disappointed, in this case the hype was surpassed by the reality.
I’d never seen anything like it, or at least, not on film. I was at art school at this time learning computer graphics, and my favourite program was Photoshop 2.0 (yes, this was before they invented layers). I’ve always had a love of collage, and Photoshop seemed a magical tool that allowed me to create images that could match whatever I could imagine, and it was these types of images that I saw moving for the first time in Prospero’s Books.
I remember thinking that it was “the first film of the 21st century”. The combination of typography, calligraphy, still and moving images… it was just breathtaking. It was more than just stunning, it was an orgasm of imagery, and my eyes simply couldn’t take in everything that was happening on screen.
A common comment about the movie is that it is full of naked people, and that’s true enough. They’re just the spirits that inhabit the island, created with magic by Prospero, along with most of the sets and props as well, virtually everything on the island is an illusion.
Throughout the movie, Greenway shows us short snippets of each of Prospero’s books of magic, and it is in these scenes that the animation and graphics are really especially spectacular.
Most people seem to find the film “too much”, but I think that’s part of what I love about it, Greenaway’s maximalism. It’s in your face, over the top, visual and aural exuberance. Every step is choreographed; every set, a reference to classical art. The costumes (yes, there are some), are made of luxurious fabrics, and some of them even change colours. And to set it all to life, the score by Michael Nyman is wonderful.
It’s been almost 20 years now that I first saw this movie. I’ve owned it on VHS tape, but it has never been released on DVD or Blu-ray, I’ll buy it when it is, this movie would be stunning in high-def. I think I’ve probably watched it dozens of times over the years, and I still look to it for inspiration when I need to be reminded of the sheer joy of creativity.
Here’s is one of my favourite scenes, the wedding of Amanda and Ferdinand. The goddesses Juno, Ceres and Iris officiate, each singing a blessing on the couple.
Enjoy…
