RBD left before me; she’s roughly three hours ahead of my plane.  I sat in Heathrow starring at a dot representing the approximate location of her aircraft as it blipped across Ireland.  My world, depicted by 120 flashing pixels.  How ludicrous modern life is.  

Extinction Rebellion (XR) have been staging protests through the capital city.  One person glued themselves to an aircraft.  Several sat on top of tube cars after pulling the breaks, snarling the morning commute.  This absolutely did not endear them to average Londoners.  Tempers flared and some angry folks pulled down the protestors and hit them.  The video of it all is quite raw. 

As I headed into the Underground this morning, I passed another XR protest in Oxford Circus.  Protestors had erected a bamboo structure in the middle of the intersection and chained themselves to it.  This locked up traffic around the area.  Oxford Street has many “fast fashion” stores, like H&M, which they say contribute mightily to carbon emissions.  

My tour guide in Oxford, Chris, alerted me to XR.  He was older and found their antics humorous.  “What’s an 85 year old pensioner got to lose by gluing himself to a plane?” he said.  Chris liked a bit of chaos and casual rebellion, watching people get upset when their world grinds to a halt, so needless to say we got on famously.  Oxford has a long history of thumbing its nose at the rules and polite conventions, and its residents take that reputation seriously.  

Roughly 19,000 undergraduates attend Oxford.  Another 18,000 or so attend a polytechnic institute close by, raising the undergrad population to around 37,000.   Don’t quote me on my numbers.  It’s a typical college town, with enough chintzy food, coffee, and trinket shops to satisfy any yearning you feel for your collegiate days.  

Chris, my guide, says he teaches a history course at the university as part of his doctoral work.  Him and his wife live full-time in Oxford, raising their 14 year-old daughter.  He does freelance tours and adjunct teaching, which probably doesn’t pay much, and she works a proper job in medicine.  They both used to live in Africa, working together in creating medical infrastructure for countries without any.

The university is comprised of many colleges, each basically independently run.  It’s not unlike U.S. universities, which may have a School of Engineering, Drama, or Architecture that operate nearly autonomously within the larger university structure.  You live and eat with your college-mates, not the larger university community, at least the first year, which helps forge lifelong bonds.  Your tutors live amongst you in the dorms.  Freshman eat most of their meals in the college’s dining hall, while upperclassman who live off campus just pop in for lunch or dinner as their schedule allows.  Some colleges have a formal, regular weeknight meal where all members are expected to attend.  

If you’ve seen any Harry Potter movie, you’re familiar with the setup of the dining hall.  High Table, so named because it’s literally a step up from the other tables at the front of the room, is where the head of the college, faculty, and honored guests sit.  Portraits of dead white men adorn the walls, though at Trinity College’s dining hall, many living white women also had portraits.  Progress.  These images are always famous alumni.  

Much of Harry Potter’s iconography comes from this place.  School gowns, crests, seals, Latin phrases, and “houses” who eat together … all how things work at Oxford.  If Hogwarts is your first choice, Oxford might be a solid safety school to consider.  However, it’ll be competitive.  For roughly 3,500 slots, over 20,000 students applied.  

Harry Potter tours are big business for the community.  You’ll find tourists wearing Sorting Hats and Hufflepuff scarves amongst college kids too cool to pay them any mind, studiously trolling Facebook in chic coffee shops.  The locals extract money from these tourists any way possible.  What J.K. Rowling has done for the economy here cannot be understated.  Several locations in the various movies were filmed here, so why not charge people to see THE actual room?  If you visit, come with a small baggie of one pound coins.  Chris, my local guide, got me in for free because we had become besties by this point.  Our ninety minute tour lasted three hours.   

I mentioned a distaste for rule following, and that idea extends to the architecture.  While mostly Baroque, the architects borrowed from whatever movement they felt like.  It’s very post-modern, a full 200 years before Post-Modernism arrives.  This creates a mixture of styles ripe for discussing over a latte or pint … very liberal arts.  I was never too sure what I was looking at, except it’s beautifully maintained and aggressively stately. 

Like any college town, Oxford is very socially progressive.  Not a Brexit town.  Most people, residents and college students alike, want to read “the new deal” Mr. Johnson struck with the E.U. and vote again on whether to leave based on its merits, not the promises made several years ago that have turned out to be nationalist fantasies.  Everyone feels sure a new vote would mean the Remainers prevail and, thus, Brexit scuttled.  This is why Brexiteers do not want a new referendum.

Travel to Oxford from Paddington Station.  It’s about an hour ride on the Great Western Railway, or GWR.  Stay the day, take a tour, have a coffee, pay to see inside the various colleges.  It might almost make you wish you were 18 again.  Almost.    

I admire those who feel protesting can change the world, like the young souls attending Oxford, steeping in the supposed self-actualization of a Liberal Arts program, as well as the protestors of XR.  It is a faith in humans to care or change I do not fully share.  XR spokespeople tell the BBC they have “no choice.”  They speak eloquently about the time to act is now, whatever the cost or inconvenience.  I’ve never believed anything that absolutely in my life.  Probably why I’ll never be a God-King, The Pope, Cult Leader, or a Sales Rep.   

I will be home soon.  One more post where we’ll tour a bomb shelter used during the war, situated beneath the London Underground.