I’ve had a nice day doing a bit more exploring around Oxford, including the Natural History and Pitt Rivers museums, followed by a quest for good icecream and some shopping. But being (very) far from home the notion of place comes up again and again, both in conversation and in my head.

As I sit here now in my room at Wadham college, the soundscape includes music from my laptop (meme – thanks to fellow OII participant David Berry), Beethoven symphonies from downstairs, the outdoor theatre troupe on the lawn below my window performing a French play (Cyano de Bergerac) in English, and the chants and shouts of the animal rights protest marching past on the street. This morning I looked at cultural artefacts from all reaches of the globe, many of which are of course the spoils of Empire, before eating Turkish delight icecream and buying an african thumb piano (mbira) and a set of peruvian pan pipes…

This evening: croquet, apparently!