I never thought I would say this, but I really wish it snowed more in Oxford. Being freezing and cold is so much more enjoyable when there are little white snow flakes falling from the sky and making everything look like a picture perfect winter wonderland. About two weeks after my last post in which I said it hadn’t gotten stupidly cold yet, it got stupidly cold. But even though the rest of the country was getting snow it wasn’t until this Wednesday morning that I woke to see that Oxford was snowing and our little back courtyard and my bike were all covered in snow (not much snow, but well and truly enough for my “I grew up in the tropics” inner child). Instantly my grumbles about the cold grey weather (which are becoming a regular morning tantra now) stopped and I was happy! I was also happy to find out when I got to work that I wasn’t the only one excited and that even the folk with considerable snow-cohabiting experience were also excited about the first snow of the season. But now just two days later it’s all gone – and its back to just being stupidly cold with no reason…so here’s hoping for more, will keep you posted
Aside from snow, the other thing I realise I like a lot more than I thought is France. I really don’t know how the French ended up with such a bad wrap from the international community. Because every French person I’ve ever met has been super awesome and totally lovely – and I don’t speak a word of French (well actually after this last trip to France I now speak about 20 French words, a few of which actually form sentences). My week-long course in Montpellier was really fun, good food, great cheese, superb wine and an enjoyable week learning mark-recapture (yes I do get my geek on every now and again). I think you know that a course is going to be good when you get there for registration (and the preliminary meet and greet affair), and there is an enormous table laid out with a smorgasbord of cheeses, deli meats, olives, delicious breads and about 20 different bottles of French wine. And then the guru of your field (whose paper on mark-recapture analysis has been cited over 1600 times including at least 10 times by you) gets up and doesn’t talk about stats or anything like that but instead begins to explain in detail which cheese and meats should be eaten first, which are more pungent and can’t be eaten before the less strong cheeses, which meats are cured etc, and which wines are the best to combine with each and every one of the delicious foods on the table. I probably wasn’t the only one in the room thinking ‘awesome’, but being the only native English speaker in the room (and the only person to only speak 1 language fluently, bloody Europeans!), and the only one currently living in a country where baguettes and croissants are sold in plastic, food is highly processed or ready-made, and deep-frying is an art, I’m quite positive I was the only one thinking ‘I love France”. So the week was totally enjoyable, the weather was sunny and warm and the city was gorgeous (lots of little funky bars, cafés, patisseries down winding narrow cobbled streets) and the only disappointment was that when Cam turned up he must have brought the English weather with him as it started to rain and didn’t let up for the rest of the weekend, which ruined my plans to hire bikes and ride out to the sea to go try and find flamingos. But, oh well I have a feeling this won’t be my last voyage to France.
And then it was back to O-Fo but thankfully I didn’t have time to get all depressed about the grey weather this time as Dave and Madeleine came to town and hung out with us for a couple of awesome days spent just strolling around town, eating drinking and playing Rumikub (with the most minimal amount of time spent at work on my behalf). Come back soon guys! And now its just work, and life and trying to stay warm until Chrimbo (as they call the festive season in this part of the world) festivities will be upon us, hopefully accompanied by loads of snow! I like snow....
