My new modus transportandi! Of course, two days after I hired it came the snow, so it's been garaged until the roads are melted enough for me to venture out again; somehow I find it more nerve-wracking to bike on the wrong side of the road than to drive.

I love how very English it looks - complete with a step-through frame so that I don't muss my, I dunno, hoop skirts or something. All it really needs is a wicker basket on the front instead of that pannier, and I could practically call it a velocipede.



So I might have been a little prematurely blasé about Headington, last time I wrote about it. For one thing, Sandfield Road? as in the road that I live on? Yeah, this is about two minutes down the street:

It's actually number 76, I just framed the shot badly. Oh, what's that? You can't read that plaque on the wall? Here, let me zoom for you:

That's right, ladies and gents, I'm living in JRRT's erstwhile stomping grounds. On the street where he lived, even. We're practically neighbors. Several years removed.

Okay, fine, so even if that doesn't tickle your fancy like it does mine (I have a nerdy fancy, what can I say?), Headington is not, as previously described, just a modest but nice-looking neighborhood. For one thing - and this is something that I, more American than I even realized, have not gotten over yet - it is old. Strolling around just off the high street the other day, I found myself in this sort of area:

Those walls, for instance. They run all throughout any part of the city that is not the high street. At first I was glancing around for some sort of marker, some "History happened here!" sign with interesting infobits on age or builders or whatever. Then it struck me - they're just there. To folks around here, there's nothing unusual or particularly noteworthy about coexisting with things that are hundreds of years old. I know I'm playing straight into the hands of Eddie Izzard here, but that still just blows my mind the slightest bit.

This is the local parish here in Headington, St Andrews Church. It's lovely. Quaint. I might go down of a Sunday. It's almost nine hundred years old.

The chancel, the oldest part of the church, dates back to the 12th century.

The church's historians claim archeological evidence of about 40,000 people buried in this churchyard. To be fair, it wraps round the back a bit, but still - small wonder it's so high compared to the church floor...