Oxford

I am having a tough day today. A very painful goodbye at Oxford station, a long walk along the river, and now I am sat in my half-empty flat feeling hollow and a little lost.

My possessions are strewn about. They need to be divided into take-with, put in shipping container, and chucked away. I have nowhere to sit. My chairs are covered in boxes; the sofa’s is in pieces in a recycling skip; the bed I sold last night for £75 to a nice student who loaded it into a large people taxi and drove off. My Mazda was driven off the day before.

I keep feeling hungry but it’s only 11.50am and I know it’s not hunger but stomach knots as the depth of my move, my emigration sinks in. And I keep welling up. Occasionally one manages to break through and pulls with it a few drops down my face. They don’t have enough momentum to get past the cheek ridge so stop there and dry.

I’m hoping that by writing this post I am going to get some clarity, clear my head. I’d been staring vacantly out the window for 10 minutes trying to get a handle on things and failing. The answer my brain eventually came up with was: write. I am starting to feel better already.

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Last night, as I was scrabbling around by the front door in the dark with a torch and a piece of fuse wire, my letterbox started juttering away behind me. Even the postmen manage to deliver before 9pm, so I was intrigued. And sure enough it was the latest newsletter (number 6 this year) from the St Ebbe’s New Development Residents’ Association (SENDRA).

A two-page A4 printout covering what is happening locally for the 100 or so other people in my peaceful little corner of the world, hidden from central Oxford thanks to a hideous car park on the way over, but resting neatly and comfortably on the river.

Thanks to the electricity shutdown causing my modem to commit hari-kiri, and me having to do an early morning rush to PC World and rebuild my entire home network, I have only just now got around to reading SENDRA’s September 2006 newsletter.

I get the feeling that the St Ebbe’s resident’s association is rapidly running out of control.

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Pro-Test march strikes historic note

June 5, 2006

It’s an extraordinary thing, this Pro-Test movement that started only a few months and yet has had an enormous nationwide impact on a very difficult subject – the use of animal testing.

On Saturday, the group – fronted as usual by 16-year-old Laurie Pycroft – had their second march through [tag]Oxford[/tag] and even though there were fewer people than the first march, despite it being a beautiful day, there was a real sense of something historic happening.

Pro-Test march, Oxford, June 2006

There was a similar feel at the first march on 26 February, but the sense that time was that this was the first time people had publicly stood up for animal testing. On 3 June, that change had come – wide media attention, GlaxoSmithKline publicly stating its support for animal testing, the prime minister himself signing a petition – and there was instead a collective sense of excitement that the movement had achieved so much in such a short period of time.

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Tony Blair in Oxford: Part II

February 4, 2006

The second part of my effort to cover the visit of prime minister Tony Blair to Oxford. In this part, the locals past judgment and the prime minister makes quick his visit from the horde of four.

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The hunt for the prime minister – and our democracy: Tony Blair in Oxford

February 3, 2006

The British prime minister comes to my home town of Oxford, so I decide to go listen to what he has to say. So began an extraordinary and bizarre saga where democracy itself came under question.

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