On being accepted into Oxford, everyone warned me about the reading lists. “You’ll be reading eight hours a day,” they said. At the time, it sounded almost romantic.
It's Thursday night in New College's Long Room, and several dozen students are desperately trying to master The Plough Speed, which, for the uninitiated, is a mind boggling routine of side-steps, spins and shuffles.
l've moved cities enough times to know that leaving is never just about packing boxes. After spending eighteen years in London, I found myself applying to a number of different cities, including Oxford, for university.
As Michaelmas drew to a close, a dramatic conversation about Zohran Mamdani, the new mayor of New York City, finding his partner on a dating app prompted my friend and I to try a dating app for the first time in the UK.
'Places are not the same by night. They are transformed. Shapes and forms take on different sizes, colours and shades. Perspective becomes blurred, sounds sharper'
'There’s a wonderful feeling of freedom that comes from being in the water, especially here where it is deep enough to kick your legs out without touching river-bed'
'In such a forest there is of course much more than visual pleasure; there’s the sound of wind bending and creaking age-old timber, or the whiff of damp leaves, the smell of air, damp, imbued with life.'
'Port Meadow is steeped in myth; it’s the unploughed landscape, the land earned from resisting the Danes, a sacred spot where the Freemen graze their cattle'