2 months ago...

After a period in the wilderness, Damien Martyn style, I have come back to the blog dashboard to recap an eventful December.

But after a brief Faure into the downloading of photographs onto my computer in the Mathematical Institute, it seems that jpeg format is non-compatible with the file format of..... and then I stopped reading the error message and gave up.

So before I can use the deluxe photographs to aid my collections of Caledonia I will give a brief rundown of the past few weeks.

Assume Alba adventures as given, then Christmas in Oxford, then New Year's Eve in Vienna (all of which have quips which will be told in due course) and now fast forward to the beginning of Oxford term.

Di had arrived on the 21st of December, and by the time Hilary Term began on the 14th of January - and indeed by the time Di began teaching on the 7th, we had just become accustomed to the house.

Oh yes - we are living in a house. Out in Horspath

http://www.horspath.org.uk/

which is a little over a 4.5 mile cycle into Oxford. Di is teaching some characters in the Wheatley Park School in the neighbouring village (of Wheatley - the story checks out). She has a Whitman's sampler of students across several year levels, and on the whole is enjoying the work despite the horal hard work she invests.

Horspath itself is a welcome change from the pulstations through my bedroom floor after living on top of the Holywell Manor Bar. Out here there are two pubs, a general shop/post office, a petrol station, a church, and a village hall on the side of a lush cricket oval. Everything you need really. We've been for a pint in each of the pubs - on Christmas Eve there was some sort of illegal blackjack being played in one by the local villagers, but that is fine.

Being out in the village some transport into work each day is required: the buses stop running after 6:30 which means that bicycle investments were made. I bought a brand new, all the gadgets £140 bike, thinking that this way I would have a good piece of machinery to last me for years - or, as it turned out, for four weeks.

I had a little fall before the large one - the former being a late night attempt to move from the road onto the footpath and misjudging the height of the curb: bike went one way (to the right) and I went another (forwards, up, then down.... always down). That merely caused a scratch or two and a sore knee, but it paled in comparison with 'The Incident'.

On the way into work there is a largeish hill down which I travel. Most days, including the day which will live in infamy, I enjoy playing around with the wind resistance. Standing tall on the bike to slow down, then hunching down low to speed up, and back and forth. On this dies horribilis I was at the peak of slowing down, that is I was standing up as high as I could on the bike. Then some sort of maverick insect burrowed into my eye, causing a momentary loss of vision (both literal and.... the other one... you no... not literal), and I raised one hand up from the handlebars to expunge the fly. In doing so I took my hand away from my 'good' brakes: never buy a bike from the Cycle King - they tempt you with the Siren's Song of cheap prices only to cheat you like Faust with cheap materials held together with nothing but hopes and dreams. Anyway, nearing the nadir of the hill I realised I was going a might too quickly, but all to late as I hit a pothole in the road and soared through the air, E.T. style. Except there was a critical difference: 1) E.T. got more than one foot off the ground, and 2) There was no.... TWO there were two critical differences 1) E.T. got more than one foot off the ground, and 2) There was no pole to meet him halfway and 3) He had the power... I'll come in again.

Amongst the critical differences were ET getting more off the ground than I, No poles for ET and he had the power of (something) to land safely on the other end, where I had the power of Newtonian gravity - and it is such a harsh mistress.

So I hit a pole in midair... what of it?

I blame the council - why put a metal pole in the middle of the bike path - is it to delineate which way people should go? (surely on the left would be fine) Is it to enhance the safety of the cyclists? (that is not even worth a response)

So the bike stopped at the pole, but I kept going, Carl Lewis esque in my long jumping. I lay there for a while after impact, then picked up myself ginger(Rogers)ly and examined my bike. The front wheel had crumpled and the frame was bent severly, and my knee looked like a piece of cheese. (What do you mean hard?.... no full of holes.) I wheeled the bike back to the shops, rang for a cab, threw in the bike and got back home to strap on some frozen peas to my knee and watched Al Pacino in 'The Merchant of Venice'.

So there you go. I then bought a second bike, this one for £120 a few days later, and I have been sober ... I mean, safely driving ever since.

3 weeks have all but passed out of the 8 week term. I am teaching quite a few classes and tutorials on Mondays and Tuesdays, but then have Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays for a bit of my own study. Work is going well - I presented some results in Bristol (so far the only place I have been on official business - twice now, whereas jokers in quantum mechanics get conferences in Austria, USA, Japan, Barbados.... jokers) and have refined these and so will give a small talk at a conference in Canada in July.

Di made ghoulash (not to be confused with the gulag) the other night, and I will now leave the office to partake.