A day in Oxford

I spent approximately seven hours on a bus yesterday (in total, not seven each way, that would be silly) going to Oxford for various reasons.

One of the reasons was to meet my mum for lunch - always pleasant, particularly when she comes in generous mood, insisting she pays and bringing lots of gifts from Kenya. This included a wooden hippo and a pair of earrings in the shape of some strange little men on this occasion. Strange, but very cool.

Anyway, we went to some place called Zizzis - or possibly Zizzi - and a confused mum ordered two starters as the waitress didn't speak the best English ever and she said the starters were very small and the main courses were what sounded like enormous - but I think she actually said normal.

Gosh, that was a bit dull.

Anyway, somewhere near the middle of the meal, the very friendly waitress had a conversation with some kind of maintenance type man. She then came over to us and said in not quite broken English
"Hello, we have to change electricians now, so don't be too scary, okay"

I'm not entirely sure what it was they were changing. But we did our best not to be too scary and I think we got away with it.

In other Oxford related news, we saw the Beep at his market stall. It was quite funny. I've never seen the Beep or even a picture of him. Mum saw him briefly once but apparently his hair has grown since then. We had, however, seen a picture of a particular round mirror he had on his stall. So on this particular market, there were lots of fairly similar antique stalls and we spent some time surreptitiously wandering around the market, peering at the stall holders and saying things like "blogging" and "beep" quite loudly. Unsurprisingly, we got some funny looks.

But we found him! He had the best coat, I was really envious. I'm not good on sartorial matters but it was very stylish and also looked long and warm. He also had some really nice yellow patterned china (on his stall, rather than his person) which I wanted but could see was perhaps not the most appropriate thing to take back with me on the bus. Sadly, we didn't have too long to chat but he seemed very lovely. And also had a really nice, sort of plummy voice. I'm told he offers bloggers discount on the stall, too. As well as the funky mirror and the gorgeous china, there was a rather sweet-looking Paddington Bear, so if that's your thing, clearly the Beep is where it's at.

Anyway, it was a very pleasant day, helped by the fact that it was a gorgeous day. And I got presents, too.

More on that story later.