Great Expectations

 The big day….

Getting dressed in my academic finery took longer than I expected. The outfit under the gown is prescriptive. It’s called “sub fusc” and involves covering up every inch of skin in a long sleeved white shirt, long skirt and black stockings. Over that goes the gown, the hat and a ridiculous black velvet bow around my neck . The boys get a bow tie.  Clearly the ribbon is some effort to dress up the females but I look somewhat like a six year old from the seventies.  My poor family is  also dressed up in full formal glory. I appreciate the tradition, but black academic robes or blazers and ties in the middle of a heatwave require more commitment  than even signing up for the course in the first place. 

As we made our way from the hotel to the venue, I felt a little conspicuous in my gear, lots of tourists looking and smiling. Random people kept saying “congratulations”. 

The Sheldonian Theatre itself (designed by the ever present Christopher Wren), is a breathtaking building. A very fancy, special place for a graduation ceremony. The ceremony was really nice - shortish speeches, a vocal quartet , some handshaking and we were out in the sunshine for the obligatory photos and hat throwing.

While we were sitting in the ceremony, I had some reflection time. Forty nine people put in time and money and effort to learn something new. Why? What were we hoping to achieve and now we are at the end of this chapter, did we achieve it? 

I had applied for the “view from the room” speech to be given at the ceremony. I didn’t get the gig, but my draft speech had been largely about these questions, via a metaphor.

Hic Sunt Dracones. Here be dragons. 

This phrase appeared on old maps, warnings inked on to the edges of the known world. Beyond this point - uncertainty, danger, mystery, things not yet understood. For me this is an appropriate metaphor for my Organisational Leadership course in so many ways. 

The first dragon for me was the fear of not knowing. Adult learning asks established, competent people to become beginners again. I’m used to being the person with the answers,  and all of a sudden I have none. I don’t know what good looks like. There is something uniquely humbling about getting a mark on a paper I’ve spent weeks crafting. 

The next dragons were the ideas themselves. How to tackle ambiguity, paradox and change. And while we wrestled with new complex ideas inside Oxford, outside the walls the world continued shifting beneath our feet. We studied change while living through it. Technology reshaped industries faster than organisations could adapt. AI challenged how we work and how we made decisions. Political systems fractured. Social expectations evolved. The pace of change accelerated while our certainty diminished. 

Which brings me back to the metaphor. Old maps no longer work. In order to lead in today’s world we need to be able to navigate when the existing map fails . Navigate into the unknown places marked by dragons. 

But… dragons are also symbols of power, wisdom and guardianship over treasure. 

So did I achieve what I wanted from this chapter of my life? I think so. I learned to fly over terrain I once found intimidating. To tolerate ambiguity. To ask better questions. To challenge assumptions (including my own). 

Finally, I’ve also gained some self belief. I looked at the edge of map, at the place marked “here be dragons”. I read those words and was willing to walk there. 

And I didn’t walk alone - there is cohort of others, now friends who walked with me. We all arrived at Oxford with different expectations, but we all leave with something shared, an experience that built a support network that will last well beyond the course. 

Hot in the City

We breakfasted late on Thursday, at an Indian restaurant. Bottomless chai and a range of tasty breakfast items with an Indian slant - I had a cooked-to-order naan wrapped around a sausage with cream cheese and chilli jam. Spicy, messy and delicious. 

Fortified by breakfast, we wandered towards the  Weston Library for a bird exhibit and then the Natural History Museum. Our progress was slowed by a detour through the Bodleian Library gift shop. I am incapable of passing a bookshop or museum gift shop without at least having a look, and the Bodleian gift shop is particularly dangerous. My suitcase is getting heavier! The Natural history museum is home to the only surviving Dodo- it’s only the head part and completely desiccated, and not on display, but they make quite a big deal about it. Possibly to increase sales of Dodo gift shop items, of which there are many. 

It reached 33 degrees in the afternoon . The pavement and walls in the largely treeless city centre radiate every last degree of heat back at you. Self-preservation trumped exploration so we stopped sightseeing altogether and retreated to the rooftop bar for a cold drink and a rousing game of cards. This was followed by snacks and drinks on my terrace as the evening slowly cooled. There are certainly more productive ways to spend a day in Oxford, but at this temperature they are difficult to imagine. I am hoping this is the peak of the heatwave. When shopping for snacks we found some “interesting” food and drink items. KFC serves baked beans with one of their meals, and Pepsi has a wide range of flavour options- banana chocolate anone?  

Friday was largely the same, with a trip to the Asmolean Museum around the corner from our hotel. I have a bit of museum fatigue, but there are fantastic Egyptian, Greek and Roman  exhibits here. One of my favourites was a statue painted with historically accurate colours. It looks garish and weird as we are so used to seeing white marble statues. I forgot to take a photo! King Charles is in town today for the opening of something or other and we had to wait to cross the road while his limo went by. 

We had been walking past a Sicilian sourdough pizza restaurant all week, and opening day was today, so we dropped in for lunch. The focaccia sandwiches were delicious but the shop has some kinks to iron out with service - the English staff couldn’t figure out the Italian names on the digital till, and my white wine was served at room temperature. Very full after lunch, we repeated the terrace snacks and drinks plan for dinner, this time with a new card game. It’s a relaxing way to spend the evening. The terrace is on the top floor, and sounds drift up from Oxford - pealing church bells after a wedding at Magdalen chapel, chatter and laughter from schoolchildren on an excursion, and the cool tunes from a trumpet player, busking in the street. I’ve included photos of my mother and I waving to each other between my terrace and the St Michael’s tower down the road . It’s the oldest structure in Oxford. 

I know big graduation ceremony is tomorrow, but I’m over the heat and actually looking forward to going home more. No doubt once I’m home, I’ll be complaining about the cold….. 

I’m Still Standing

I’ve been on four different Oxford walking tours now, as they tend to include a tour as part of the education experience. You would think I would have exhausted both the city and my enthusiasm by now, but Oxford always seems to have another story or a different viewpoint to disclose. I wanted my family to get as much storytelling and history as possible, so booked a three hour walking tour. It sounded like a good idea when I booked, but at that time the heat wave was not a factor. 

Today’s guide was an English/history masters student who was clever and entertaining. A very solid base of knowledge was delivered with humour and storytelling. By the end of the morning, we knew not only who built half of Oxford, but also who argued with whom, who rebelled against whom, and which bits had been set on fire. 

The tour took us inside both Trinity and Christchurch Colleges, each with its own personality. Trinity felt like a secret garden, with well kept lawns (keep off the grass!!) and small quadrangles of honey-coloured stone. Christ Church is far grander with a signposted audio tour and doormen in bowler hats. We did exit the Christchurch self guided tour very quickly, due to exhaustion and hunger. 

Oxford architecture is pretty spectacular - every building seems to have a tower or an elaborately carved doorway, usually accompanied by a story involving a bishop, a king or an exceptionally wealthy benefactor. Speaking of doorways, we stopped at the doorway to the pub where Tolkien and CS Lewis used to drink, and coincidentally it was the “cool doorway” my mother and I had photographed on our morning walk. Note the Aslan like door knocker and the Mr Tumnus sides. There is also a black lamppost right outside. 

We spent a surprising amount of time discussing Christopher Wren, who appears to have had a hand in just about everything in England. Just when I think I have escaped him, another guide points to a building and says, “this is by Christopher Wren.”

Our guide had a few tales of the long-running tensions between the university and the townspeople from the town’s inception through the development of the University. Interestingly, in chats to a few Oxford residents on this trip, there is still a clear distinction between the academic community and the non academic community, with a divide that clearly has existed for centuries. 

After some downtime in the aircon, we returned to the Bodleian Library for an evening tour. Our guide led us through the reading rooms, sharing stories of the benefactors and the extraordinary lengths the library goes to in preserving its collection. The oldest part of the library is from the 15th century. There is also a cool underground tunnel connecting two of the library buildings. I love libraries and this library is very special. Now that my course is finished, I no longer have access to the library unless I pay for a tour, a fact that makes me deeply unhappy. That being said, the crowds were gone, the spaces were quiet, and it was lovely to be back in the library. 

A much less stressful day than yesterday. Other than the ridiculous number of Campbell selfies which  I need to keep deleting from my phone, the only real challenges today were the heat and the sheer amount of walking. Oxford’s dreaming spires lose a their romance when viewed through a sheen of perspiration and aches and pains from standing and walking and climbing for several hours. To be fair, being tired from a long day of walking around Oxford is a rather fortunate problem to have. Good health and the ability to wander for hours are things I have largely taken for granted, yet they are gifts that can disappear far more quickly than one expects. Tired feet are a very small price to pay for the health and freedom to keep exploring.

We Can Work it Out

 For our last morning in London, we abandoned the hotel breakfast and headed to my a favourite London breakfast restaurant, 26 Grains in Neal’s Yard. It allowed us a lovely stroll through the quiet morning streets, and provided a delicious breakfast. I had 5 grain porridge with banana, tahini and black sesame.

Our Uber driver had to take a scenic route out of the city due to some roadworks so we said goodbye to London via Buckingham Palace, driving right up to the front and then along the side. The roads were clear and we settled in for the two hour trip. Half way to Oxford, I received an email from PayPal, saying I had a refund of about $2000. The only thing this expensive was the accommodation in Oxford…… Sure enough, a few emails later, I discovered that the air B&B had cancelled due to “operational difficulties”. I had booked and paid at a pretty good rate back in January, so I am deeply suspicious that the operational difficulties involved another, higher paying guest in the apartment. Oxford was booked solid for this week, presumably due to all the families here for graduations, but I did manage to secure hotel rooms, albeit at an eye watering rate. 

Dropping our bags at the hotel, we walked the short distance to my college, Pembroke, to do some much needed laundry. I had checked with them two weeks ago and they said it was completely fine, but the dragon at the gate today said no. She told me that there are children under 16 staying at Pembroke for a conference, so while we are free to go into the college and walk around, apparently doing laundry is a working with children security risk. Further, the children’s conference goes to the end of August (!). A very long conference, particularly for children. We did go in and walk around, sans my suitcase of laundry which remained with the porter lest I sneak into the laundry room for a guerrilla laundering operation. I was fuming. Here’s the Pembroke chapel.

My mother and I hiked the half hour trail to the nearest laundromat while Cam and my Dad went for a beer at the Crown. Hot and sweaty and $48 poorer for one wash and one dry (for real!) I rejoined the group at the hotel for an evening snack on my terrace. The Jericho Cheese shop is just around the corner from the hotel and it was fun to pick options and watch them slice and wrap them up in waxed paper. Mum and Dad had brought a lovely bottle of wine from home and Cam had purchased a new card game, so we chatted and relaxed and laughed and snacked. Dinner was accordingly a light meal, partaken at the Turf Tavern. Tucked down a narrow alleyway and looking every inch its 1400’s origins, the Turf was buzzing on a warm summer evening. We squeezed into a table inside next an old stone wall (under a ceiling requiring Cam to duck when he stood)for a relaxed meal before heading back to the hotel for bed. 

In the end, it was a day of minor disasters and absurdities: cancelled accommodation, fake child protection legislation and the most expensive wash cycle in my life. I’m Somehow none of it really matters . I’m here , in Oxford, with my family, graduating and life is good

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You can go your own way

We have a regular breakfast table at the hotel, complete with one “Queen” chair that my mother and I take turns claiming. Breakfast has become the planning forum for the day. Luckily Cam, who breakfasts later (at his leisure) is perfectly happy to fall in with whatever we have scheduled.

Today we agreed to split up. My mother made for  the Victoria and Albert, and the other three of us headed off to the British Museum. 

The Museum is full of beautiful things and you could never hope to look at everything in one visit, so we focused on the Greek galleries for my Dad, the king of ancient history. Unsurprisingly, he struck up conversations with the museum staff about the collection and couldn’t resist gently baiting them about the controversial ownership of the Elgin marbles. We also spent quite a while in the gift shop. I LOVE museum and gallery shops but happily for my wallet, my suitcases are very full. 

My mother had gone completely dark and was not responding to messages, so the three of us took ourselves off to lunch at Brewdog, a Scottish startup that went spectacularly global and then went broke. Cam and dad happily tasted beer and chatted away. The surprise hit was the Beer Float - a stout collaboration between Brewdog and a Scottish ice cream brand (Mackie’s), served over two scoops of honeycomb ice cream. I was dubious, but it was delicious. I have no idea how they thought of it, but going off the expected path has produced something fantastic. 

We put the approved blazer to good use in the evening, dressing up in our glad rags for dinner at the Reform Club. I wanted everyone to see inside and it didn’t disappoint. Amazingly, they recognised me from last week and looked after us very well, sorting seats in the bar, a table for dinner, and even graciously taking a family photo for us (something frowned upon in club land). Campbell, predictably, took covert selfies throughout the evening, but thankfully didn’t get caught. 

I always travel with the principle that we don’t have to spend every minute together to travel well but my favourite part of the day was converging together as a family again at dinner, where even the blazer was in the right place. 

Common People

I met my parents at breakfast this morning to discover that they had already settled right in. Kamal had been summoned from the front desk to help my dad with the coffee machine, my mother sitting up in bed against the pillows, like a queen. Andrew had walked them down the street to get them started in the right direction for their morning walk. My dad tells me that Kamal had quite as much trouble with the machine as he did, and that Andrew adjusted the route he took them on to walk down a particular street my mother wanted to see. I don’t know Kamal or Andrew yet, but clearly my parents are feeling right at home. I’ve included a photo of the Porcupine pub - the site I collected them from yesterday after the police assist. 

They headed off to the War Rooms after breakfast. I took a little stroll, skirting the rough sleepers at St Martin’s church to listen to the choir practicing inside, and avoiding a crazy ranting man at Seven Dials to explore Neal’s Yard. The streets are quiet in the early morning , a nice change from the chaos that come later on. 

We went full tourist today, regrouping mid morning for the hop on hop off bus. The early part of the tour route showcases a city of domes and carved stonework juxtaposed with curved steel and glass towers. A Christopher Wren church sits in the shadow of a shiny tower and it all works splendidly. We hopped off at St Paul’s, which I have never been to. On Sunday, entry is free rather than $58. Score. There was a church service on, complete with a choir and musicians, so while the areas we could look at were restricted, the soundtrack was magnificent. 

The hop-on hop-off bus is usually a great way to see a city, but the commentary was dreadful - dull, and always a beat late or early, referencing things before we'd reached them or after we'd passed.  The bus turned out to be a better way to get to the tourist attractions than a way to see the city. The stops take forever while hot, sweaty tourists climb on and off asking the driver various navigational questions, and the traffic made the whole thing sloooow. We should have ditched the bus, but our disinterest peaked at the furthest point from our hotel, so we persevered for the full loop. By this time it was 2pm and we were all hungry. We settled on Five Guys -  pleb comfort food, served in an air conditioned space. 

After lunch we walked in the sweltering heat to Sir John Soane’s museum. I’ve been there before a few times but really wanted to show my parents. It’s a fascinating collection, treasures crammed into every corner, nook and cranny. Since this was my third visit, I didn’t need to look at the specifics and spent time thinking about the contrast between modern wealth, which buys space and emptiness, and this older, more atmospheric approach. Minimalism v Atmosphere. 

Our evening moved from aristocratic eccentricity to cheerful chaos at Lina Stores for dinner - a tiny restaurant, downstairs from a deli in Soho. We shared a fantastic Frittura di Verdure: floured and fried zucchini and lemon slices with roast garlic and aioli. So good. We each chose a different pasta, small, perfectly sized servings of house made pasta with delicious sauces. 

Our tourist day today has left me thinking about the coexistence of the ordinary and grandeur: queueing for burgers beneath domes and pediments, a choir singing over the top of the homeless. London is an intriguing mix of the magnificent with the everyday, everyday people with extraordinary backdrop.