Prehistory

I drove up to Oxford this afternoon to drop off some stuff for my son, who is beginning his second undergraduate year, incredibly. I can remember beginning my own second year so vividly, that it sometimes seems that I will simply wake up in my bed in the room at the top of Staircase 10, and the intervening 36 years will turn out to have been a confusing and slightly dull repetitive dream. Phew!

The corollary of this pointless fantasy is that I repeatedly tell my kids that "We had no computers at all in those days, you know, and no internet -- imagine that!!" I somehow expect them to reel about clutching their heads at this mind-blowing prospect, but they never do. I might as well say, "Of course, all transport was horse-drawn in the 1970s -- imagine that!!" What seems like yesterday to me is prehistory to them and, in the end, to the young all ancient history is equally unremarkable in its improbability. That, or maybe they've just stopped listening to me.

Anyway. I took the opportunity to take us for a stroll in the Botanical Gardens, partly to ensure my son gets a least a half hour's fresh air in the next eight weeks, but mainly because I know I can rely on some good windows to photograph there. If only I'd thought to bring a ladder.