Autumn on Bolingbroke Grove

Arsenal 3, Birmingham 1.

World Cup qualifiers

A night in the Bobby Moore Club at Wembley care of GLG to see England thump Belarus 3 - 0.

Bearded Beckham, who's Man of the Match award after being subbed on in the 60th minute caused a bit of a stir, but it wouldn't be football without a stir now would it.

Oxford

So the story goes that way back when, the Saxon's used Oxen to ford the river Thames, giving the name Oxen-ford to the settlement. Not long after loads of smart people must have shown up there and started telling everyone about it.

Over our weekend there , we took a stroll through Magdalen College where cricket loving Lord Denning sharpened his fountain pen. After much speculation we finally figured out that undergraduates are taught in tutorials at the Colleges and this teaching is then supplemented by the University's classes and lectures.






And of course we went punting. In "rivers" that are narrow enough to provide a challenge, the passenger sits with his back to the direction of travel. My main memory of the trip was as we drifted slowly and inevitably toward a group of overhanging trees and Gabrielle saying to me "Watch your head" closely followed by "Oh shit, what I am going to do?"



Backgammon at the Old Parsonage hotel while we waited for our room to be made up.