Tolkien and Lewis, and Hoyle’s Rules of Games

While the female half of our family is off hunting leprechauns in Dublin and Galway, the male half (Andy and Phil) have been holding down the flat in England. Alison and Deb took a bus to a hotel at Heathrow on Thursday (July 31) and flew to Dublin early Friday morning. They were in Dublin until Monday morning, then took the three hour train ride to Galway. They will be in Galway until this Thursday, when Alison, Andy, and Deb meet up in Heathrow before Alison and Andy fly home and Deb returns to Oxford.

So what have Phil and Andy been doing in Oxford? On Friday, we went on a lengthy walking tour that showed us the Oxford of JRR Tolkien and CS Lewis. We saw houses they lived in, pubs they frequented (the Eagle and Child—mentioned earlier), lanes they walked frequently, colleges they attended or taught at, and plaques in their honor. One house where Tolkien lived is on Phil’s regular walk to work, so he has been past it dozens of times without recognizing its significance.

Here is the pub across the street from the Eagle and the Child. The Inklings frequented this pub during WWII when the Eagle and the Child would run out of beer.

We also visited a number of other colleges—more than we did on Andy’s actual college tour when he was in high school in fact. Lincoln College is where John Wesley was a professor, and we were allowed to see his study and rooms. These are not usually open to the public but Phil, flushed with the power of a University of Oxford faculty ID card, persuaded the porter to take us there. New College dates from the 14th century—well, it was new once—and includes some of the original city walls of Oxford. Other colleges on our visit were Balliol (which has a disputed claim to being the oldest college—certainly one of the nicest ones), Trinity (great gardens), Exeter (the Tolkien plaque and Inspector Morse filming sites) and Jesus College (pretty unremarkable actually).

We also went to the Hoyle’s Game Shop, which we also walk past daily. Andy loves board games, so we had been saving this visit for him. Do you know the expression, “According to Hoyle”, meaning that something that is in the rules? Or the book, Hoyles Rules of Games, which lists the rules for hundreds of different games? This is the shop behind those expressions, established in the mid-1700s. It is historically interesting, if a little small and dingy. But all of us might be a little dingy after 350 years of settling disputes over the rules, I guess. (We also went to a much larger and better game shop with no historical significance located on Cowley Road not far from our flat on Saturday.) So we have managed to stay busy.

Slainte'

This blog post is a first, in several ways. It is the first one posted from Ireland; it is the first composed using free wifi internet in a pub; and it is the first written by a guest author!! This is a special "cross-over" blog entry, written by Alison.

As Dad mentioned in his previous entry, Mom and I are in Ireland with my aunt, cousin, and grandfather, and our access to the internet has been rather spotty. We discovered that we could access it from our apartment in the hotel... if we propped the laptop on a windowsill... and rubbed our stomachs while patting our heads and standing on one foot. Ok, maybe not the last part... but it couldn't have hurt! So we were forced to bring the computer down to the hotel pub, where we had absolutely no choice but to drink a pint of Guinness while surfing the internet.

Internet access in the pub!

We arrived in Dublin on Friday and spent the weekend exploring Ireland's capital. We saw lots of sights, including St. Patrick's cathedral, Trinity College (and the Book of Kells), the Guinness Storehouse, the River Liffey and its bridges, the old jail, and an infinite number of things named after O'Connell. Since we had weekend passes to a "hop-on, hop-off" bus, we could probably give you a great tour of Dublin, hitting all the main highlights!!

On Monday, we took the train across the country to Galway, on the west coast. We spent Monday evening exploring the city, and then today we took a bus tour to the Cliffs of Moher and Burren National Park. The Irish countryside is beautiful and very picturesque... although we found out firsthand WHY the Emerald Isle is so green! In between ducking raindrops and storm clouds we did manage to see the cliffs, although we were unable to catch a glimpse of any leprechauns (which they call Fairies here). Now we are recuperating in the pub with pints and half-pints of Guinness, Smitwicks, tap water, and Budweiser (we'll let you guess who is drinking what!). There is a group of musicians doing live music, and it definitely contributes to a very Irish atmosphere!

Here are a couple of pictures from the last few days:

Alison, Shannon, Jill, Reid, Deb in Galway

The Cliffs of Moher

Grandpa Reid lighting a candle at St. Nicholas Church in Galway, where his grandfather may have been baptized.

~Alison

Blog clog

Hello, faithful readers. We apologize for not posting blogs for the past few days, but here is the explanation. Deb posts the blogs since she knows how to include pictures, videos, links, etc. The software for posting is on her computer. We take turns writing the blogs, as you have probably figured out. You can tell mine (Phil’s)—they are longer, go off topic frequently, and don’t convey as much information.

So why no postings in the past few days? Deb and Alison left Oxford (on Thursday) for Ireland (arrived Friday) and are currently there with Deb’s father, sister, and niece. Although she purposely booked rooms that said they have internet connections, the connections have been weak or non-existent so she has not been able to post. I will do my best to provide some updates, but it will be one-sided (from this side of the Irish Sea), and Deb will post some Ireland blogs when she returns.

Warwick Castle

On Wednesday July 30th, the four of us spent the day at Warwick Castle, considered to England’s best medieval castle and a major tourist attraction. The trip involved two short train rides and about an hour and a half. A castle was built on the site on the River Avon by William the Conqueror (the original Norman) in about 1080 AD, and figured in many battles, prisons, sieges, and political maneuverings until it was given to the Earl of Warwick in the 17th century. Then it became a country home and estate for the next 300 hundred years, before being opened to the public. The castle is celebrating some anniversary this year—could be its 1000th, its 500th or any other one since some famous event occurred there—so there were special attractions all day long.

The castle and its grounds are spectacular, and we had a beautiful sunny day to enjoy it. We arrived in time to see the launching of the trebuchet, an oak structure 70 feet tall that sent a 50 pound iron ball at least 200 yards downfield. It was impressive, and Andy took a video that captures the event. Although this one launched an iron ball, trebuchets in the medieval times were often used to send flaming grease pots or diseased animals over the walls of the city. Based on the scorch marks on the ground, they do sometimes send a flaming cargo but we saw no signs of animal carcasses being used. A bit later, we watched a re-enactment of a jousting contest, featuring a variety of events to unseat the other rider, to spear an iron ring, or other sporting contests on horseback. There was also a trick rider who rode standing in the saddle or hanging off of one side with his shoulders inches from the ground. And whatever else happened, the event usually concluded with hand to hand combat involving swords, clubs, and general slamming each other to the ground. The guys playing the knights had to be professional stunt men, but it was still remarkable that no one really got hurt.

A view of all the peasants in Warwick Castle.

The castle featured tours of the dungeon, the ramparts, the ball rooms, armour rooms, and so on. Remarkably for such a large castle, all of the routes ended up at the same gift shop, which was probably not a feature of the original castle. In addition to the medieval rooms, there was also a tour recreating a dinner party in 1898 attended by, among others, Winston Churchill and two future kings of England, as well as various dukes, earls, countesses, and other elite members of British society. Warwick Castle is reputed to be one of the most haunted sites in England but no ghosts were in evidence. We did see the falcon that escaped during the falconry show, one of the dangers of acts involving animals. After a long day together, we ended up back home and played a few board games before bed time.

Genetics at the Eagle and Child

I’ll begin at the end and work backwards. After a long day of showing Alison and Andy the sights of Oxford, we ended up at the Eagle and Child pub for dinner, made famous by CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien, the Inklings. We have been there several times and sat in different small rooms but we were pleasantly surprised to find that the very table that Lewis and Tolkien used to sit at was vacant, so we sat down and ordered our fish and chips. A few minutes later, a large and friendly group of mostly Americans came in and sat all around us, even mistaking us for members of their conference group. Phil leaned over towards Deb and said, “That man sitting next to Andy is a dead ringer for Francis Collins”. It turned out this group was in town for the CS Lewis conference, and when they went around the table doing introductions, he said his name was Francis.

So most of you—and I think most of the people at the conference table—probably do not know who Francis Collins is or why this was one of the most unexpected and extraordinary evenings of Phil’s life. Francis Collins is one of the great geneticists in the world, but also a humanitarian and science ethicist. In addition to a very successful research career (where, among other things, he discovered the gene responsible for cystic fibrosis—an account in Chapter 5 of Phil’s book), he was the head of the Human Genome Project from its beginning in about 1995 until resigning earlier this year. The Human Genome Project is the huge multi-national effort to determine the DNA sequence of humans, and he insisted that all of the information be made available to the public immediately. He devoted 25% of its annual budget to studying the ethical implications of human genetics, and still spends part of every year as a missionary doctor in Africa. He wrote a book entitled “The Language of God”, one of the best books I have read by a practicing and highly respected science about his Christian faith. To the extent that grown-ups are allowed to have heroes, Francis Collins is one of Phil’s. He asked who we were, so we introduced ourselves and explained why we were in Oxford. We then chatted throughout dinner about genetics, the human genome project, and CS Lewis and the conference (which we are not attending), and so on. So we have to ask ourselves, “What are the chances of bumping into Francis Collins, in Oxford, in the Eagle and Child, while having dinner at the very table where Lewis and Tolkien sat?” Alison asked if she could take a picture of us together, so the Eagle and Child was briefly invaded by genetics.

Phil and Francis Collins at Eagle and Child

This came at the end of our first full day in Oxford. We did a lot—a picnic lunch at Christ Church meadow, a tour of Christ Church dinner room and cathedral (where we ran into the same tour guide we had used for Cambridge and Wales, only leading a different tour—Oxford is a small city), punting, the Covered Market, a walk along the Thames, a stop in the Alice in Wonderland shop, Blackwell’s Books, Tesco, and so on.




Since Alison is only here for a short time, we wanted to hit as many of the highlights as possible when the weather was good. We ended up criss-crossing the city several times on foot, but we sure saw a lot. Then we headed to the Eagle and Child for fish and chips, and that is where you began this story. A great memory, among many that we have had this summer and this week.
--Phil

Alison and Andy Arrive

Yes, Alison and Andy arrived safe and sound yesterday afternoon-- on the hottest day of the summer thus far. They were a bit wilted by the time they got here, but everything went smoothly as far as finding each other in the Heathrow airport after their respective flights from Seattle and Raleigh.



We had time for an early supper and a walk into the city centre, stopping along the Cherwell to watch the punters. It was fun showing them all the interesting back streets we've found, though by the time we got there, most of the shops had closed. One advantage of meandering in the early evening though, was that the streets were quite free of tourists, so we could take our time without being jostled. During the daytime, Oxford is a bustling place.


We stopped at one of the nicer pubs--- the Turf Tavern-- before heading back to the apartment before a big thunderstorm came through to break the heat.

It's great to be together as a family!
--Deb

British Museum

Yesterday (Saturday) we decided to go to London. We debated which of many things to visit, and decided on the British Museum. The train ride to Paddington Station took about an hour, followed by a few stops of the tube, one stop at Starbucks, and then to the Museum. We mentioned before when we visited the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford that, while we appreciate antiquities such as Egyptian, Greek, and Roman artwork, we don’t usually head to that section of the museum first. We know that there are people who love these ancient cultures—we had lunch today with Naomi Koltun-Fromm for example, and this is her field of study—but generally speaking, when we go to a museum, we prefer European art. But we can confidently recommend that if you ever get a chance, you should definitely plan to go to the British Museum. Plan at least one long day. (The museum is free, too.) About two hours into our visit, Deb said to Phil, “You’ll have to be the one to write this blog”. There is no way to describe this in a few words, but I will do my best. It is genuinely astonishing.

The Museum is huge, and the ground floor is basically laid out chronologically—first the Egyptians, then the Assyrians, followed by the Greeks and then the Romans. The first exhibit you see in the first room is the Rosetta Stone—not a copy, but the original stone tablet unearthed by Napoleon’s troops in Egypt that allowed people to translate hieroglyphics and opened the door for studying ancient cultures. The objects here were collected, purchased, or “acquired” (OK—looted) by archeologists, diplomats, and adventurers over the past three centuries. Many of the statues and monuments are enormous, towering high above our heads, and the number and size are overwhelming. We still have no idea which Pharaoh’s dynasty was which, but we have a tremendous new appreciation for ancient Egypt.

Head of Ramesses II circa 1270 bc

And then you go into the second of rooms—still on the ground floor of a building with six more floors. These are the Assyrian exhibits. From our Bible lessons, we knew that the Assyrians were the people who conquered Israel in about 700 BC—Ninevah, of Jonah and the great fish fame, was their capital city. But we knew little else about this culture. And right there in front of us were the gates of the palace for Sennacherib, the king who conquered Israel. The lions flanking the gates were massive, and the gates themselves were at least 35 feet tall.



The more we read and observed, the more we realized that Ninevah was a beautiful and impressive city, and that the culture flourished for hundreds of years before dying out. Then it was on to the Greek rooms, and here were sculptures and walls from the Parthenon, the ancient temple in Athens. These were sent back to England by Lord Elgin, ambassador to the Ottoman Empire (which then included Greece) in about 1800, so these have become known as the Elgin marbles. (Insert your own joke here about losing your marbles.)

And on and on. We can’t possibly begin to describe the exhibits, room after room, object after impressive object. We saw dozens of mummies, objects from Captain Cook’s voyages, from the HMS Bounty (from the famous mutiny), from the ancient peoples of Europe. We learned more about the history of Europe in an hour at the museum that we could have learned in any number of hours of lectures in a classroom, and in a more interesting way. We saw a burial ship from Sutton Hoo in eastern England, dating to Saxon times or about 650 AD. (It was the Saxon equivalent of the guys who are buried in their favorite Cadillacs—some traditions are older than you think). We saw artifacts of the Vikings, the Celts, the Huns, the Mayans, the Incans, and even from post WWII America. The guidebook offers 15 different museum tours, based on different themes. We did most of two of them, with a few side trips. We saw more than our brains could hold, and we saw only a fraction of what was there. You really need to go yourself.

Naomi and Phil lunching at Kings Arms Pub