Chapter VII

In which Josh embarks upon a short, whirlwind visit to see various friends and family back in England.

Roughly twenty minutes after concluding the previous entry I arrived back in dear Oxford. It must be said, I was afflicted with mild culture shock, particularly at using coins with corners and notes with Queenie’s reassuring face; Euros really are pretend money. However, once I was sat with Joe, having a coffee on good old Ship street, it was like I’d never left. It was jolly nice running into all those who didn’t know about my trip too; such joy in their weary, 6^th week eyes! This said, there were also a couple of awkward moments running into tutors, such as my Lektor Marcy D., who did a double-take and asked why I wasn’t in Germany (cue obligatory uncomfortable conversation, loitering in third quad). Quite spectacular was last year’s translation tutor’s utter blanking of me and the subsequent exaggerated “My goodness! I didn’t expect to see you!” reaction I received when we ran into each other later that evening.

I was relatively tired that evening, and not up to a big night out, so we decided to spend a quiet night in. We certainly kept to our resolution to stay in, but the evening was anything but quiet. Hannah came round and we got roaring drunk playing a Made in Chelsea drinking game of our own devising. With drinking required whenever there’s a hair flick, someone makes your skin crawl, Francesca is overly keen or there’s a shot of a street sign (amongst others), it’s small wonder that we got so utterly blotto. The evening was concluded with Joe and I getting into a ridiculous (yet incredibly heated) argument about Nelly the Elephant, with me inadvertently leading him to believe that I felt he valued musical pedantry over human life. I spent the night thereafter rather pleasantly, sleeping in an alcoholic haze on Joe’s two armchairs, pushed together so as to form a cot. However, I did at one point wake up on the floor between them, having evidently been a bit too fidgety and pushed the twain apart.

In an effort to ameliorate our poor sense of general wellbeing, Joe and I decided to attend welfare yoga in the Harold Wilson Room, me in pyjama bottoms, he in tracksuit  for ease of movement. I ended up feeling rather a lot better, in spite of the headstand I felt obliged to do. The rest of the afternoon was spent with dear Amy. We visited the Turl Street Kitchen for coffee (a favourite haunt) and gave in to the temptation of the sticky toffee pudding – much to our mutual delight (c.f. photo). This was followed by the obligatory trip to a charity shop, the wares of which filled us with childlike joy (one XXL jumper in particular), and I bought a rather snazzy suede waistcoat. Naturally, the vinyl section was inspected, with some rather comical items discovered in the “interesting and unusual” section. Having battelsed some wine from the college cellar and stealing some drink from a law event, we finally adjourned to Stevens Close for prelash, ahead of a night out in Cellar (“Cell-whar?”).

Sadly, we had a slight altercation with a power-tripping, mental bouncer, so chose not to patronise Cellar in the end. Instead, we informed the bouncer that Lauren would write a sternly-worded e-mail, and that we would be taking our custom elsewhere. We left, as I called back that we would have the last laugh. Naturally, we fell back on the old failsafe, Baby Love. Much fun was had on the pole (we were actually asked not to get off it, much to our surprise… Naturally we got straight off) and watching a tutor’s crazy dancing as he sharked on a “postgraduette”. However, a particular highlight was playing the “destroy people’s conversations” game on the street outside. This involved of us joining strangers’ conversations and being awful until they couldn’t continue and were forced to go back inside.

Waking up the next morning was unremittingly awful, surrounded as I was by the hideous carnage engendered by the previous night’s pre-drinks. Lauren made the two of us coffee, hawking like a boss, and we sat there as she informed Jack, still in her dressing-gown, with eye-makeup all down one side of her face, that she had a tutorial at one o’clock.

“But, Lauren, that’s in ten minutes!”

“Yeahh…”

I tidied up a bit for them and headed back into town. That day was largely spent bumming around, reorganising my ipod, and watching three-quarters of an episode of Grey’s Anatomy. It was most distressing to be interrupted before the completion of the episode to go to dinner, I must say. That night was again spent at Baby Love (do I notice a pattern emerging?) for Ecclectric, where we again had a fantastic time but didn’t stay as late as the previous night, due to the inferior sound-quality and a still rankling bollocking we got from the nasty night porter earlier that night.

I slept on Joe’s floor this time and woke up rather late but feeling surprisingly healthy. At fiveish I set off for London on the Oxford tube to go to the birthday party of my old friend, Eddie. I had a fantastic time and it was really lovely to get to see him. It was just a shame I had to head off back to Oxford at lunchtime on Saturday to be collected by the fam. Returning to Cheltenham was, however, really lovely, and getting to spend time with Boris (c.f. photo, above.) was fantastic. Another plus of going home was the opportunity of a long, hot bath. I had also had the opportunity in Oxford, but the experience was somewhat marred by Joe’s reminding me of the fact that his neighbour, whom we refer to only as potato-face and suffers from severe BO, uses that tub daily.

Sunday was primarily spent in Cheltenham town, where I bought a new jumper from the GAP children’s department (yay for rising obesity levels in children!). We had a beautiful Sunday lunch at the Suffolk Kitchen, a small independent restaurant and my favourite in Cheltenham. It was so lovely to eat English food again, enjoying a gorgeous meal of lamb in minted gravy (I’ve really missed having veg with meals) with red wine, with duck-liver pâté to start and a brownie for dessert.

The following day I returned to Germany, this time via Luxembourg. It was actually lovely to be back and finally get a rest after my hectic visit home. However, the rest had to wait, as I met some friends to go for dinner at the burger evening at New Mintons, to be followed by cocktails. They had begun to put up the Christmas lights and the Weihnachtsmarkt stalls in the centre, which was looking utterly charming. We had a quick peek, ahead of going to the opening in a week’s time. It looks like it’ll be beautiful. There’s even a little hut with mushrooms all over the roof called the Champignon Häusle, which is particularly adorable.