Wind her away, keep turnin'

[venta]

A quick advert: a few times, people have said to me that they'd love to try rapper dancing, but that they're a bit scared because they're never done anything like it and they'll be crap. At the moment we have a few new people starting with Mabel Gubbins, and at least one of them has never even seen rapper dancing before. So, if you're female[*], and in Oxfordshire-ish, and you've ever thought you might like to give it a try, now would be a really great time - we'll[**] be teaching everything from the absolute basics.

http://mabelgubbins.co.uk

Practices are Tuesday evenings 8pm - 9pm for beginners (hardcore Mabels stay til 10pm), in Brightwell-cum-Sotwell.


[*] If you're male, and in Londonish, try Thrales. They're very welcoming of beginners. I can try and offer suggestions of other teams if neither of these suits.
[**] Where by "we" I apparently mean "I" - think I blinked at a critical moment at the AGM :(

Comments

Brightwell-cum-Sotwell

[bopeepsheep.livejournal.com]

Out of interest, do you have any members who pronounce it not as written?

(Interested to know how well or not it's being preserved. When I was at school with people from there it was "bri'llumso'll", I'm told that before that it was just "bri'll" - with a hint of a t but no more.)

[venta.livejournal.com]

We don't, but then none of our members are actually local... B-cum-S was merely a convenient point, with a cheap hall, approximately equidistant between everyone.

I was delighted to discover at the weekend that there is a place called Brill (not far off the A40). Apparently it is on a hill. With a mill. Town planning by Dr Zeuss!

[sammason.livejournal.com]

Brill is brill! Nice walking country round there.

[sammason.livejournal.com]

You're stars! Six-pronged ones in fact. The photo that graces your website shows a window that may have been the one I sat behind with some fellow students, not entirely sober, as we worked out that the room that we were in was the centre of the Universe.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Everyone knows Oxford thinks it's the centre of the Universe! And that's probably quite close to the centre of the university...

Disappointingly, I'm not sure I've ever been in that college. I don't think I've ever walked over the Bridge of Size. (I've always spelled it like that since I heard a friend's excellentlt nonsensical Oxford Walking Tour commentary, which included the comment that although it's small now, when it was first built it was a bridge of considerable size...)

[sammason.livejournal.com]

Last time I tried, you just had to walk brazenly through the main entrance into Old Quad, turn left, go through the door in the corner of the quad and walk up the stairs. That takes you to the Bridge of Sighs where I did my share of sighing, unhappy kid that I was. If you go down on the far side of the bridge, towards New Buildings, you'll find a choice of bathrooms. I took more than my share of free baths there after I'd graduated and no longer had any right to be there at all.

Btw when you come through the main entrance, at the top of the wall across Old Quad you can see the bedroom window that belonged to Steve Webb. I often went round for a cuppa. Steve always warmed his teapot carefully before use. I drop his name now because who wouldn't? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Webb

[venta.livejournal.com]

just had to walk brazenly through the main entrance

Once, many years ago, I was meeting a friend from a cricket match, and was left rather confused about whether I was allowed to enter the Magdalen cricket clubhouse or not. I asked for assistance from someone who turned out to be a Magdalen fellow, who reprimanded me sternly: you're a member of the University! You don't wonder whether you're allowed in somewhere, you stride in through the front door as if you own the place!

[sammason.livejournal.com]

I'm liking that person!

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

The college currently have a campaign to stop people calling it that. (Sensibly, as it's clearly modelled on the Rialto, not the actual Bridge of Sighs which looks completely different. But probably still doomed.)

I had one strand of tutorials in the ground-floor room in the left corner of OB quad, which was famously (then) the room into which Sebastian Flyte had been sick through the window in the TV Brideshead Revisited. Granada had paid for the whole staircase to be redecorated.

[sammason.livejournal.com]

A campaign to stop people calling the Bridge of Sighs the Bridge of Sighs? Oh, bless. Never mind climate change, economic meltdown, chemical weapons!

That story about being sick through a window in Brideshead Revisited is true, no doubt, but it was told about my room's window too! My address was in New Buildings and my room was the lower one of the two curvy ones under the turret. I'm now thinking that some entrepreneur could take tourists around every room that's said to have had its window puked through.

Since we're on Hertford anecdotes, here's another. When I was volunteering at the Night Cellar on Iffley Road, where people could stay if they were too young for the Night Shelter, one of our regular couples was a classic case of criminal, drug-addled bloke with clean supportive girlfriend. She casually mentioned that her man had burgled the staircase I was then living on.

[exspelunca.livejournal.com]

Rapper (or rap 'er) ti bank - Johnny Handle and many others.

[venta.livejournal.com]

One kudo to you :)