Things to do in Oxford

[venta]

As it wont to happen in September, St Giles is entirely full of stalls, sideshows, and enormous whizzy glowy rides. Makes a nice change from traffic. And makes no change at all to its usefulness as a parking place.

wimble and I trotted along last night. I was overjoyed to discover that unlike the last few years, there were actually some donkey races there. Now, so far a bewildering number of people have looked at me blankly:

Donkey Races. Some number (8,10,12..) of players pays their money, and rolls small balls up a slope, trying to get them down numbered holes. Each time a ball drops into a hole, your 'donkey' moves forward that number of places. The winner is the person whose donkey reaches the finish first. I played four games, and won three - wimble thinks this is evidence of a severe gambling addiction (or possibly evidence that I'm a seventy year old bingo-fiend in disguise, you'll have to ask him why).

As a result, I now own a small furry dog of uncertain pedigree. It appears to be 50% Airedale, 45% Old English Sheepdog, and 5% Dennis Healey. He is called Giles, and I'm slightly unsure what to do with him. chrisvenus's suggestion that I take him to work and try to get people to treat him like the labrador-off-Scrubs[*] is looking quite appealing :)

I'm still not really up for fairground rides, what with having a bad neck and all, so we mostly wandered round watching things, eating candy floss, and eventually picking up zandev, lanfykins and quisalan in the process. They had a very exciting ride on a Waltzer (good old Hebborn's :) - I watched. Which was disappointing, as Waltzers are my favourite ride... when I was little, I thought that the people who span the cars had the most glamorous job in the world. I've mostly got over that now, but some of the sparkle remains. However, I like being able to walk, so I stood on the sidelines and demonstrated that it's really very difficult to take photos of people on Waltzers. Particularly when using someone else's digital camera, and you're not sure exactly how long the delay between pressing the shutter and stuff actually happening is.

They went all wussy after that, so we retired to G&D's, and picked up still more people. Mmmmm... mad cow coffee (coffee with steamed ice cream).

[*] Anyone remember what that damn dog's called ? I can't.
Rowdy - thank you, Google.


Wise readers may remember that a few months ago I enthused gently about a band called Union.

You do ? Splendid.

Well, they're playing at The Wheatsheaf, in Oxford, on Thursday. They're now called Bloc Party, having become aware that they'd been somewhat beaten to the name Union. All the usual trappings can be found at their website.

You should come along. Really, you should.

[Note for diffrentcolours: this isn't the band you saw in Cornmarket, apparently, cos they've never played there :)]

Oh, and there's a couple more updates to the diary on http://www.travelswithakite.com/.

Comments

[venta.livejournal.com]

Er.. be competent ?

:)

I dunno. Be sober, and roll the balls as soon as you can... that way you get more chances. Maybe everyone else was just bobbins.