Without a doubt, this was the first Christmas Eve in which I:
- Cycled well over 10km
- Ate chips with hummous, balsamic vinegar, and salt from a kebab van for dinner
- Demonstrated my relative ineptitude in the playing of pool
- Found myself in the Purple Turtle (a notorious and bunker-like student bar) at 1:30am
All told, it was almost infinitely better than last year’s experience of sitting alone at my computer in Wadham College. Many thanks to Antonia’s brother Fraser: for teaching me about contact juggling, winning graciously at pool, and generally making the evening far more social than it would otherwise have been.
The only other time I have been to the Purple Turtle was January 05, 2006.
I’d sell a toe for a kebab van right now.
Regarding the kebab van:
When walking back from the Wadham Library to my house in the evening, I decided to buy some food from the only place open. It took about twenty minutes to get my chips from the van beside the Ashmoleon, because there were three outrageously drunk young women in front of me: the kind of Three Stooges drunk where people are flopping about a lot, talking loudly, dropping their beer over and over, but not yet experiencing the nastier elements of being really and truly drunk.
After their taxi arrived and the driver almost forcibly shifted them inside, I was asked whether I wanted salt and vinegar on the chips. Assuming the man had forgotten that I wanted them with hummus, I said yes, then watched with a combination of curiosity and fear as he combined the three rather well-defined flavours.
In the end, the combination works pretty well, though I will probably hold out for something even better next Christmas.
Glad you found something to do in Oxford for Christmas – hope it was a good one for you and your family too.
Look to the sky, way up on high
There in the night stars are now right.
Eons have passed: now then at last
Prison walls break, Old Ones awake!
Madness will reign, terror and pain
Woes without end where they extend.
Ignorant fools, mankind now rules
Where they ruled then: it’s theirs again
Stars brightly burning, boiling and churning
Bode a returning season of doom