it is almost definitely autumn here now: the leaves are turning red and yellow on the very boughs and branches of trees. a sight to behold, certainly - before they fall, and the branches, denuded, proclaim the accession of winter.

but still, scarlet and gold reminds one of war, of blood and money which are its twin engines. and along parks road where the leaves fall in their hundreds or perhaps even thousands, trampled by the feet of students into the pools and puddles on the pavement, formed by yesterday's rain, and there they lay rotting, so much like the bodies of a fallen army.

M: "what a fine body of men you have there, eh, blackadder?"
B: "yes, general, soon to be fine bodies of men."

***

now where did that come from? ah well. london past 2 days, i never fail to feel that this place was once the centre of a great world empire. here the history of the world echoes in the streets, in the buildings and in the monuments. even the animals which had fallen in war have their own memorial here, reminding me so much of kipling's Her Majesty's Servants especially since the statues were those of a yoked ox and screw gun mule.

or maybe the allusion was deliberate, a clever little insertion by the sculptor now cast in bronze.

st paul's cathedral in any case was a fantastic building where the dead seemed to speak, their voices pulling the hearts of the living from the crypt, and still christopher wren's genius thunders down from the top of the magnificent dome.

i saw flowers placed on the tombs of admiral nelson, and of alexander fleming.

it would be a frightening thing if the past left no echoes and the dead no memories.

3 weeks into school - on the way back to keble college from oxford high street i have to cut across the cobblestoned catte street. on the left looms the radcliffe camera, a magnificent georgian neo-classical building with blue-grey dome and yellow limestone; on the right the forbidding walls and gate of all souls' college, (perhaps the very epitome of ivory towered academia that oxford supposedly symbolises) an academic community of scholars with no students.

the sky was, of course, darkening early, because at this time of the year the axial tilt of the earth causes the northern hemisphere to experience fewer hours of sunlight a day than the southern; and the lighted windows of the libraries were standing out in stark contrast.

and somehow, magically, floating on the chill of the biting wind, comes the warm sound of a viola, the familiar tune of bach's allemande from his suite in g major for unaccompanied cello. the welcoming expansive chords of a stately dance form draw my feet half consciously to where the busker was standing.

she was a grey haired woman, and she flashed me a smile as she hit the highest note of the movement.

(this felt like my first welcome to the cold city of oxford, really, since i arrived.)

i smiled back and walked home, fingering the notes on an imaginary fingerboard resting on my palm.

it is amazing that a single line of words from so far away can strike chords so deep within you; like chords in a chapel, arranged in an imperfect, incomplete cadence; issues unresolved and tensions unrelieved, hanging heavy in the air and reverberating obstinately.

and yet, there is also this feeling of having been disabused before, your head telling you, firmly, that even while you are in the city of dreaming spires there is no point pursuing nebulous fantasy and elusive illusions; illusions elusive and ephermeral as the mist that rises from your breath on a cold foggy night and disappears even before the wind picks up to draw the last vestiges of that expiration into the darkness.

let the spires dream, you think, and please, please, let me finish my work on king george iii.

"The poetry of history lies in the quasi-miraculous fact that once, on this familiar spot of ground, walked other men and women, as actual as we are today, thinking their own thoughts, swayed by their own passion, but now all gone, one generation vanishing after another, gone as utterly as we ourselves shall shortly be gone like ghosts at cock-crow."

- G.M. Trevelyan