An Eventful Weekend

This weekend ended up being full of quite different activities.  Saturday morning I took the inter-city bus to Woodstock to hear P.D. James and Kate Summerscale discuss the genre of true crime and mystery novels.  I thoroughly enjoyed and even had P.D. James answer one of my questions.  She claims that her characters do not surprise her, but that by the end of writing a book, they are more fleshed out than when she of them in her original plan.  

She autographed a copy of her most recent book for me and I told her that the videos of her books had helped me recuperate from major surgery. (I watched six of Dalgliesh videos in one week, several of them six hours long, when I was recovering from knee surgery.)

The discussion took place at St Mary Magdalene, the Episcopal church in Woodstock. When I first entered the church, I was overwhelmed by the spectacle of the hundreds of hand-stitched kneelers in a myriad of colors and designs.  It took my breath away.

Many of the kneelers have Christian messages.  Some of them represent the beauty of nature, birds and flowers and so forth.

And some of them commemorate particular people such as the Duke of Marlborough.  St. Mary Magdalene parish includes his family home, Blenheim Palace, so this is his church home.

At the end of the discussion, I  wandered around outside.  Someone pointed me to the Norman door.  

I went to an antique show and bought Farmer Giles of Ham, a book by J.R.R. Tolkein.  Then it was time for the bus back to Oxford.

After feeding the dog, I made my way down the road to the community orchard for the Wolvercote Apple Festival.  At one of the booths, sponsored by the Nature Society,  I discovered that standard acorns in England are more oblong than the ones in the US.  I also drank some fresh pressed cider, or apple juice as the Brits would say. (Cider in Briton is an alcoholic beverage.)  The Victorian variety was thin and slightly sour.  The other one I tasted, from an apple variety I have forgotten, was much fuller and sweeter and had a slight pear taste.

This one of the trees in the orchard full of fruit.  I found the Falstaff variety to be sweet with a very tough skin.

Saturday evening, I read several chapters of The Private Patient, by P. D. James book.

On Sunday, after church, I took the London Tube, a bus line to London, to its first stop, Lewknor.  St Margaret's Church was hosting a green festival and dog show.  I bought my weekly supply of vegetables and cheeses, sampled a bit of expertly prepared venison, dined on an organic burger and home-made dessert, and finished it all off with a glass of very good local wine.

Outside, the dogs were patiently waiting for the show to begin.

Soon they were put through their paces. They and their young owners all received ribbons.

After the show, I walked back to the highway to catch the bus to Oxford where I  had chicken mai fun at the Noodle Bar and went to the evening service at church.