May Day in Oxford

I awoke at 4:00 am to see dawn on May Day, but the Oxford students had been reveling all night long. The police requested that the students refrain from jumping off Magdalen Bridge into the Cherwell River after previous years’ injuries. Try reasoning with a lemming. I heard of a couple that got engaged in mid-jump. Honestly! Can you imagine how much drink was involved?

May Day is a pagan celebration, and yet there are Christian overtones. Or should I say over-tunes? After six bell chimes, choristers sang in the sunrise from Magdalen Tower. Crowds of drunken students and sleepy townspeople tilted up their heads to hear the Latin hymn. The young boys’ voices were truly angelic. Over the tower a small patch of blue sky dissolved dark clouds. But for a few cheers and loose balloons, the crowd stood still in silent awe. The Magdalen Boys Choir then sang Sumer is Icumen In. The minister spoke a few words about Mary Magdalen, the college’s namesake, and welcomed spring.

The many gargoyles of Magdalen College leered down at the less than reverent crowd.


Inebriated students in tuxedos with lost bow ties lounged upon the street as their micro-mini skirted girlfriends shivered, lurched and giggled. A Scottish gentleman in a dinner jacket, white tie and a kilt gave his stiletto-ed lady a piggyback ride. Others had painted their faces or hair in fluorescent hues. I looked for traditional Morris dancers and was impressed by this modern take:

There were live bands playing along High Street:

In Radcliffe Square Scottish country dancers spun in kilts and long skirts before a bagpipe player:

Another Scotsman welcomed spring with not so fresh air before St. Mary’s Church:
Vault & Gardens inside the church was serving a hot cooked breakfast from 5:45 am, but the queue (line) was too long to join. Many cafes and pubs had been open most of the night.

On New College Lane before the Bridge of Sighs, groups of Morris Dancers cracked sticks, stamped clogs and jingled bells to accordion players.

Dawn’s early light made the sandstone buildings glow pinkish gold.

A tree man watched. Must be a druid thing. Note the pink haired lady and the cheese-headed accordion player behind him. At least I think it was a he. It’s hard to sex a tree. Green families gathered on the steps of the 18th century Clarendon Building.

Despite the forecast for heavy rain, not a drop fell. The rites of spring must have worked!

May Day is also peak bluebell time in England. The hovering purple-blue mist could make a curmudgeon believe in fairies.

Best place to see these lovely woodland flowers is on National Trust Land. The Holies in Berkshire overlooks the beautiful Thames Valley.

Fluorescent yellow grouse and fields of rape provide the perfect compliment. England can be relentlessly grey and green so to see such rich color is pure joy.


May also heralds World Press Freedom Day. At The Reuter’s Institute my husband, Henry Laurence, gave a brilliant talk on political censorship of public television. In a related article Henry revealed how the Japanese government altered NHK documentary coverage of the comfort women (WWII sex slaves) and how the Bush Administration censored PBS children’s programming.

The British BBC is by far the most progressive public broadcaster, although not free of incidents of self-censorship. Henry referred to the phenomenon as “the pre-emptive cringe.” Expect a really interesting book to come out of two sabbaticals of research in Japan, the UK and the USA. It is fascinating and provocative material, but you don’t have to take my word on it.

Washington Post journalist John Kelly blogged about Henry’s talk. John Kelly’s Voxford is one of my favorite blogs; it’s topical, controversial and often very funny. Fridays feature the gargoyle of the week. Like us, the Kelly family is on sabbatical from the USA. John refers to England as the land of warm beer and cold loos (bathrooms,) but he clearly loves it.

Another new friend from this sabbatical year is women’s fiction author Miranda Glover. She’s in my writers’ group. Miranda’s second novel, Soulmates, just came out last week. Soulmates is about sisters, daughters and the sad havoc of depression. From trendy London to the cold beauty of Stockholm, it’s a captivating read in a soothing voice, rich in detail. I’ve only just started and look forward to reading more tonight.

I’m cross with the characters in the new novel I'm writing. They’re not even out of the prologue and already they are waking me before dawn for adventures. Maybe it’s sleep deprivation or the amount of work left to do for this English novel, but I can’t believe it is already May!

Best Pubs in Oxford

There are so many great pubs in Oxford, it was hard to choose a favorite among the 8 I reviewed. The Trout (above) has everything I look for in a pub: history, properly stored bitter (beer), real wood fires, cozy nooks, good food, country walk, pleasant outdoor seating and a peacock. Okay, I don’t usually look for peacocks, but this one came looking for me!

Book a table days ahead for dinner at The Trout. Stick to the pub classics like the best fish and chips or special savory pies. My kids adore the wood oven pizza. The hummus etc. plate is good for sharing. Perfect with a pint of Landlord’s. Sitting outside by the river, watching the sun set over Port Meadow, is bliss. You can get a full tea too.

Colin Dexter (creator of the Inspector Morse series) is a fan of The Trout as were other local authors. I’ve never seen Dexter at the pub, but I have passed him on the road while picking up my daughter from school.

The best way to reach The Trout in Wolvercote from Oxford City Center is on your wellies (rubber boots). Take the dog too! Enter Port Meadow from Jericho, and you have a nice 4 mile loop along the Thames/Isis River with The Trout at midway. The Port Meadow side is a muddy, boggy field with horses, cattle, geese, swans and migrating birds for company. It’s gorgeous in a frost or the rare snow.

At the north end of Port Meadow, cut through the car park, take a left on the Godstow Road and cross the bridge. Pass a sheep farm on your left and a community garden on your right. The Trout will be on your left before the next bridge (about 5 minutes).

On the way home, take a left, cross the bridge and turn left onto the Thames towpath by the Godstow Abbey ruins. At the end of the towpath, cross the footbridge back to Jericho. If you don’t have wellies, you can take the towpath both ways.

The less intrepid can take the Number 6 bus from Oxford City Center (near the Randolf Hotel) to Wolvercote Home Close (end of line.) You’ll have a 10 minute walk down Godstow Road. The Trout has a good size car park too, but then you’ll have to watch your drinking. Really! I live in Wolvercote. My English husband chose our house because it was closest to his favorite pub and country walks.

Back in college, Henry and his Oxford mates thought the journey to The Trout was well worth it. Mostly, though, Oxford students are lazy drinkers. They usually head to the college bar or to the closest boozer. Oriel and Christ Church students favor The Bear. Writer that I am, I can’t resist the sign calling itself “an historic pub.”

The Bear is tiny and authentic (1242!) During term time, crowds spill into the road. Wear a special tie only if you are willing to have it clipped for the impressive collection housed in glass cases on the walls and even on the ceiling.


The most classic but hardest to find pub is The Turf Tavern. Check out their website for funny visual directions or you'll never find it. It’s cozy inside and has plenty of outdoor seating in the courtyards. The Turf has been a favorite Oxford watering hole for centuries. It was mentioned in Thomas Hardy’s Jude the Obscure.

The Lamb & Flag was also cited in Jude the Obscure. It’s popular with students and is owned by St. John's College. The lamb and flag signify that saint. The visual signs were key in old pubs, serving an illiterate community.

I had an excellent pint of Pewsey Best, and Henry’s half of Spitfire was good too. Okay, I’ll own up. I ordered the Spitfire (half pint as we were visiting 2 pubs) and traded it for the Pewsey because it really was the best. Research, darling.

Great atmosphere at The Lamb and Flag. I wonder if they ever light the enormous fire? It was almost cold enough. April has been miserably grey and bitter with the exception of yesterday. Yes, I know you are wearing T-shirts in NYC. It might get up to 75 here – in mid summer!


Across the busy road is the most literary pub: The Eagle and Child (1650). C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien and other friends met every Tuesday morning(!) between 1939-1962. “The Inklings” discussed books and their writing. They called the pub affectionately “The Bird and Baby.” Is the sign creepy or what?

On the walls are pictures of the famous writers, a framed letter to the landlord and even a commemorative plaque. Hey, my writer friends and I occasionally meet at Henry and Marty’s for a drink and dessert back home in Brunswick, Maine. We discuss writing, revising and publishing too. When’s the plaque going up?

Sitting in the Inklings’ corner is Henry, my best drinking buddy. He knows from pubs. The Brakspear (local Oxford brew) was divine and the Adnams Broadside was good. Add a packet of crisps (potato chips) and you’re sorted.

Looking for a big, easy to find pub? Go to The Kings Arms, smack at the end of Broad Street near my favorite bookstore, Blackwell’s. It draws a lot of tourists and students. The food isn’t so great, and I find the high ceilings lend a cavernous feel. Smokers on the outside benches and traffic fumes waft inside.

For you Oxford locals, this is all old hat, so I’ll name a couple of favorites more off the beaten track. Perhaps the most obscure good pub in Oxford is The Plough on Wolvercote Green. Take the Number 6 bus, get off at Wolvercote School, walk straight past the school and down the hill.

The Plough is on a meadow by the Oxford Canal with limited parking. You can also walk a couple miles to it from Oxford Center along the canal towpath. There is pleasant outside seating in the meadow (for those of you with dogs,) also an adjacent playground. It feels like a country village pub.

Sit in “the library” at The Plough. There's a working fire (gas), huge bay windows and lots of books. My daughter enjoyed reading J.H. Williams’s In Quest of a Mermaid (1960) while waiting for her kids’ menu dinner. My teenaged son loves the fresh chicken burgers. The food is really good value. I once had a delicious ostrich steak special, and they prepare fresh side vegetables.

The Plough’s food is not as tasty as The Trout’s, but you can always get a table and it’s much cheaper. Go there if The Trout is full or just for more peace and quiet. The Abbot Ale was mighty fine and the service very friendly. The Plough and The Trout are the best pubs for families or for a meal.

Avoid the two other pubs in Wolvercote by the end of the bus line. The Red Lion has bad food and lots of loud kids playing in the bouncy castle. Give The White Hart a miss unless you fancy a wide-screen TV playing the football (soccer.) Don’t confuse it with The White Hart in Wytham which is good for a pint, although the food isn’t as good as it used to be.

Closer in to Oxford Center is The Rose and Crown on North Parade. It is a 20 minute walk from Oxford Center and a good value for okay meals. I hear the ale is kept really well but didn’t sample it as I was working after lunch. Yes, I’m still revising my novel, S.A.D. I'll be back for a pint of Old Hooky, a local brew and favorite of mine.

The pink color both inside and outside was cheerful, and I saw more women at The Rose and Crown than at the other pubs. What I love about English pubs, is that they are friendly places for women and even families, not at all like American bars.

The English beer is cask temperature so you can really taste it (like fine red wine.) Lager is light, and bitter is darker. My favorite bitters are medium amber colored, smooth and rich like Hobgoblin. It shouldn’t be cloudy, too hoppy or sour – that happens when improperly stored or too old.

Riverside at The Trout for sundowners.

Pubs are often the social hubs of villages, but sadly many are going out of business due to the cheap cost of beer in supermarkets, high taxes on pub beer, stiff penalties on drunk driving (that bit is good!) and perhaps the recent smoking ban passed last summer [as reported in The Week April 18.] I for one much prefer pubs since the smoking ban – I’m going much more frequently now. You can expect several pub scenes in my English novel, Not Cricket (A Match for Eve).

If you know of other good pubs in Oxford, please add a comment below. Click on the “pubs” label to read more reviews. Cheers!

Japanese Influence on French Gardens

I didn’t intend for a Japanese theme to my long weekend in France. For vacation my daughter asked to visit her old buddy from Maine who had moved to the Parisian suburbs. I’ve always wanted to see Monet’s gardens in Giverny, and our host, Elizabeth Webb, suggested the Albert-Kahn Gardens (above) in the outskirts of Paris.

In the 1880’s Claude Monet and his family settled in Giverny. It was there that he painted his famous lily pads. Although Monet never visited Japan, he collected beautiful Japanese woodblock prints which are displayed in his house and well worth a visit on their own. Local carpenters recreated the Japanese bridge.

The flower beds were as cheerful as Monet’s green-shuttered pink house. The formal grid design of the upper gardens were distinctly French. The bulbs were planted by color type and carefully balanced. The blocks of bright color were reminiscent of the multicolored rooms inside: a sun yellow dining room with 56 Japanese prints, a pastel blue parlor and an azure blue tiled kitchen and many others. It felt more like an artist’s palette than a decorating scheme. I loved it.

The daffodils were fading, but the tulips were out in full force with the blooming fruit trees. The bright colors softened the regimented symmetry.

The lower garden with its serpentine of water, arched bridge, weeping willows and thick groves of waving bamboo felt understated and Japanese. All it seemed to miss was a teahouse to view the splendor. My favorite gardens are in Kyoto where every blossom or stone is carefully chosen, all working together in asymmetric harmony.

But even in Monet’s Japanese-style garden, the colorful plantings, blooming in reckless abandon, felt more extravagantly western . The pansies glowed in the sunlight as did the azaleas. In pockets of peaceful contemplation, I could appreciate how this garden became Monet’s muse.

I was sorry to miss the irises, roses and lilies pads but not the crowds that accompany them. Over a half million visitors come annually to the Giverny gardens that are only open April to October.

We had lunch at the Museum of American Art’s Terra Café. We ordered crostinis with an interesting fruit and vegetable salad and an excellent raspberry tart for dessert. My ten-year-old daughter enjoyed the American style kid’s menu. The service was fast, and the dining room, open to the gardens, was very pleasant.

If Monet’s Giverny is one of the most famous French gardens, the Albert-Kahn Gardens are the most obscure. Albert Kahn was a wealthy banker who dreamt of world peace. The museum houses his early photography collection, but it was closed for renovation. The gardens were designed to reflect his vision of internationalism. Kahn had traveled to Japan in 1909 on business.

The Japanese garden was too busy with layered stones, thick plantings and multi-level vistas to be Asian. There was a gaudy hill of solid azaleas with a spiraling path. It had an almost Disney theme park feel to it, but of course that made it all the more appealing to the children, who raced up the paths and skipped along the stepping stones. There was a delightful, playful quality to the garden.


The huge carp were genuinely Japanese. My daughter and I shared a Zen moment watching scattered rain drops falling on the pond, creating concentric rings. I’d love to return for a tea ceremony in the teahouse.

By the time we made it to the English garden, it was (appropriately enough) raining quite hard. It wasn’t the best example of English gardening, but daffodils blooming along a stream did bring to mind London parks.


We loved the rough, hilly paths winding through a conifer forest. The pines smelled fragrant in the rain and reminded us of hikes in Maine, although it was meant to invoke the Vosges Mountains of Kahn’s childhood. There was even an American meadow but not much was blooming.

It was a bit of a shock to come upon the traditional French garden after the wild forest. Early in the season, one could see how the crab apple trees were twisted and bent into geometric shapes and pinned like torture victims on a rack. Although all the gardens were artificial, it was only in the French garden that one felt keenly aware of man’s hand in shaping nature to his design.

The Albert-Kahn Museum and Gardens
14, rue du Port
92100 Boulogne-Billancourt
Tel: 01 55 19 28 00
Open Tuesday-Sunday 11am-7 or 8pm
Metro: Boulogne-Pont de Saint-Cloud (ligne 10)
€1.5 (free for under 12)

For dinner we continued the japonais theme. Elizabeth’s friend Akiko claims that Kunitoraya is the most authentic Japanese restaurant in Paris. It’s a simple noodle shop, and it did indeed feel like I was back in Tokyo.

In Japan restaurants tend to specialize in only one type of food so there are noodle shops, sushi restaurants, yakitori grills, Buddhist vegetarian restaurants and even restaurants serving just breaded fried pork cutlets. There are no “Japanese restaurants” in Japan – that’s a western export. As are large servings of meat or deeply battered tempura. Real Japanese tempura comes lightly battered and isn’t greasy so you can really taste the fresh vegetables.

Kunitoraya sells only noodles and a few rice dishes. My daughter ordered plain noodles in broth, and the rest of us had Kamaten-Udon (€15). We watched them prepare our meal from the noodle bar. All the staff appeared to be Japanese as were half of the clients – always a good sign.

I explained to our friends that you have to slurp the long, slippery noodles, the louder the more polite. The thick wheat noodles (udon) were the best I’ve had outside Japan as was the tempura. They came with a warm dipping sauce to which you add fresh ginger, toasted sesame seeds, chopped scallions and a raw quail’s egg (that had to be a French addition – it usually would be a raw chicken’s egg.)

Kunitoraya was in the Asian district that included many Japanese, Chinese and Korean restaurants. It was at 39 Rue Ste. Anne near Rue des Petits Champs and is open every day from 11:30am to 10:00pm. Great place for an early, inexpensive dinner with kids. You can sit at the bar or in the cave like basement at a table.

I rounded off the evening with a French motif: fine wine and cheese back home with my friends. It was a fun weekend of dual cultures. Like quails eggs on udon, France and Japan are a good pairing.

This post was part of Garden Bloggers’ Bloom Day. Click on the link to see what else was blooming around the world on April 15th.