The Virtual Stoa

While we were standing around outside the Town Hall this morning, Philip Pullman was being interviewed on the Today Programme [and scroll down to 0837 for the audio link].

(More over here.)

National press: “Labour suffers worst electoral defeat for 40 years”

Local press: “Labour has taken control of Oxford City Council after a hugely successful election night.”

There are many nice things about living in Oxford, and one of them is that political culture here is lively. We have vigorous five-party politics (if you include the Tories), and what happens here is often pleasingly disengaged from the rhythms of the national scene.

Jericho, however, is rapidly becoming a one-party-statelet. Four years ago, the Lib Dems won by 846 to 716; and in the three contests that have taken place since then in 2005, 2006 and 2008, Labour has won by 713 to 437, 1100 to 704 and 907 to 301 respectively. That’s not bad at all.

We’re in today’s Observer.

The Jericho Boatyard planning application went to Oxford City Council’s Area Committee today. I couldn’t stay for the whole meeting, but I’m glad to read that (unsurprisingly) the local councillors threw out the proposals in the final vote. So no doubt it’ll go to appeal - again, and we’ll have to take it from there. Channel Four News covered the story earlier tonight, while the meeting was in progress, and you can watch the clip over here [and click on “watch the report”].

(We’re over here at the BBC, too.)

The Philip Pullman discussion below reminded me of this bit of propaganda that’s going round the neighbourhood, as local gyptian-consciousness is on the rise.

(The film’s playing at the Phoenix with an exhibition of photos of the boatyard in the bar upstairs, and Pullman recently turned up to a ceremony to rename one of the campaigners’ boat Lyra’s Defiance. All the fictional characters are on our side — Sergeant Lewis, too. How can we lose?!?)

More here, here and here.

Whenever I go past Pepper’s Burgers on Walton Street these days, it seems to be closed. And the people at this page seem to think it has closed down. This would, obviously, be utterly disastrous for humanity in general and the residents of Jericho in particular, so I hope it isn’t true. Does anyone know what’s going on? (I might have to produce another Defunct Oxford Institutions page.)

By my reckoning Enkidu caught two mice in the first two years of his life, and three mice in the last two weeks. So either he’s getting much, much better at catching mice, or else the mouse population in Jericho has recently gone through the roof. (I wonder which.)

Rather touchingly, he brought in last night’s mouse shortly before midnight, played with the corpse for bit under the table, and then placed it in his food-bowl before starting to devour it.

I missed last nights Dispatches on the bin wars — the one where they collected some of our rubbish for us in a nice yellow wheelie-bin — so if anyone can fill me in on the state of play here in Oxford, that’d be useful.

In possibly related news, I realised last night that there’s at least one mouse on the loose in our house, and that when Andromache has been parked in front of her food bowl for lengthy periods without eating, this isn’t a protest against the muck we feed her so much as her patient vigil in front of the mouse-hole.

Enkidu recently disappeared for (we think) three nights in a row, which isn’t typical behaviour, and in the end I found him on the corner of Victor St and Canal St where there’s a little alleyway that goes down to the canal, and I brought him home. (This confirms what other neighbours had told me, that he spends his time hanging out down at the canal, and this may be where he finds his mice.)
Anyway, this is by way of background to the fact that my friend Max Pensky, who has been a visiting philosopher at Oxford this year, is living round the corner from us in Jericho, on the street to which Enkidu is a frequent visitor, and has now turned to haiku.

First, there was this:

Enkidu’s return:
Indignant but glad he’s found
Like any good cat.

Then, yesterday, this:

Peripherally
Glimpsed, black-white quicksilver flash.
“Flink,” the Germans say.

And, this morning, the third instalment:

Dialectic of
Enkidu’s extremities:
Quite sharp, or quite soft.

The rubbish wars are escalating here in Jericho. About ten days ago The News of the World van was spotted driving around with a chap dressed up as Robin from Batman (pretty similar, anyway), and now Channel Four’s Dispatches tell me they’d like to have two weeks’ worth of my rubbish, and have given us an enormous yellow wheelie bin to put it in. I dread to think what’s coming next.

My street, apparently. (I hadn’t really noticed.)

Well, not yet, and the matter might go to appeal, but we live in hope. BBC report here; Oxford Mail report here; local(ish) Green councillor’s bloggerage here (though I don’t agree with him about the pub, which is just over the road from me).

I wondered why there was a police van parked just outside my house shortly before lunchtime yesterday, and why I saw several more on the streets of Jericho yesterday: the protesters at the local boatyard were being evicted. BBC report here; pictures over here; Cllr Matt Sellwood’s blog here.

Completely unrelated to anything that’s ever appeared at the Virtual Stoa ever… If I were to buy one book on gardening, which one should it be? I know absolutely nothing about gardening, but now that I’ve got a small garden to attend to, it’d be nice to have the slightest clue what I was doing out there.

Over here. The protestors seem to think this is a good thing, though there doesn’t seem to be quite enough detail in the reports to be sure about this. Let’s hope so.

Google Earth is now available for Mac.

One of the reasons I didn’t post much on the blog over the last few days is that what time I was spending with the computer was being spent admiring different bits of the surface of the earth, rather than wittering over here.

Someone needs to fly low over Oxford, though, and get some better snaps. It’s a pity that I can see the back porch of the Cambridge, MA flat I used to live in, and can scrutinise Cambridge, UK, on a quad-by-quad basis, only to have Oxford in general and Jericho in particular appear as a bit of a blur.

(For Jericho-from-the-air, go here.)

I’ve already posted on the demolition of Lucy’s. Now it’s been confirmed that The Globe, the pub just over the road from me, isn’t going to reopen, but will probably be turned into flats.

One of the reason I liked the idea of moving to Cranham Street is that there was a spot a few yards from my door from which four licensed premises are clearly visible (with three more just out of sight!). Now there are only three. Still, it won’t make much of a difference to my life, as I never had a drink there.

Someone told me it used to be a National Front pub, which surprised me a bit, so if there’s any Stoa-reader out there with a long memory concerning this part of the world, please do your bit in the comments box.

[The next instalment of Defunct Oxford Institutions will be a sadder one: the St Giles Cafe appears to have shut down, too, either for good, or for a comprehensive remodelling inside.]

Over here.

The demolition of the old Lucy’s factory in Jericho is well underway, to make room for more of the kind of houses that you can see in the second picture (or over here). These photos aren’t very good - the light was poor, and the battery in my camera was dying - but I wanted to make sure I got some pictures before the shell of the building gets knocked down, which I suppose may be any day now.

The press tells me that cricket-mania is sweeping the country, and I now have a datapoint of my own to prove it. This morning, for the first time, I’ve heard several cries of “LBW!” coming from one of the gardens just down the road from us — and, weirdo that I am, I find myself wondering whether the ball might just have pitched outside Channel Four’s “red zone” on the leg-side. I should have thought that the gardens round here were too small for a good game of cricket, but I think the people playing are quite small, too, so that may make a difference.

(I also found myself explaining in some detail the rules about substitute fielders the other day. That’s not a regular feature of life, either.)

From today’s Oxford Mail (though I don’t think the link will last for long), and with added hyperlinks:

Protesters take over boatyard
by Andrew Ffrench

Protesters have occupied a boatyard in Jericho, Oxford, in a bid to prevent the site becoming a new housing development.

Steve Goodlad, 40, ran the Alchemy Boats repair business at Castle Mill boatyard until Friday (July 29) when he agreed to leave the site.

Mr Goodlad did not want to leave the yard, but finally agreed to do so after owners British Waterways agreed to lease him a new site north of the Pear Tree roundabout near Yarnton.

But when he left the yard on Friday (July 29), protesters moved in and pledged to stay until the outcome of a public inquiry over plans for 46 new flats next to the canal.

Mr Goodlad said: “I handed over vacant possession of the site to British Waterways, signed all the paperwork and made sure about 20 boats were cleared from the wharf. But the next thing I knew half a dozen other boats turned up with some people who announced they were occupying the site. I am pleased I have been able to reach an agreement regarding a new site but I do have some sympathy with the protesters.”

Matt Morton, 33, of Walton Well Road, Jericho, who is leading the protest, said: “We will continue to occupy it until we get legal approval that boatbuilding can continue here. British Waterways know that people from the boating community are not the easiest people to get tough with. A lot of boaters have spent their life being pushed from pillar to post and this time they are resolute that they won’t be pushed around. We are anticipating a visit from British Waterways staff in the near future — which should be interesting.”

Mr Morton added that protesters were setting up a website to coordinate their campaign and to update supporters.

There was large-scale opposition to the closure of the boatyard when it was announced earlier this year and opponents to the housing plans include children’s writer Philip Pullman.

Chris Stanley, a spokesman for British Waterways, said: “They have been making their feelings known in a peaceful manner. We will be monitoring the situation.”

Building plans depend on the outcome of a public inquiry held in April and the inspector has not yet announced his decision.

British Waterways has offered boaters who were living on site help to find new moorings.

I don’t think I’ve met anyone who likes this development. It’s not just the boatyard, it’s also that there’s not enough affordable housing proposed, the worry that highish-rise building will spoil views of St Barnabas church tower, and the lack of adequate space for a new community centre, and, no doubt, other things, too. Not many people like British Waterways much round here.

It’s not just the Labour councillors in this town who scribble on blogs. Local Green councillor Matt Sellwood’s got a blog, too, and he writes, with reference to what’s going on just around the corner from where I live:

On that note, I am also getting up at the crack of dawn tomorrow [Monday] to go down to the old Lucy’s Factory site, where British Waterways have been stopped from evicting the boatyard by squatters. Contrary to the typical (and false) image of squatters as people who move in and trash a place, the squatting community in Oxford attempts to defend absolutely crucial community facilities like the boatyard (without which, most of the boating community in oxford would lose their affordable homes) and deserve wholehearted support…

Read more about this kind of thing, and other kind of things, over here.

Mark Kaplan’s been having reveries about Oxford’s Jericho, the area of town I moved to about a month ago, in particular about Nellie’s delicatessen, which used to be there, but which isn’t any more.

And in one of those extraordinary coincidences, I first learned about the (non-)existence of this place earlier this week, when a colleague stopped to chat on the way into town, and when the subject of living in Jericho came up asked me whether a certain delicatessan was still around, and so on, and so forth.

Jericho’s an interesting part of town. I’ve linked before to this splendid site on Oxford suburbs, which has a wealth of information about the area; and I also spent half an hour or so last week browsing these pages, which are full of good things, including a splendid aerial photo section.

The first ever episode of Inspector Morse was filmed there, too, with a splendid performance from ex-Dr. Who Patrick Troughton playing the local resident weirdo.

When did Pepper’s Burgers on Walton Street in Oxford open?

Please report any sitings from before 1992 in the Comments.