May Day, May Day!

Happy May Day! It really feels like May here, as the weather is just glorious. It is at least mid-70s with a clear, blue sky. I had another outing with my camera in the sunshine today and had a wonderful time.

Today started off (but not for me) with the annual Oxford ritual of May Morning, where the Magdalen Boys' Choir greets the sunrise from the top of the tower and everyone goes to the pub afterwards - nothing like a good lager at 7am!

Last year it was freezing cold on May Morning and we said we'd go next year. This time it was perfect weather, but we completely forgot. But also it would be difficult for David because it fell on a weekday and it would be difficult for me because I don't do early. :)

The picture on the right is by a fellow Oxford Flickrer, showing the choir boys waving from the tower after singing.

Academic Stuff

In other news, I am very pleased to announce that I am done with my dissertation! Well, mostly. It's never truly done until it's bound and turned in (which will be 31 May), but I have finally finished writing it and I e-mailed it to my supervisor late last night. She said she would try to get comments to me by this Friday, and I'm looking forward to hearing what she thinks.

I now have other essays to write and exams to study for, but after lots of hard work over the past week or so, I am taking a break today! And what a day for it.



I started off by going to an 11am special lecture by my supervisor (Jane), which is part of a Patristics Seminar series held at Christ Church. There were about a dozen attendees, most of them professors, and everyone sat around a large table. I saw some friendly faces from last year, including my favorite Constantine lecturer and a fellow student from my Church History seminars back in 2005. There was also a visiting scholar from Cleveland.

The lecture was on popular stories about the Virgin Mary in medieval Byzantium (i.e. the Greek-speaking east), and was quite interesting. Jane is writing a book on the subject. She made some interesting comparisons between devotion to Mary and to Kwan Yin, a Buddhist goddess of compassion. I have heard of this comparison before and always found it interesting - I plan to write an article on it for ReligionFacts one day.

Revisiting Christ Church Cathedral

The lecture was over by about noon and we were all invited to go out for lunch afterwards, but I decided I'd rather go next door and take pictures of Christ Church Cathedral! It was nice and empty in there and I had a lovely time adding to my photo collection and working on my skills in dealing with difficult lighting.

Just for fun, here's a satellite view of Christ Church, with some personalized labels. This image is from Microsoft Virtual Earth - for some reason Google Earth still doesn't have high-resolution imagery for Oxford. Lame. You can click to enlarge, and click here for an interactive view.



Some photo highlights from Christ Church:


Lovely, spiny exterior of the famous Great Hall (dining hall) where Harry Potter was filmed.


Tower and cloisters of the cathedral.


Some funny faces on the cloister ceiling.


The reconstructed Shrine of St Frideswide.


View to the east rose window through the choir.


Wooden angels in the choir.


The tomb of Lady Montacute (d.1354), with carved portraits of her 10 children on the sides. They lost their faces at the Reformation.

If you're interested, you can see more photos in my Christ Church set on Flickr.

From there I headed down "The New Walk" through Christ Church Meadow, just as David did the other morning. The trees were blowing in the warm wind, the sun was sparkling on the river, everybody was out and about - it was beautiful.




Tower Climb at St Michael's Church

Then I headed down to St Michael's Church on Cornmarket and paid £1.80 to climb the tower for some lovely views. We had climbed this tower shortly after our arrival in Oxford long ago, and it was fun to revisit it now that I know what I'm looking at.


Seen here is the spire of Exeter College Chapel, the little green dome of the Sheldonian Theatre (center) and the bigger dome of Radcliffe Camera (right).


A view of busy Cornmarket from above.

Back down the tower, I took some snaps of St. Michael's Church itself. Its most interesting feature is a 14th-century baptismal font, but it also has some nice stained glass windows.





Then back to Broad Street to catch the Wolfson bus home.