Shopping trip to Oxford was the order of the day. I had to retire back to the car quite early on as various muscles went into spasm, so I contemplated the lower bowels of the Westgate multi-storey while Kit and Izzy explored the town. Is there anything less pleasing architecturally than sixties/early seventies concrete? Yes probably but it's bad enough to be going on with. Where I sat was once the thirteenth century Barbican by the great West Gate in the town's medieval walls...they had to dig deep when building this complex and in doing so pretty much destroyed the archaeology of about a twentieth of the medieval city. One thing they left were the thousands of corpses of the extensive grave yard of St Ebbes, the dead of 700-800 years, somewhere down here among the cars and mouldering concrete lies all that is left of Doctor Mirabilis, Roger Bacon himself. The bodies they disturbed they re-buried deeper down...if you linger in the public space that is now Bonn Square you are sitting on a mass grave...enjoy your sandwich. I rejoined the shoppers to linger amongst various art materials, it was only with great difficulty I didn't spend a lot of money (that I don't have) on these objects of desire....it's always the same, whenever I go into an art shop I start to drool,I consoled myself with a new sketch book while casting longing looks at some sable brushes and a huge easel (such as I've wanted for years) which was in a sale....

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