Oxford

It has been some time since I last visited Oxford, and I have forgotten how nice it is. Everything about it is right: not too big, not too small, not too rich, but “comfortable”, as the saying goes. The city is always neat, streets lively without being crowded. The weather today is miserable, raining from a grey sky, breezy as well, yet it feels like nobody cares about the weather. People keep walking, biking (no joke, why would one want to bike in this weather, but bike they did), some with a spring in their steps, some with a gritty determination. I stopped by a café, asked for a combo in the menu, and the Moroccan owner calmly explained: that was for afternoon, for the morning we had those. The price was a bit on a high side for me, so just a cappuccino then. Walking past one of those doors that only reveal a little bit of the oasis inside, the meticulously manicured lawn, suddenly a revelation came to me: that those doors just say: for a thousand years, regardless of the chaos in the outside world, in here, things are in order, always have been, always will be. Such an understatement, together with new builds, big shopping malls, refined restaurants, and many others, almost recreated the feeling of awe from the first few times I visited Oxford, but not today. Today, even the house with the shark was not too impressive. Am I getting too old, too hard to please, too wise to be seduced? But the ancient foot paths, the long frontage of an independent school, they did not care to seduce anybody.

Oxford is a strange city, much smaller, yet has as good schools, as good hospitals, house price is not crazy, so why people don’t want to be there?