Spent a few days in Oxford visiting my good friends Chris and Satomi. I got to know Chris over 20 years ago when we were trawling universities looking at chemistry courses, and both ended up at St Catherines.

Unlike me, Chris never left the city, and I always enjoy going back myself. Despite having a difficult time there, it does feel like home to me. Perhaps one day I’ll return to live there although it does go against my principle of ‘going back’ – I like to feel life is always moving forward. Anyway, it was a good trip.

It was actually a bellringing trip that was organised with the AGM being yesterday. There had been ringing on Friday and today, but with a mixture of wanting to catch up with my hosts, and the fact I slept in this morning, I only managed the 7 towers yesterday, although that was tiring in itself.

I finally went up Carfax Tower. Somehow it was one of those touristy things I’d never done, presumably because I was a resident whilst there, and not a tourist. Anyway, Carfax is an ex-church and has a ring of 6 bells (on plain bearings making life somewhat more of a challenge!) and in between rings we got to look out from the roof – something of a bell ringers privilege when it comes to standing on tall churchy buildings!

Sadly the camera lens was a bit dirty so the photos weren’t as good as I’d hoped.