Halloween is not a very big holiday here. A few stores, mostly charity shops, decorated their store windows with cobwebs and pumpkins. There was some Halloween candy at the grocery store, but not much. It had to compete for shelf space with the Christmas candy which is already out. I have no idea if children go out trick-or-treating. I did see a few running around in costumes though.
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On the morning of October 31, I honestly forgot that it was Halloween. I normally wear an orange shirt to be festive I but that did not happen (though Amy did remember to wear orange). It was not until I went to meet Amy at the bus stop to go into the City Centre that I remembered that it was a holiday.
Amy and I were going to the City Centre with one goal: check out the pilot episode to Lewis, a detective show filmed and set in Oxford. For some reason, all of the television episodes are available on Netflix, except for the first one. Amy looked for it online for forever, willing to even pay a few dollars to buy it but all the websites she found required a UK credit card. As a last ditch effort, she checked the Oxford Central Library, knowing that I had recently received by library card and found that it was in stock, hence, our trip into town.
The Oxford Central Library is in downtown Oxford, sandwiched between a bank and a shopping center. There is nothing on the ground floor but a desk for inquiries, all of the library materials are up the stairs.
On a side note, there were signs on the stairs that said "Keep Left." We have been wondering forever what side of the street and stairs you should climbs to stay out of the way of other people. In the United States you are supposed to try to stay to the right, probably in imitation of the side of the road that we drive on. We assumed it was the left in the UK, but no one ever seems to follow that rule, making walking on crowded sidewalks into an incredibly difficult game of, "Dodge the oncoming person."
Back to the library where we have reached the second level and passed by the bestseller book sections, looking for the DVDs. I really liked how the books were arranged by genre like mystery, travel, fiction, etc. like a book store. My library at home sorts mainly by hardback or paperback. It is so much easier to find something to read by choosing a topic or genre instead of having to sift through racks of books.
The DVDs ended up being located just a little ways inside the doors of the first floor on the right-hand side. We noticed that all of the DVDs had different colored dots on them in relation to how much you have to pay to rent them. Lewis had a yellow dot so it was cheapest at GBP 1.25. I just seems strange to me to have to pay to check out anything at a library. The books all had yellow dots to, but Amy and I do not think that they could charge to check out books. That would kind of defeat the purpose of a library, to lend out books and encourage reading.
I gave Amy my library card to use and she checked out with no problems. I was not sure if I would have to show ID or something to prove that the library card was actually mine. Even with the packet of leaflets that came with my library card, I am still not sure about how all of the library works.
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Before I knew it, 5:30 pm had come and it was time to go to class. Walking outside, it was completely dark with the orangey glow of streetlight illuminating our way. Sunday was Daylight Savings (one week earlier than in the USA) so now it get dark super early.
This session on British Heritage and Culture focused on religion. We basically just talked about all of the churches and cathedrals everyone in our group has visited so far, and then were told about the history of Guy Fawkes Day, again.
Amy, Caitlin, Libby and I got to leave class ten minutes early to catch the bus into the City Centre for our haunted ghost tour. We thought it would be a good way to celebrate Halloween, plus it was free.
Our bus was running late so we walked very briskly from the bus stop, down Cornmarket Street (one of the main shopping roads) to the Martyrs' Memorial. We had never ventured that far down Cornmarket Street before so we got to see the exteriors of some new buildings, including the Ashmolean Museum.
All of that speed walking turned out to be unnecessary as a lot of other people were late. We ended up waiting an extra ten minutes until the tour group swelled to about fifteen people. While we were waiting we spoke to two girls, one from Japan and one from Bulgaria. The Bulgarian girl told us about how much she wants to visit New York City, the place all Europeans I have met seem to want to go.
The first story on the tour was about the three martyrs honored on the Martyrs' Memorial. Thomas Cranmer, Hugh Latimer and Nicholas Ridley were followers of the Protestant Church of England who were burnt at the stake by order of the Catholic queen, Bloody Mary. Latimer and Ridley were killed together with Cranmer following a year later.
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| Martyrs' Memorial |
The tour guide named Rob moved us throughout the oldest parts of Oxford, telling stories along the way. There were the students studying religion who died in collapsed tunnels where they hid when teachers came into the pubs where they had been drinking, and could be heard scratching the ground trying to unbury themselves. One man was sentenced to have his ear nailed to a post so he cursed the courtroom and nearly of its occupants died within a week of typhus, or jailhouse fever.
My favorite story occurred at Brasenose College of Oxford University. In the 1800s, a man known as a drunk was walking down a dark street next to the college when he saw a black robed figure trying to pull something out of a window. Now, this window was small, only about a foot wide by three feet tall, and it had metal bars over it. The man, who taught in the college, was frightened and ran passed, entering Brasenose.
Inside, he learned that a student in his 20s has just collapsed on the stairs and died. This student was rumored to be president of the Hellfire Club, a club that got together to drink and cause mischief. However, legend has it that the members of the club worshiped the Devil and offered him their souls.
The student was determined to have died from natural causes but it is said that on his face there were straight red marks, two vertical and one horizontal, matching the pattern of the window's bars. It is said that the drunken man had seen Satan in the dark street, trying to take the soul that the student had offered him.
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We were invited to a Halloween party thrown by some of the people from our American university. Partying is definitely not my sense but I thought I would make a short appearance and then leave. Libby dressed as a zebra with her knitted zebra hat and stripped shirt while Caitlin, Amy and I just wore our normal clothes. Caitlin just said she was a Muggle and, if needed, I could pretend I was a cowgirl since I was wearing boots and a flannel shirt.
Everyone seemed to be having a good time, considering the small space we were in. I was really impressed with people's costumes. There were several Captain Knickers (a version of Captain Underpants they thought the British would understand better), Oompa Loompas from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Harley Quinn. One British guy named Simon, dressed in an orange tiger onesie was friendly.
I was uncomfortable after about ten minutes so Caitlin and I slipped out of the door and across the small courtyard to our own flat. That was the extent of my celebrations on Halloween. Not very exciting, but perfectly acceptable for me, especially since I had to be up at 7am the next morning to get to class.
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