today we went to oxford, the hometown of my all-time favorite band, radiohead. it started with a tour of the university area (i've never seen so many bikes in my life---hundreds of them crammed into enormous bike racks), including, of course, the harry potter filming locations. somehow the tour guides never fail to mention when a place has been filmed for harry potter. whatever.
anyway, what was interesting about the tour was all the connections to alice in wonderland---lewis carroll went to oxford ('it was a wednesday') and based alice on the dean's daughter alice, and the white rabbit was based on the dean. and the story goes that before trains made it necessary for times to be constant across the country, different towns would have slightly different times. so oxford was 5 minutes behind london. which is why the white rabbit is always five minutes late. amazing, right?
after the tour, the search for thom yorke began. i heard from a friend where thom likes to write his lyrics, and ventured to find the tiny pub. my goal, my expectation, was, of course, to meet thom yorke, pee my pants, then tell him how much fake plastic trees means to me, and become his best friend. if that didn't happen, then at the very least i wanted to visit the pub where he hangs out.
four of us found the pub, a cute lil pub in a cute lil avenue. got a few pints. asked the bartender, 'i heard thom yorke hangs out here...where does he usually sit?' and he said, 'he doesn't have a usual spot. he mostly comes in the evening. he doesn't like being approached.'
well yea. i don't like being approached by creepy americans either.
so we left him a note. yes, i know. weird. but we wanted to buy him a pint. so we left four pounds and a note letting thom know exactly how amazing he is. we gave it to the bartender and he looked pretty creeped out. whatevs.
i hope thom enjoys his pint.
yet again, no good pictures. distracted by the biting cold and the search for thom, i only got a few pictures of buildings that inspired some of the buildings for my very own school back in sweet home.
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