London walks, Oxford bikes

London walks To the City on Thursday evening to lose our pub-quiz cherries at First Derivatives annual bash for its customers. We did abysmally, I’m proud to say, owing to our wretched ignorance of TV shows and celebrities. So that’s all right. Friday morning breakfast at the Bar Italia in Frith St, and a walkabout the Courtauld Gallery at Somerset House with Arthur Whitney and his fiancée Rita.

Oxford bikes Then we packed our bikes atop the car and headed for St Edmund Hall, Oxford to meet my former philosophy tutor Denise Gamble at the British Society of Aesthetics conference. Attended a couple of fairly interesting papers, one on depiction, without winning any insights into the relationship between text (eg source code) and illustrations (eg diagrams), but got to crack a Walter Pater joke.

No art aspires to the condition of Muzak.

The highlights of the weekend were undoubtedly Saturday afternoon punting on the Thames and Cherwell, and on Sunday, lunch at The Plough at Godstow, and the afternoon by the Windrush river at Minster Lovell Hall.

The bike that walked Today very bad news. Miki’s bike was stolen from under her office window, despite a motorcycle lock chaining it to a lamppost. She is inconsolable.

Posted by SJT at September 12, 2006 05:50 PM