Foxy

For lunch at the end of my first week working in Oxford, I was taken to the Fox Inn on Boars Hill. A week beforehand, on my last day working in London, I had been sitting at my desk looking through a street grimed window at the traffic ten feet away, queuing at the lights at the top of Pentonville Road. My desk vibrated with the engines of the big puff-wagons. Now I was looking out across the Vale of the White Horse on a lovely sunny day.

The Fox has been special to me ever since.

So it was good to be there last night with friends David and Tom. The garden has been improved since my initiation; decking has been installed to take the edge off the sharp slope and tall trees surround it, buffeting in the wind but not letting much through (though it was still bloody cold). We could chat and catch up and be astonished at the annual miracle of being able to see each other clearly at 10 o'clock in the evening.

Happy solstice!