Dreaming Spires

Our first month in Oxford has been an adjustment in many ways, but we’re settling in nicely and enjoying living here - dull weather and all! Calvin has been at his new nursery school since the 5^th of September and seems to have settled in well. Our new home is nice: it goes without saying that it’s a lot smaller than our lovely house in Joburg, but we have a bedroom for each of the boys, plus our own en-suite bedroom and lounge as well as a downstairs kitchen and living room which has become the boys’ play room. It took another week or so after we moved in at the beginning of September for our stuff to be delivered but we’re now pretty much unpacked (although some stuff is simply staying in boxes as we don’t think we’ll be using it immediately. So Mackenzie’s room has a wall of boxes across one end, and behind our couch that I’m sitting on are all of our wall pictures and mirrors that we haven’t even unwrapped yet. The sound-proofing of the house at times seems to suggest that we have paper walls - amusing or perhaps not when a nearly-three year old jumps up and down in his room and the house seems to shake. But it’s light, airy, and works well for our life right now - we have a car for when we need it (thanks to my dad’s kindness in swapping my SA car for his UK car) and we have bikes and even a trailer for the boys to ride behind Helen’s bike so that she can drop Calvin at nursery school three days a week.

We’re living in North Oxford, a little further out of the city centre than I ever ventured as an undergraduate, but it’s still only a 10 minute cycle to the centre of town or to the Education department. It’s a nice area though - lots of play parks nearby, a canal path with barges and ducks, nearby is a large open field area called Port Meadow that has cows grazing in it (and I used to mock Cambridge for having cows near the city centre, cough…) Mackenzie has just learned to walk and is still a huge fan of food. Calvin is starting to settle down better now after all of the disruption and turmoil of the last two months as we packed up our house, moved temporarily to my parents’ flat in Joburg, then to their house in London briefly before going on holiday to Sweden and then returning to Harrow before moving to Oxford. It has been hard to watch sometimes how Calvin would nervously bite his nails till they were raw, or get terribly upset if Helen even left the room. Helen too became a little bit absent-minded and it’s been good to see that she is starting to get her groove back too - in fact I think she and Calvin feed each other’s state of mind a bit (or are affected by the same things), so it’s nice that things are back to being a bit more normal again.

Prior to arriving in Oxford we took the boys with us on a family holiday with my parents to Sweden. It was lovely to see a number of old friends there again, and to spend some time in the countryside. In other ways it was not an easy holiday as my mother was in quite a lot of pain (since returning from Sweden she has had a hip-replacement surgery that seems to have gone well in terms of her recovery), and unfortunately the weather was also bad for some of the time, making it tough keeping our two small boys entertained inside a very small apartment. I even had one or two mornings where I found myself taking at least one of the boys with me to the supermarket in the nearby town more for distraction than out of any urgent practical need. We also explored a range of different kids play parks in different towns in Sweden - such was our desperation for ways to keep the boys occupied. In all it was an unfortunate reminder that kids completely change what holidays are like, and set the bar a lot lower as far as entertainment options and freedom are concerned!

Tomorrow I begin the induction week for my Masters in Comparative and International Education. I’m really looking forward to this year of study - it has been tough to knuckle down and read academic books again for the pre-reading for the course and also to do some research before the term starts (more on that below), but it has also been very stimulating and because I’ve been teaching in schools, this feels much more real (non-theoretical) for me than some of my previous studies. Where on my previous Masters degree I was the young university graduate who appreciated having people on my course with real-world experience in the field, I think I am now more likely to be one of those people on this course. I am still aiming to progress from this Masters to a PhD in Education, and to that end I’ve been using some of my time in the last few weeks to do some background research for a PhD proposal and also to look at where I would consider applying. Unfortunately the deadlines for applications to many institutions are as early as December of this year so I don’t have a lot of time to finalise my applications nor to find members of the faculty here at Oxford who would be willing to act as references or perhaps even support me applying to continue on to a DPhil here at Oxford. There is a part of me that is very keen to apply to postgraduate schools of education in the United States, the funding is much better and it would be the realisation of a long-held dream of mine to live Stateside for a while, but on the other hand the competition for places is incredibly intense and we would be likely to be quite socially isolated initially. The UK is likely to be easier to get into a PhD programme but that’s also because I would have to self-fund for the most part and pay substantial tuition fees each year, unless I get lucky about finding a professor who sees my research fitting into a funding stream they can tap into.

Oxford University is a federation of colleges, and I’ve come to feel lucky that I was accepted at St Antony’s College, which is for graduate students only. Now that I’m what is called a ‘mature’ student, it is nice to be somewhere some of the other students also have spouses (though seemingly very few have kids), and also to be able to meet people with a wide variety of academic interests, across a range of disciplines. St Antony’s is exceptionally international as many of its students come to study at departments and institutes that are either adjacent to or within the walls of the college - including Middle Eastern Studies, Japanese Studies, Russian and East European Studies, African Studies, and Latin American Studies. Already in my two forays this week to social ice-breakers in the college bar I have had some fascinating conversations with other students and I’m looking forward to many more. I am also very pleased to find that spouses are very much welcomed at St Antony’s, so now that we’ve found a baby-sitter who lives just down the street (a very nice 17-year old school boy who gets on well with our boys but will have an easy job as he’ll basically only come over when the boys are already in bed), I’m looking forward to taking Helen along to some of the college parties and other social events - and hoping that she’ll also meet some nice people and we’ll both make some new friends.

I’m still finding my feet in terms of rugby refereeing, having joined the Oxfordshire society, but so far I think they’re still sussing me out, so the games I’ve been given have been very hit-and-miss. I had a game two weeks ago that was played by guys many of whom were so old and out of shape that I was almost tempted to give someone else the whistle and to play myself! But I’m hoping that despite not knowing whether I’ll be here for more than 1 year, I’ll be able to take my chances and prove myself capable reasonably quickly so that I can try to get more challenging games to push myself and keep improving in my abilities and also because by February when it’s really cold I would much prefer to be refereeing teams that play reasonably fast and don’t make too many errors so that I can keep running and stay warm! It has also been an adjustment to find that the number of games I’ll get is typically far fewer in a week than I was used to in Joburg. Most clubs play all of their games at the same time so there is only one club game to referee on a Saturday afternoon (but because of this the referee is expected to arrive at the grounds much further in advance of the game than was often the norm for me when I was coming from other school games in the morning). There do also seem to be Sunday afternoon games, but often not the same quality as they are only juniors and womens’ games. So I’m probably also going to do other things to keep fit - including possibly looking to practice some basketball once in a while with an old team-mate from my university days in Oxford who still lives in town and plays with a local league team (I am now too old and slow, and have too much else on my plate to even consider playing at the level of intensity of the university basketball set-up).

Life in Oxford is shaping up pretty well. I’m a little bit daunted by the prospect of being an old dog trying to learn new tricks again, studying alongside youngsters with more time, more energy, and likely a lot more brains than me (Oxford, in my past experience, is a humbling place). But I’m excited to be learning and challenging myself again and looking forward to making the most of all the experiences I can access. That includes potentially using our location in Europe to see friends again who I have not seen in a while. So, to all my old friends reading this, if you’re keen to come to Oxford or have a suggestion to meet up, please do give me a shout.