I just returned from a short trip to the UK, to give the `Strachey Lecture´ at Oxford University. I saw many old friends, and also had the chance to visit brother Don and his wife Dee in Basingstoke for the first time. I flew in to Heathrow on Saturday afternoon, and drove at once to Basingstoke. Don and Dee were out at a dinner, but had left me a selection of toys to play with -- Don's Nintendo 64 and their DVD player -- and chilled Indian food in the fridge!
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The next morning they were determined to remind me which country I was in, and cooked a Full English Breakfast with eggs, bacon, mushrooms, sausages, and even fried bread! I haven't eaten anything of the sort in ages, and it really set me up for the day.
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After breakfast, Don and I set out for a Sunday walk -- six or seven miles cleverly chosen to end up at a pleasant country pub. The southern English scenery was certainly very lush compared to Göteborg at this time of year, with deciduous trees everywhere and an amazing preponderance of green. I've noticed before how green the south of England is in the spring, when Sweden is still brown, and now I understand why: it's green even in the winter!
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| I had been unable to buy duty free (the EU, you know), so instead I had taken them smoked reindeer, whipped horseradish, and thinbread, a northern delicacy. We took rolled reindeer sandwiches along with us on the walk for lunch, and you can see here how easy Don found the unfamiliar object to eat! |  Click here to see if he liked it! |
After the walk, Don cooked the most amazing meal -- roast duck with every conceivable trapping -- so I felt treated like a king.
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On Monday morning I drove to Oxford and met Richard Bird, the old friend who is now head of department at the Computing Laboratory, and who had invited me to speak. I stayed with him for the next couple of nights, at his thatched cottage in Blueberry, a village about 20 minutes south of Oxford. Richard's cottage offers extreme cosiness, as you can see! |
| Richard is a runner, so he took me out on Wednesday
morning to get the blood circulating. From Blueberry, one
can run directly up onto the South Downs, and then keep
going virtually as long as one likes. I really didn't
expect such a nice place to run in the densely populated
south! The morning we ran was perfect, with glorious
sunshine and white frost on every leaf, and the
considerable quantities of mud conveniently frozen solid! To complete the idyll, Richard is running a Mazda MX-5, which you can see gleaming in the large photo above! |
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To my amazement, I realise it is 25 years since I was first at the Programming Research Group in Oxford! While the building has changed a lot since I was a doctoral student there, many of the people I knew at that time are still there. I saw Geraint, John Desmond's godfather, who was in fine form, and my old supervisor Bernard Sufrin. Bernard has hardly changed, he just looks more distinguished! Bernard and Linda invited me over for dinner on Monday evening, which was very pleasant indeed. I hadn't met their children before, Sam and Laura. Laura is just a little younger than Liam, and took an enormous liking to me. She wouldn't go to bed until I promised to read her a bed-time story! It's nice to be flavour-of-the-month, I must say! |  |
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The Strachey Lecture itself was on Tuesday afternoon, and seemed to go well. Afterwards I was royally dined at Le Petit Blanc, a very fine restaurant. I ate smoked haddock, which I haven't had since we lived in Scotland, and it was delicious. I gave another talk the day after -- three days made for a hectic visit ineed -- and then on Wednesday evening travelled back home to Sweden.
