“Ok what’s happened to all my clothes
What’s happened to all my furniture
You know it can’t just disappear
And I know I left it there”
Michael Head
Staring at your feet is something you might do in a strange town or one named malice, but that’s not usually what one does in Oxford, but that’s not to say that this place wasn’t once a place full of fear.
Pot marks in the asphalt tell of turmoil, to be on the wrong side of the reigning religion meant death. It’s no wonder that the masses in England just kept their heads down and got on with trying to feed themselves. There is scar tissue just under the fabric of every place. Where there are humans, so there is both unity and disagreement, but above all there is also love.
The 21st century has squeezed plastic tables and chairs into the swell of Broad Street, a realisation that England can, on a sunny day, sustain cafe culture to match the French.
Scratch the surface a little and there exposed, amongst the lazy sunbathers in the afternoon winter sun, mixing with the scent of brewing coffee and chatter - lest we forget the very first coffee shop in England was founded in Oxford, 2 years ahead of ‘that’ London - sits a small square of cobblestones, with a cross at its heart.
Upon this spot, during the religious heat which rocked the 16th century, 3 pious Christian men were cruelly burnt alive. I ponder for a while, wondering what one group of religious people did unto another, but then, I don’t think that I see the world in the same way as some do, and sometimes I am really rather glad of that.