please empty your brain below

I am surprised that the new line is not electrified.
Seems the service from Paddington takes 3 minutes less to reach Oxford.
Looking forward to avoiding Paddington on my next trip to the spires. Evocative post, dg!
@John

As the rest of the route from Marylebone isn't electrified, there would have been little point in electrifying last few miles from Bicester to Oxford.

Indeed the latest news is that the work on electrifying the route from Oxford to Paddington has been suspended.
I wonder how the two competing London to Oxford train services will affect the two competing London to Oxford bus services (Oxford Tube and the X90)?

They are roughly every 12 to 20 mins and £18 return, peak time or not. I expect the lower prices and more flexibility over drop-off points mean that the coaches will still have a big market share.
The Isis Farmhouse (aka The Pub at Iffley Lock - the person who introduced me to it had known it for years but had no idea that was its official name) is the most fabulous, in every sense of the word, place. It was my best pub of our boating trip this year and I wrote about it, with photos, here
http://chertsey130.blogspot.co.uk/2016/08/woking-2016-illustrated-edition.html
I also incorporated it into a surreal fairy story, without having to change much.
Chiltern Railways have done some sterling work on building up their network. They've been given the abilities to invest and get a return on their investment. And that's been great.

Unfortunately they're the only rail franchise ever to be really allowed to invest in this way because governments won't give out 20 year contracts to anyone else. Once Chiltern's franchise expires in 2021, expect things to slow down. A lot.
So were you at BNC with Call Me Dave or the House with Bozza!? Do tell!
£25 return, you were robbed! Tickets start at £5.50 each way from Marylebone. I've booked for later in the week at £7.00 each way.
Oxford a wonderful city to visit, I always expected Inspector Morse to be sitting having a pint at every bar.
The drone footage of Iffley church is stunning. You can find it by going to DG's link for 'St Mary's'.

dg writes: the YouTube video is here. And wow.
Yes, I too was impressed with the drone footage. I've even sent a link to a church loving friend.

Thanks.

Gawain, neither I suspect. Sounds like dg was resident in Blue Boar Quad (Christ Church), but what do I know? I'd assumed from a previous post dg was a Cambridge man. Perhaps twas both.
I thought DG had been to university in Hull, not Oxford.

http://diamondgeezer.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/three-hull-houses.html
I think revisiting your student accommodation is a good way to make you feel old!

I recently went back and found that the Halls of Residence I was in in the first year had been demolished and re-built, the flats I was in in the second year also demolished and rebuilt and the flat I was in the 3rd year is now "postgraduate only".

The student union had been entirely rebuilt.
@John 0740.

You will take more than the three minutes saved in travelling the extra two tube stops beyond Marylebone
Not impossible to have attended two Universities, BrightonRo.
Mmmm, but I thought he'd been to Warwick too!
DG is quite good at subtle misdirection. I haven't done any elaborate research into the matter, but I suspect he has allowed certain mistaken conclusions drawn by his followers about his own personal history to remain uncorrected. And if I am right about this, I don't blame him. He is entitled to whatever level of privacy he wishes.
The best establishment on Cowley Road when I was at college there in the 80s was Hi Lo Jamaican.

dg writes: I remember it too. And it's still there :)
BrightonRo, Gawain, Sarah, Malcolm

DG attended Oxford for his first degree: he's mentioned it before (see http://diamondgeezer.blogspot.co.uk/2003/04/6-trip-to-boat-race-boat-race-is-one.html). By deduction, he would have done a Masters or another one-year course at Hull.
Well, DG wrote about Important Days back in 2004, and mentioned spending a year "up north" (in Hull, one assumes) doing a course as a fall back option when applications for something in media led nowhere.

In 2008, he also wrote about going back to http://www.myoldcollege.ox.ac.uk/
I was also amused earlier this year to hear foreign language announcements at Bicester Village station! It's Chinese and another language, which is not Japanese (which I speak semi-fluently); my guess would be Arabic!
Ah, yes - Hi Lo: "From a penny to a thousand pounds"
I find the level of 'stalking' by some readers here very very scary.
I don't think reading old posts really counts as stalking, does it? Especially as the author has complete control over them.
@Blue Witch I think you are overreacting. No one is stalking dg, let alone in a very very scary way. I, for example, only mention a particular building as I'm interested in architecture, amongst other things, and it's pretty well known, having been listed 10 or so years ago. I have a friend who was at Christ Church and lived there in his first year.

Others mention disparate places such as Warwick (don't remember this, must've had a day off) or Hull. As Andrew, Sarah, shirokazan and others mention this is all stuff dg has blogged about.

This blog is often (although obviously not exclusively) about places and regular visitors clearly love this sort of thing. 'Oh yeah my brother lived in Hull in 1997' or whatever.

No one is stalking dg. Whilst other bloggers such as geofftech or ianvisits post photos or videos (hell, you could probably ring Geoff up at work if you wanted to) dg clearly wishes to remain anonymous and evidently readers respect this.

@AndyV My memory of late 80s Oxford delights include an inexplicably large number of night-time street kebab vans (there was even one on St Aldate's by Tom Tower) and the Afro-Caribbean club.
Don't forget Carfax chippy as well!
Blue Witch - I suspect I am not the only one who has built up a mental image of DG (as some do for Samantha in Radio 4's "Clue") and so take an interest in anything which confirms or contradicts this. I remembered the reference to Hull as I regularly stayed with relatives a few roads away from where DG lived at the same time.
I remember hearing the well-known London blogger Diamond Geezer on a BBC radio interview programme years ago. The only reason I knew of it was because he blogged about it and IIRC he included a link to the BBC website which stayed up for about a week.
One cannot un-remember things like this in the interests of DG's privacy.
"One cannot un-remember things like this in the interests of DG's privacy."

Indeed. BUT one doesn't have to post links to every tiny detail YOU might recall.

"dg clearly wishes to remain anonymous and evidently readers respect this."

Do they? Not when they insist on showing off how good they are at searching the archives by linking to every detail.

Enjoy the blog, check facts if you must, but don't feel the need to tell everyone else - because it DOES come across as stalking, and it is unnerving.
Corpus Christi?










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