Bill Clinton's Ghost and Regatta #1

Dear Bill Clinton, our ghost tour guide would like it if you would please become an Oxford ghost.  You have a connection to the area, and you don't even have to be dead according to him.  All you need is an energy disturbance, so just get angry or guilty or something and c'mon over, let some drunken students sight your specter, and join the haunting ranks of King Charles, Archbishop Cranmer (burned alive in the city center), the wife of the lover of Elizabeth, various Oxford professors and some Generals.  Cheers.

Oxford Ghost Tour last night! A two-hour extravagant look at the history of Oxford and the specters that haunt it, led by an real creepy member of the British Ghost Society who had been hunting ghosts for the last two years with his daughter.

What did we learn?

• Ghosts like to haunt libraries.  Merton College and Queen's College, watch out your libraries are quite haunted. Also the old Bodleian library is haunted by King Charles because he got his fortune told there and didn't like what it said.

• The most well-known ghost is William Spooner (famous for Spoonerisms), a quite friendly ghost who haunts the first floor of New College and mixes up the first letters of words. 
• Queen's Lane used to be used as a hospital because no one could hear the screams of agony.  It is now much creepier to walk down. 
• The King's Arms claims to be the first place where Hamlet was performed? How interesting!  Also the statue heads outside the Sheldonian are also inhabited:  they laugh at Jude the Obscure in the book.

Anyways, we also had our first regatta today! Check "Row a Regatta" off life to-do list!

It was a learning experience.  We learned a lot about how hard it is to row quickly and stay in time, and how much more practice we have to do before our next regatta in 2 weeks.  On the bright side, it was fun and nice to get first-regatta jitters out of the way.  Plus it was gorgeous outside, as you can see. 

This week marks the debut of the first ever St. Hilda's Ultimate Frisbee team, called the Hildabeasts, which we're putting together.  Also it will mark the start of me putting together my plan for my dissertation, which will be not as fun as captaining the Hildabeasts.  

In other news, I have now learned that converting Fahrenheit to Celsius is necessary when using the oven.  Those practical skills they don't teach you in University. Sigh. 

Cheerio!

Lisa