Buildings, various

The office where I work is closed on Thursdays. The full-timers work from home and for me it’s a day off. But I’d earmarked today to go in and catch up on some work in peace. Which suited my colleagues, since something needed handing over to a client this morning.
 
But it was warm, and won’t be again in the ten-day lifespan of the current weather forecast, so once the item was handed over I ditched work so B and I could cycle round some of Oxford’s Art Week venues in the sun.
 
The University Department of International Development had a display of photos from ‘Young Lives’, a project I’ve been interested in for some time, which is tracking the changing lives of 12,000 children in Ethiopia, India, Peru and Vietnam over 15 years. It’s well known that the children of better-educated parents do better in school but did you know that corporal punishment in schools at age 8 is negatively associated with maths scores at age 12, equivalent to the child’s caregiver having between three and six years less education themselves? (Just in case another reason not to hit children were needed.)
 
Then off to my ex-employer to buy a second-hand whiteboard for another project I’m involved with. Brilliant to see my ex-colleagues and some of the clients there. I miss them. Hugs all round. I was gratified to see that the exhibition I made for them about the history of the building was on the walls, very much better displayed than last September.
 
And on to another excellent Art Week photography exhibition held in the Maths Department’s fabulous new building. We sneaked into the superb hall made of steel, glass and hardwood but were spotted and quickly removed. So I took pictures of the canteen and the pigeon holes (extra) instead. I love this building. A huge bonus to discover that Marcus du Sautoy was due to give a public lecture 45 minutes later. He’s utterly brilliant at making incomprehensible complexity in maths and physics accessible and fun, so although it was fully booked we decided to try our luck and… we got in. I never thought I’d understand a joke about Heisenberg's uncertainty principle sufficiently to laugh not only at the first punchline but also at the second.
 
Still sunny when we got out so we wandered over to the new(ish) Blavatnik School of Government building, previously blipped by both Chamaeleo and me, where (even though they were shocked that I had no idea it was formally opened yesterday by the Duke of Cambridge) they agreed to show round a small group of amateur photographers on a date to be decided. So email me (see bio page) if you’re up for an architectural Oxford blipmeet, probably in June.

Black and white in colour 92



Irresistible sunset this evening in Extras.