Part of the main

While the north has had vicious storms, huge winds and power cuts today, and the east is bracing itself for the biggest tidal surge in 60 years tonight, we at the edge have had the drama without the menace.

This morning I was puzzled by the world blazing pink through a north-facing window. I ran to my daughter’s south-facing room and thought she must have put the lights on, but no, she was fast asleep in a deep orange-pink glow from the sunrise pouring in. I grabbed a camera and recorded the best morning skies for a very long time.

So I could have blipped a bird and trees silhouetted against the glory of it but…

… in the early afternoon as I went into town the sun was battling stormclouds and was winning here at Tom Tower, the entrance to Christ Church (yes, that’s the correct and full name, even though it is one of Oxford’s 38 colleges). The sun was also winning just to the right of here, glowing on the sandy stone of the college chapel/city cathedral  (a dual use hence Oxford having the smallest cathedral in the UK).

The bell in this tower is the one that, every evening at 9.05pm GMT – i.e. 9pm Oxford time since by sun time, Oxford is five minutes behind Greenwich – peals 101 times to summon its students back from the pubs before the college gates are locked. That, of course, dates from when there were only 101 students and when the gates got locked but, anachronistically, the bell continues.



And just as I am thinking of the bell tolling, I hear news of Nelson Mandela’s death...

This poem is about the smallest of us, not the greatest but, almost uniquely among leaders, he cared about the smallest:

No man is an island,
Entire of itself.
Each is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manor of thine own
Or of thine friend's were.
Each man's death diminishes me,
For I am involved in mankind.
Therefore, send not to know
For whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee.

John Donne