Photo by Niamh Jones
It’s a strange moment, walking down the brief steps from the train station, seeing the Saïd Business School, the Sainsbury’s over the road, and realising that, suddenly, Oxford is here, and you are here. Nothing has changed; you are back, and nothing has changed. You have suddenly appeared again, crossing the zebra crossing, and it’s as if you had never left—but you are at the train station, and you are not normally at the train station; you would have no reason to be there unless you had left, and come back.
And I am back, and it has been raining. It’s strange because I have arrived in yet another in-between place; I have been sitting on the train, waiting, and now I must walk from here, from the train station, home. And until then I will be nowhere except going somewhere. Strange. I wonder how long it will take me to walk home, if anything will happen in-between; do things happen in in-between places? Or do only in-between things happen in in-between places? I see someone drop a piece of paper and reach to catch it while it is still wading through the air; I see someone else watching them from the other side of the street.
I am trying to decide if I should go to Tesco on the way back, if I should buy a mango, if a mango will make the journey worthwhile. No one is hurrying around me; it feels like a Sunday, it is a Sunday. The streets seem emptier than they normally do. I wonder if I will run into anyone, or if everyone hides on Sundays when it rains.
I have crossed the stream leading up towards George Street and Worcester college, walking as close to the wall of the bridge as possible so I won’t push anyone into the road; why is it so narrow? A couple holding hands are walking towards me, chatting quietly, looking over the stream. The sky seems to be getting slightly lighter in the distance; I wonder if it will rain again, if the stream will become even greener.
George Street always passes me by slightly as I slowly wind up it—I only catch the edge of a theatre canopy, a few faces in the window of a restaurant. I will not go to Tesco, I think, I will buy a mango tomorrow, maybe even a pomegranate. Tomorrow will have more possibility. So I walk more lightly, enjoy the shock of the Sheldonian Heads, their indignation at the wet pavements, and continue my walk.
Oxford is full of unmoving places; the Sheldonian Heads never change their expressions. But past the streets sits a world tucked into colleges, behind doors which don’t appear to lead anywhere, do not even appear to be entrances. But on a walk these graze past you; it is the streets which are open, provide large paths, and it is only the paths you notice when you are walking home. It is only the streets which are visible when Oxford reappears.
And I am back. I stop at the top of my staircase, outside my room, my door open. We’re halfway through the term now, and I am looking at my room, at how I have left it. I think about how it has changed between the terms when I have reconstructed it to be mine again each time I returned. Today this room was the place I led myself to, tomorrow I will leave it again; each day I walk back to it and each day I leave it. My in-between place.