OxBlog

# Posted 12:31 AM by Patrick Belton

LOOK FOR mostly amusing ancedotes and such bits out of me for three or four days (i.e., soft-core OxBlog) while I finish up a few articles and bits of my thesis, then back right away to more substantive posting (hard-core OxBlog).

After all, how am I supposed to write or blog when I'm on the road, travelling...okay, in Oxford. As a personal note, it's incredibly nice to be back here, seeing many of my closest friends, and being reminded that this place really exists, and isn't merely a fiction of my delirium. At the very least, Oxford is a fiction which manypeople share.....

My first anecdote, however, isn't very amusing at all. It's about an incredibly disturbing incident that took place in Oxford, and was covered in the non-OxBlog Oxford student publication, Cherwell. Cherwell reports that Maxwell's bar in Oxford (37 Queen Street) served ground glass, mixed in a cocktail, to Oxford student Emma Phillips. She subsequently spent the night in John Radcliffe Infirmary, and in x-rays the bottom of her stomach was shown to be lined with glass. The only immediate action taken by the bar? To offer her two free jugs of cocktails. (Yeah, like she's going to drink those....) The manager on duty insisted there was nothing more he could do. However, after time passed, he relented and generously agreed to pay for a taxi to take Ms. Phillips to hospital. (For those of you who have lived in the UK, this will be instantly recognizable as an instance of Anglo-institutional rationality.)

Finall, the excruciatingly painful quote to carry around with you the rest of the day: "Philips had all but finished the drink before she realised that the crunching sensation in her mouth could not be ice."

Anyone in Oxford who reads this who doesn't immediately boycott Maxwell's, well, should.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion