Without a trace...

Yesterday, worn down by a mere 5 hours sleep, I took a rapid train from Paddington Station to Oxford, where I am partaking in a 3 day long Festival of Research Methods - the kind of tedium an Inquisitor has to subject himself to in order to remain competent, and sadly especially important if one has taken a break from the daily nitty-gritty of one's work to go undercover in the Orient.

The first 2 days have proceeded well. Today I attended an excellent class on Latent Class Analysis, which presents some fascinating methods for keeping track of all the Enemy's tricks. The less said about the multi-level modelling topics the better; and the Data Visualisation sessions were disappointing, though it was interesting to learn that they are now building Difference Engines so powerful that they can paint by numbers. I have to watch those Difference Engines, lest one day they build one smart enough to do my job for me. Rest assured, the day will come!

Of course, I wasn't sure what to expect from a trip to Oxford - one never is. Since the last time I visited, deconstructionism and post-structuralism have become all the rage, and I had heard that the entire place has been deconsructed by a band of post-colonial crazies. I was right to be afraid, too - even the railway lines have proven vulnerable to this mob of foreign idealists, so when I arrived at the station to come home there was no sign of the train or the tracks, and a bunch of solid-looking working class chaps were wandering from platform to platform, trying to recover the linear model of space, time and causality so that they could get a train running. It must be terribly frustrating trying to run a service business in a post-structural academic town!

Still, despite the strange post-modernisms of the roadways and the oddly invaginated building, I was able to slowly stagger my way around town, and some of the older colleges have survived the predations of the new-fangled critical mob, standing in stately repose amongst the confusion. On a sunny day their ivory towers are stunning, the greensward of their commons most inviting, and the whole place resplendent with the pall of history. Oh pleasant green land! I thought as I picked my way past these splendid centres of learning, wandering through the mess of the deconstructed modern world, and wondering exactly how splendid would be the college where my conference is located?

Unfortunately it wasn't to be. My college proved to be a modern redbrick monstrosity, so overrun by the deranged ideas of modern "sensibility" that its avenues and byways made no sense, and I was constantly getting lost. Even the ducks in the estate managers pond were strangely misshapen, so profound and all-encompassing was the post-phenomenological rot beside which they must live. A most confusing edifice of confusitive confusion! Though once one found one's accomodation, one was reminded of the vast resources the colleges have available to them - my room was vastly superior to a typical hotel room, with a view of a commons and a river, and all the accoutrements of studious retreat one would expect of Oxford.

I was, of course, invited to dine at the high table in my first day of attendance. Quite a rare pleasure, to be waited upon by attentive and admiring students while one eats one's fill of the fine booty of 1000 years of scholarship! There were no dancing girls though, which is at least one lie my Cambridge-educated fellow Inquisitors have been caught out in. I shall berate them for it, and also for not advising me to bring a helmet - one needs all the protection one can get when the foundations of traditional English Intellectualism are being torn apart around one!

Fun and Games with The Inquisition

Surely it will not shock our gentle readers when I inform them that here at the offices of The Inquisition we have one of those new-fangled electronic bulletin boards, for posting up crucial jottings about who is interrogating whom &c (coming soon: head of the Liberal Democrats). We also have, to relax us after a hard week of Inquiry, a cafe which transforms into a bar every Thursday. You can imagine my consternation upon discovering that certain habits I had wished to indulge in a little less than usual are encouraged, nay, positively mandatory on a weekly basis here at The Inquisition!

So imagine my further consternation upon reading this on the bulletin board today:

... Sorry for the late notice in telling you, but we plan to have a Wii sports night tomorrow evening in the bar...

One must conclude that the culture here at The Inquisition is truly an inspiration to all of Her Majesty's loyal servants! (And vastly preferable to a culture of pickled cabbage and suggestive vegetables, I am sure!!)

Didn't I know you at Cambridge...

Good morning fellow Adventurers!

Things are going swimmingly here at the Centre of the World (literally - the rain is falling in waves), and after 2 weeks with my nose to the grindstone I really ought to pop up with a report for the big knobs at HQ. I spent the first 2 weeks exploring town and settling into the offices of the Kings Inquisitors, where I spend my days interrogating hapless health databases. My colleagues seem to be a nice bunch, but I have to say I am rather taken aback by the fact that they are all Cambridge graduates! Except for one... who is from Oxford. And the fellows who aren't ex-Cambridge are all straight from the Upper Echelons of the National Broadcaster! Typical conversations in the halls of the Inquisition:

"I say, didn't you study at Cambridge!?"
"Why yes, I did - come to think of it you do look rather familiar, are you another Newnham girl?"
"Spot on dear!! I studied at Newnham too, don't you know! Super! When did you grace the esteemed halls?"
"Oh, back in '97, when Steamramm was the head"
"Oh yes, Steamramm, I remember her. She taught me a lot about... biomechanical engineering."
"Me too, eh. Would you like to adjourn to the bathrooms to discuss her methods?"
"Rather!!!"

&c. I do feel like the incongruous colonial oaf in the company of these esteemed scholars. I choose to see it as a reflection on the quality of classical education offered by the colonial state school system, but in order to fit in I have taken to referring to my old alma mater as "Oxford-on-Torrens". Most of the Inquisitors seem to have been fooled up till now. Benefits of a classical education, I suppose...