Oxford Brookes University
Yesterday, Sunday, was spent taking my son and his baggage down to Oxford. It was a 200 mile round trip which was a bit farther than I had expected. Not that I’m complaining. I just didn’t think Oxford was that far away.
Anyway the weather was fine and traffic was low so driving was quite pleasant considering it was virtually all on motorways. M6 – M42 – M40 then the A40, which was mostly dual-carriageway, right into the city. We did have a bit of a detour on the way. We were looking to get off the M40 at junction 8. When 8a appeared we were thinking “Great, next junction“. After another 10 miles or so we were getting a bit worried. These “a” junctions are usually close to the original “non-a” junctions as they have mostly been added at a later date. When junction 6 came along we were thinking “What the bloody hell happened to 8 and 7?“ We quickly got off the motorway at junction 6, did a u-turn and got back on it again heading in the opposite direction (north). Junction 7 duly arrived followed fairly quickly by junction 8 where we got off and followed the original plan. Yes folks. One of those weird little English motorway quirks – junctions that only exist on one side of the motorway. Still, no real problem, easily sorted and we arrived at the University campus around lunchtime having lost about 20 minutes with the detour.
The Halls of Residence are a separate campus to the University itself. The accommodation is a mixture of flats and bungalows. All very recently built and nicely laid out. They even have their own pub. Priorities, priorities, priorities!!
After a bit of form filling and handing over passport photos for security stuff he got his key and swipe-card and we were given the tour by one of the second year students. My son had been allocated a room in one of the bungalows. These are shared by 6 students, each with their own study/bedroom, with shared living-room, bathroom and kitchen. Laundrette facilities are provided in a separate building. The swipe-card is needed to get into the bungalow and the key was for the study/bedroom. The student guide suggested that the study/bedrooms were quite small but my son’s bedroom at home is small and this one was actually bigger. Luxury!! There is a phone installed in his room plus connection boxes for the Internet and a separate community phone out in the hallway. He has a study-desk and chair, shelving, wardrobe, chest of drawers, bed and bed-side cabinet. There’s even a bed-side lamp. It works too!! We popped back to the car, which was parked behind the pub, to fetch his luggage and carry it to his room. I’m afraid I didn’t get to see any of the communal rooms so I can’t comment though the living-room did have nice large windows.
This first week doesn’t involve any studies. It’s mostly to do with meeting the gang, joining the student union, going to meetings, getting accustomed to his surroundings and a lot more form-filling. Our guide told us that the first meeting was at 5:00pm that day. Guess where it was being held. Yes, you guessed it. The pub!!
Anyhow once the luggage was sorted it was a case of saying our goodbyes, good luck etc and I was back in the car doing the return trip. I was back at 5:00pm which reminded me that my son would now be in the pub. I rang him at about 8:00pm to see how things were going. He was on his way to the local Co-op to sort out some food provisions. We had a quick conversation about whether you could boil noodles in a wok and that was that. He was on his way. The start of 4 years away from home which I honestly think will suite him no-end. Not forgetting that a year of that will be in Japan.
Coda
My son’s new computer hasn’t arrived yet!! He’s decided to remove the hard-drive from his home PC, pack it carefully into a vacuum-sealed sandwich-box and take it with him. When his new PC arrives I suspect his Mom will have to take it down to him. (I’d happily take it but I probably won’t be asked.) He will then either piggy-back the hard-drives to put his old files onto the new one or install it as a second hard-drive. Anyway my youngest son, who was probably expecting to be able to use the old PC is in for a bit of a shock isn’t he?!
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