"The play's the thing"

A day in Oxford: walked around some my old haunts, visited an acquaintance not seen for more years that I can count, ducked into the famous Covered Market, checked out the pub where JRR Tolkien hobnobbed with his cronies, spent some time in the (revamped) Ashmolean Museum....and then my sons arrived, one from Reading (not far), one from Bristol (further), and we went to a brilliant new Sichuan restaurant for ducks' tongues and sea snails and jellied tofu and more beside...and then we saw a highly original and unusual production of Hamlet by a theatre workshop called The Factory performed in the huge basement room of Blackwell's Bookshop, using random props supplied by the audience (I contributed some spring onions which became the player king's crown - yes, it was as strange as that) and then we said farewell to H&G who hammed it up a bit for a photo and went on their way to catch trains back to Reading and Bristol. It was wonderful to see them and altogether it was quite special day.