Wonderland

In July 1862 Charles Dodgson took Alice Liddell and her sisters on a boating picnic up the River Thames in Oxford and told them a story about a girl, sitting bored by a riverbank, who finds herself tumbling down a rabbit hole into a strange world called Wonderland.

To celebrate the 150th anniversary there have been events in Oxford all weekend: jam tarts, drink-me potions and eat-me cake at the Ashmolean museum; talking flowers in the Botanic Garden; an Alice flotilla on the river; Salvador Dali's illustrations for the book at the Christchurch Picture Gallery; a moonlight stroll in fancy dress; rabbits, dodos and walruses at the Museum of Natural History; croquet with flamingoes and a mad hatters' tea party round the castle.

Today we were all invited to the Caucus Race, created by the Dodo when everyone was sitting miserably wet at the edge of the river:

'What I was going to say', said the Dodo ... 'was, that the best thing to get us dry would be a Caucus-race'.
'What IS a Caucus-race?' said Alice; not that she wanted much to know, but the Dodo had paused as if it thought that SOMEBODY ought to speak, and no one else seemed inclined to say anything.
'Why', said the Dodo, 'the best way to explain it is to do it'.

First it marked out a race-course, in a sort of circle, ('the exact shape doesn't matter', it said,) and then all the party were placed along the course, here and there. There was no 'One, two, three, and away', but they began running when they liked, and left off when they liked, so that it was not easy to know when the race was over. However, when they had been running half an hour or so, and were quite dry again, the Dodo suddenly called out 'The race is over!' and they all crowded round it, panting, and asking, 'But who has won?'

This question the Dodo could not answer without a great deal of thought, and it sat for a long time with one finger pressed upon its forehead (the position in which you usually see Shakespeare, in the pictures of him), while the rest waited in silence. At last the Dodo said, 'EVERYBODY has won, and all must have prizes'.

This was an inspired event for the weather we've been having, but just in case the sun came out (as it did for a while) it was preceded by a competition where people threw water-filled balloons at each other until all had burst.

There were plenty of activities and this wheel, filled with Wonderland artefacts, was powered by Alice and one of the many dancing birds on a procession a back to where we'd started.

Journey - I wanted to post this link on my journey blip two days ago but it stopped working part way through the day. It's now mended and I strongly recommend typing in the UK postcode of somewhere you know and watching before it disappears again.