Permanence

The permanence of Oxford. My empty soup bowl in a café that has been in business for 21 years next month - not bad for a café. It's owned by the son of a French baron. The baron himself owns the Oxford Cheese Company, whose Gruyère was on my Welsh rarebit (yes, I know). It rained soon after I took this, so we pushed through the Company cheese queue in the covered market to finish lunch at another café that has been there for exactly a century. I don't know if they have sold Portuguese tarts since then, but you can tell they are not beginners

The most photographed building in Oxford is the newest in the picture. The Radcliffe Camera is a science library, built in the 18th century with a legacy from John Radcliffe, doctor to the king, who is buried in the 14th century church behind me, the vaults of which house the cafe. The building draws the tourists; the tourists spend in the cafe; the church collects the rent, and the fee to climb a 14th century tower; the cash flow ensures permanence

The gothic turrets in the background are part of the 'College of the Souls of All the Faithful Departed' ('All Souls') - that is the faithful departed of the Hundred Years War; it is fast approaching it's 600th anniversary and sits on half a million pounds of endowments, some of it deriving from the slave trade. Like parts of Bristol, it has removed a slaver's name from its library. It's a strange, myth-shrouded institution, admitting only graduates, and only those who pass tough entrance examinations and interviews. The university's selective culture distilled to its very essence. It has a peculiar ceremonial parade that it performs only once every one hundred years (you missed it for this century) - it is anticipating permanence

The blue fencing is keeping visitors off the grass. Not the common institutional obsession with a perfect lawn but, in this case, allowing the grass to recover from the recent evacuation of the student camp in solidarity with Palestine and Gaza. Unlike cafés, Oxford buildings and warfare, the camp was not permanent