rainy days in oxford

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I am sitting with the ever-cheery Lily in the Vaults and Garden Cafe, just underneath the Radcliffe Camera in Oxford. It was a rainy Saturday morning here and I spent the early hours reading in bed as the rain made paths along the windowpane. When the sun popped out after lunch, Lily and I decided to make our way into town. We stopped by my favorite art store - the one I've been to four times in less than a week - so I could pick up some clothespins. Then I went on a failed attempt to find Frankie Magazine at several different bookstores. Now we are here, underneath ancient vaults listening to hum-drum chatter of old British couples and young tourist families drinking tea. It is crowded and busy, but we have a cozy little wooden table in the corner.

A few days ago I was at the Bronte cottage in Haworth. Yesterday I was in the chapel at Magdalen College where C.S. Lewis preached The Weight of Glory. In a few days we'll be traveling to Stratford-upon-Avon to see a production of Macbeth and tour Shakespeare's birthplace. But honestly, it's the unconscious moments and uneventful days like this one that I like the most - the days when we do nothing particularly significant but watch the rain and read books and wander around shops and drink lattes and spontaneously decide to walk down a little alleyway we haven't been down before. There is no expectation to take everything in or to have some sort of experience - it just is what it is. I am grateful for days like this.

[my shoes at westminster cathedral]
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