Gnomonic Verses

OXFORD EASTER Lebanese food (time added on as appetiser).

Worcester Lake (with incontinent geese).

Snakeshead fritillaries in Magdalen Park.

Two Prime Ministers and a Viceroy cheek by jowl in Balliol Hall.

Professor Jim overlooks the Nun’s Garden with its glass and steel Son of Florey.

He sits in his New Constantinople protected by a 200-year-thick book wall.

He is balanced between the German Enlightenment, with its newly (re)discovered Free Will, and the English Dissolution in its rapidly accelerating Free Fall.

Of this he can read the unexpurgated prophesy in his ever-up-to-date Decline and Fall.

Best of all; The newly hyper-sanitised Ashmolean!

This encases lifeless treasures in their mausoleum.

But from the basement staircase well rise balcony on balcony, higher and higher, crowded with a living audience clapping, tapping and applauding the unexpected blaze-up of Gypsy Fire!

Ben Holder out-Paganini-ing Nicolò, Stuart Carter-Smith outstrumming Django.

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