The English Eccentric: Alive and Well and Living in Oxford

Something I’ve noticed recently is that everyone I meet seems to be really satisfied with who they are. Not in a stagnant way, I mean, but they all seem very comfortable in their own (often eccentric) skins. I’m not implying that this is a miraculous feature of the UK, that everyone here is jolly and merry and brilliant (as it were)…maybe it’s just an Oxford thing, or a first-week-making-friends thing, or maybe I’m just searching too hard for something to write about. But everyone, from the painfully shy geologist student to the self-assured neurology tutor, from the sports-mad Turk to the spiritual Scot, everyone seems happy to be whoever they are. I really like them for that.

As I mentioned though, this leads to a lot of eccentrics. Today I was walking through the park on the way to an early-morning psychology lecture, blinking sleepily at the frosty playing fields in the white wintery light, when I glanced behind me and saw a falconer. And a falcon. Where can I get me a falcon?

When I came back through the same area of park, there was a guy juggling in the same spot. Juggling alone.

At the Fresher’s Fair, eccentricity abounded. You’ve already seen some of the groups who sent me emails, but I haven’t mentioned the Celtic warriors grouped to one side, wearing blue paint, fur, and not much else, and bashing each other with…cudgels? Could that have accurately been described as a cudgel? Or a mace, perhaps. There was the Doctor Who fan club (oh I very nearly joined that one, yes). Or any number of other groups of people that were totally unashamed to stand there advertizing their oddness.

It makes me feel (ugh I know, I need to get out of this introspective rut)…I feel very fluid and malleable, and never know how to introduce myself in groups. Emily, reading psychology (But I’m a bio major in the States – and then do I explain what a major is or do I elaborate on where in the US I go to school, or where I’m from? Try the latter…), from Pennsylvania. What is the first thing that you think of when someone says Pennsylvania? Maybe you summon to mind the city of brotherly love, the Liberty Bell, and lots of old men dressed up in tights like Ben Franklin. Maybe you envision strapping blue-collar men fueling fiery furnaces, playing football, and shoveling down pierogies. Or maybe, you’re British and you immediately think of…vampires. Or the Amish.

Of course, that’s not always the case, and I hate to insult some geography student or politics scholar by explaining where Pittsburgh is. But on the other hand, I need to make it clear that my eccentric nature doesn’t involve driving buggies hell-for-leather and biting people on the neck.