General Melchett was right

My first impressions of Oxford where that it's even less car friendly than Cambridge. I was visiting for James' stag and had elected to stay at the Oxford Social Club. Having booked it through a third party site I was under the impression there was parking. As it turned out the street parking was limited to 3 hours between 8 in the morning and 6 in the evening which meant I was up early to feed the local pay and display machine. After enough of the fug of Friday had cleared I then had to shuffle my car to St Giles where it could sit for a further two hours before we left for our afternoon excursion. As it involved guns it seemed best not involve the obligatory drinking. Luckily the parking restrictions where lifted on Sunday so I did have a little longer to lie in. However I did discover some twat had decided to kick/swipe my passenger side wing mirror off which requiring a Sunday morning excursion to find some gaffa tape.

Car troubles aside the actual celebrations were fun. We were almost all various types of software geeks, some with more academic bents than others. As a result there where many fascinating (to us!) discussions about relative merits of language features, the point of lambda functions and even a friendly mini vi/emacs flame war. As stag does go probably not the hardest on my liver* but entertaining non the less.

* Brief aside: Oxford CAMRA need to sort their act out as to making a list of recommended pubs easier to find.