OXFORD

Duke Street garden

THIS is the town aspect of our – very privileged, it has to be said – life: the garden of our little Oxford house and some random pictures of the lovely, but gridlocked, city we still love. We let the house to tenants who care for it brilliantly and who have been there since I left four years ago. It was the house I bought when I moved from Newcastle to go to college in 1995. That move and everything associated with it was such an adventure and the start of a whole new phase of my life.
Ian and I met in Oxford. At the time – September 2003 – I lived in Duke Street, about a mile out of the city to the west, and he lived in Eynsham, a village some six miles in the same direction. What made him choose me? “I’d always wanted to meet somebody on the bus route.” And no, he wasn’t joking.
I eventually moved to Eynsham a few months before we got married and when we moved north we sold his house and kept mine: being smaller (a two up, two down terrace) and so near the city we knew that would be the easier one to rent. And of course it would have sold for less. The same tenants have been in Duke Street for the whole three years and I’m hoping they’ll want to stay. It’s immaculately kept.
The agents who manage it for me, Finders Keepers, charge a fee in return for which they visit regularly and manage all repairs, and queries from the tenants. People moan about management fees but I reckon they’re worth it.
I’d moved to Oxford in 1998 from Whitley Bay, to fulfil a long-term ambition to do a theology degree, which I did, at Westminster College. I thought it would answer all my questions about God and religion and the Church and who Jesus really was. It didn’t. But it did make me realise how much more there was to learn which can’t be a bad thing. And I enjoyed being a student enormously.

Ian on the other hand had been amid the dreaming spires since 1986. Here’s his first house, in John Street in the centre of Oxford. I have some of Eynsham but they’re on one of my phones which I can’t find at the moment. I was surprised to learn he was the telecommunications manager for Oxford University; he had neither a mobile ‘phone nor a watch when we met and he’d given up driving a long time before. In fact he’d studied biology and zoology at Edinburgh University back in the 60s and would have been much better suited to being a boffin. He certainly looks the part . . .
Ian has four children – Tom, Ruth, Simon and Danny – and I have three – Sally, Morag and Beth – and we’re both widowed. We met as Samaritans in the Oxford branch and although we’d been part of it for six years we’d never met on duty until the morning of Sunday 7 September, 2003, the day before the 12th anniversary of Malcolm’s death. He’s an atheist who likes going to church; I’m a Christian who doesn’t. Were still working through that one.