LO: is it just me or is Lyras Oxford over priced (£10!)

[Phit]

What I want to know is, why does every street named on the L-Oxford map bear the same name it does on the A to Z of our Oxford, except that our New Inn Hall Street is their New Inn Street. Is this another teaser, like 31 April?

I'd never even considered the map could be a teaser. And what's this 31 April?

But I'd guess PP made all the street names the same so the map would be usable. He could even claim laziness . I wouldn't want to make-over Oxford.

What I want to know is, in real life is it possible to walk from the hornbeams to the Botanic Garden in fifteen minutes like PP claimed? It took me quite a bit longer but then I was lost most of the time.

[Peter]

What I want to know is, why does every street named on the L-Oxford map bear the same name it does on the A to Z of our Oxford, except that our New Inn Hall Street is their New Inn Street. Is this another teaser, like 31 April?

I'd never even considered the map could be a teaser. And what's this 31 April?

Check the S.S. Zenobia's cruise schedule...

But I'd guess PP made all the street names the same so the map would be usable. He could even claim laziness . I wouldn't want to make-over Oxford.

What I want to know is, in real life is it possible to walk from the hornbeams to the Botanic Garden in fifteen minutes like PP claimed? It took me quite a bit longer but then I was lost most of the time.

Where does he make that claim? It seems pretty unlikely to me.

[Enitharmon]

I'd never even considered the map could be a teaser. And what's this 31 April?

Have a look at the cruise schedule of the SS Zenobia. Especially when the ship leaves Famagusta and when it arrives at Latakia.

What I want to know is, in real life is it possible to walk from the hornbeams to the Botanic Garden in fifteen minutes like PP claimed? It took me quite a bit longer but then I was lost most of the time.

I don't recall any such claim being made. At the end of TAS they walk from a spot in Cittagazze corresponding with the hornbeams to a spot near Mary's flat in Norham Gardens in about fifteen minutes, which would seem to be about right. In TSK I think Lyra walks from the hornbeams to the Clarendon Laboratories in Parks Road in forty minutes, which is also about right if she goes the long way round via Banbury Road, St Giles, Broad Street ("the Broad") and Parks Road - the way she went the previous day. The Botanic Garden are a good deal further than the Clarendon - via Parks Road, Holywell Street, Longwell Street and High Street ("the High") - possibly another fifteen minutes.

[Phit]

"I want to go to the Botanic Garden," Lyra said.
"All right. I suppose that's about fifteen minutes' walk. This way..."

*smacks forehead*
That was around Mary's flat! I see it now! I suppose that would be why I was having such trouble expecting to get there so quickly!


And so...the 31st of April would be the "missing day"? Maybe they just took the long route between Famagusta and Latakia. Whatever the reason it was made out in the schedule. Maybe the boat stopped for a scheduled cruise dance - could it be where LA and Mrs. C. met?

[Enitharmon]

Maybe they just took the long route between Famagusta and Latakia.

It's nothing to do with the route they took, it's to do with 30 April being a Wednesday and 1 May being a Friday!

[Phit]

Oh, uh... ... so there is no 31 April?
That poem never worked for me.

[Haku]

Oh! Haku, did you go from Turl to Juxon? I did, just curious. Makepeace's house in our world is pretty uh...dreary. But indeed, with the LO map I was much more successful at finding things than I had been with...nothing.

No... In fact I hadn't time enough to visit Jericho. I only stayed one day in Oxford but I took so many pictures that I'm not too sad not having seen makepeace house. And, after all, that's a good aim to go back in oxford in some years !
Strange fact, in the map included in LO, Mary's house is not at the same place in the french edition... I saw the true one, in norham gardens, and I wondered... This house is huge ! How can Mary - the police was after her - be able to afford such an house ???

[Enitharmon]

This house is huge ! How can Mary - the police was after her - be able to afford such an house ???

She has a flat in it. Most of the big houses in North Oxford are divided into flats.

[Haku]

Ok, I understand better.
Thanks

[JoefromOxford]

I wouldn't want to make-over Oxford.

Hmmm...town on a saturday night, cowley centre and the whole of cornmarket street seem fairly good candidates to me...

[Townie]

Sorry to 'do a Lazarus' on this thread, but before the Clarendon was built in the mid-eighties, the bit of Shoe Lane that went through to Cornmarket was a kind of narrow subway, people used to call it the windsock, as it got a bit blowy. It used to run parallel to Woolies before it relocated to the Cowley Centre.

Another thing that has just occured to me - the LO Map: I could be wrong but some of the Streets were built after they knocked down the St Ebbe's area where the Westgate centre is now - back -to-backs where my nan was born. I'd like to think the planners in LO gave the Westgate a miss...

[Peter]

Sorry to 'do a Lazarus' on this thread, but before the Clarendon was built in the mid-eighties, the bit of Shoe Lane that went through to Cornmarket was a kind of narrow subway, people used to call it the windsock, as it got a bit blowy. It used to run parallel to Woolies before it relocated to the Cowley Centre.

Another thing that has just occured to me - the LO Map: I could be wrong but some of the Streets were built after they knocked down the St Ebbe's area where the Westgate centre is now - back -to-backs where my nan was born. I'd like to think the planners in LO gave the Westgate a miss...

The history of my version of L-world's Shoe Lane is a little murky. I originally invented a narrow road, full of shops and small businesses, that ran southish from the High (more or less opposite the Covered Market) down to Blue Boar Street. I called it Shoe Lane, after the Shoe Lane I once worked close to in London (it's near Fleet Street). There was a pub, the Talbot Inn, where my Shoe Lane met the High.

Then, when I was planning the short story Dearer Than Eyesight I downloaded a PDF map of central Oxford from somewhere-or-other, as I needed to get my narrator from Bodley's Library to Albert Terrace (in Jericho) in a credible (i.e. geographically correct) manner. This was before the publication of Lyra's Oxford. To my horror, I discovered that there'd been a real Shoe Lane in Oxford all along.

So I moved my L-world Shoe Lane to more or less its location in our world and hoped nobody would notice. Or care.

In the end, though, I can't help thinking that St Michael's Street as it is now more closely resembles Shoe Lane as I originally conceived it. It's much too late to change now, though. Shoe Lane is thoroughly stuck in my imagination and will forever, so far as I am concerned, be where Bigsby and Jarrett, Bookbinders, James and James, Makers Of Fine Clocks And Instruments and Maison Jeanette, Modes For The Lady Of Distinction, are to be found.

[Enitharmon]

In the end, though, I can't help thinking that St Michael's Street as it is now more closely resembles Shoe Lane as I originally conceived it. It's much too late to change now, though. Shoe Lane is thoroughly stuck in my imagination and will forever, so far as I am concerned, be where Bigsby and Jarrett, Bookbinders, James and James, Makers Of Fine Clocks And Instruments and Maison Jeanette, Modes For The Lady Of Distinction, are to be found.

If Colin Dexter can swap his main characters around, you can move Shoe Lane, I'm sure. The exisiting one would never be missed!