England's Oxford now on my mind ...

Above all, Oxford is England's most famous centre of higher learning. Its academic institutions go back centuries. Many learned men and women have Oxford deeply in their blood
after studying here and then being granted their university degrees and doctorates in the field
of their matriculation.
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My two-day stay at Oxford was three fold. My first reason for coming to Oxford for the first time, was to visit and stay with my Canadian grand nephew -- from the Badlands region of Alberta -- who has entered Oxford to earn a degree in theology. Last time I saw him we were in Vancouver, British Columbia, for a family reunion some 10 years ago or so ... We recognised each other instantly at Oxford even though both of us have aged by at least a decade!! I was overjoyed to share some time together and he just loves being here despite the very rough expense for his folkz to underwrite his stay and university studies in England ... Secondly, I wanted to record the scenes of homelessness in perhaps one of the most quintessential and historic England cities that is Oxford. And, thirdly to find any Big Issue vendors I happened upon ... and to photograph them with their approval for my continuing photographic essay:
"The Faces of Homelessness."
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So all day today, I was all around the Oxford surroundings from Headington to St. Giles to
Summertown and to the city centre itself with my cameras at the ready. It wasn't long before I found the homeless and then followed quickly by finding several Big Issue vendors, who shared their thoughts with me once they knew I, too, was a Big Issue vendor from London's Covent Garden ...
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So while the world tourists took snapshots of Oxford's world famous colleges and institutions,
I was alot more happier photographing the offbeat and the homeless and the vendors ...
The twentysomething woman with tatooes all over her face was the first among the offbeat
I saw at downtown Oxford. She wasn't exactly a turn on for me, since she was innately grotesque with or without her disgusting tatooes that appeared like botched needle work on her chubby and sickly white face ... Then I spied upon the first homeless man I found at a church bench on St. Clements Street in the heart of the city. He wasn't in a friendly mood when I spoke to him with his reddish complexion screaming out at you along with his gruff words that needed a big dose of carbolic soap to washout his filthy mouth ... He said he'd never heard of The Big Issue and he didn't know any such vendors when I asked him if he was familiar with either ... The few questions I tried to ask him were met bluntly with: "It's none of your f***ing business ..." Each time he said that, he got redder and angrier in the face. And he spit almost every time he finished his hostile dialogue with me ...
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Shortly after that, I bumped into James, age 27, with his Big Issue Badge No. 99. He was the first Oxford vendor I met and James was outgoing and began to talk to me like we'd known one another before, even though it was our very first encounter. He told me that Oxford was a good place to be homeless at least until recently when the city rules were changed against the homeless. Now they can only stay at St. Giles Hostel for 14 days before being put back out on the streets again. You must otherwise prove you're a legal resident of Oxford, before you can get the city to help you. Other vendors like Tony, age 30, Badge No. 076, also confirmed much the same details with me of what James had stated.
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Also, a recent influx of homeless Romanians and Bulgarians has caused conflict among some Big Issue vendors, so I was told. The East Europeans have now been ban from assembling outside of such businesses as Marks & Spencer on Oxford High Street and elsewhere. Vendor Tony said that verbal fights have taken place as the Romanians have tried to elbow in on Big Issue pitches by using their trickery of getting the wary public to buy their fake gold rings ... or confronting the public with their outright aggressive begging and ill-manners ...
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They're not liked nor is The Big Issue vendor co-ordinator by the majority of vendors from
what I heard. Simon, who I went to see but he wasn't there at the time I visited The Big Issue distribution spot at the rear of St. Giles Church Parish Hall, is the bloke that is their unpopular co-ordinator. The gripes from the vendors seemed many and real to me. They must first register with Simon in the morning to get their pitch and do so again in the afternoon. This they must do every day. If they fail to appear on time, then they lose their pitch for the day no matter how long they have held such a pitch. They're assigned instead to whatever is left, if anything, for the day ... The vendors complained of no facilities for them to eat or wash ... No plastic magazine covers when it rains, no Big Issue jackets and no shoulder bags could they get.
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They said Simon was lazy and did as little as he could for them!! He was also the first Big Issue vendor in Oxford and thus was rewarded, I assume, with being made the first vendor co-ordinator there ... New vendors also bitched about only now being given five free copies of The Big Issue instead of what use to be 10 to start with. They must go back and get the other 5 free copies after they're sold the first five. What a pain!! But that's also being done to vendors in London and elsewhere, I told them in Oxford ...
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Unlike in London, The Big Issue does not open to serve Oxford vendors on Sundays. They also complained that Simon fails to order enough stock that then keeps either running out or in very short supply for the vendors to buy to sell at their pitch ... Today, I was told there was only about 200 to 400 copies left among some 99 vendors in Oxford ... that leaves about 3 to 4 copies per vendor to buy ... and then flog and that leaves some of them pretty penniless if they want to make a little extra money to buy needed food and what have you ...
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By late afternoon, Oxford was drenched in wet rain and thus it seemed so depressing against the backdrop of its famed history of great learning ... Thousands of folkz scurried along the old city streets with brollies opened doing them a treat of staying relatively dry although overcast was now the English darkened sky ... During the day I also saw many dozens of "Freshers" all nicely dressed in their cap and gown black and white going to their metriculation ceremony with their proud moms tagging along like mother hens nurturing their chicks ... In contrast to the homeless I saw, the Oxford Freshers and their parents looked well nourished and certainly well dressed ... Along High Street, I was at first amused to read the large sign in the front window of Tranter's Tabacco Shop: "THANK YOU FOR SMOKING" ... Smoking, I thought was the last thing you'd thank someone for!! At Simply Sewing, I saw £78.00 shirts were marked down to 19 quid each. Great! But the shirts on sale had patterns and styles that would make you cross-eyed just to look at them ... Even if they'd been free, I'm sure I'd have said "thankz, but no thankz ..." Cops cars whizzed by countless times, too, with their nerve-wreaking sizens that should be outlawed just for the noise they inflict on us all in the name of police chases and/or 999 calls ... Such has turned London into what I call "Siren City, UK." I always thought the American cops were bad enough with their sirens going off all around the clock at Washington, D.C. But the British cops
in London now take first prize for "sirening" us to death like never before ...
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Oxford is also cursed thesedays like most other English high streets with the invarable brand-name stores and designer goods that brings no joy to my taste at all or to my pocket. Lost forever are the local shopkeepers and their family-own stores to the top corporate retail outlets that swamp the downtown area now and force sky high rents to become the norm. England was once called "a nation of shopkeepers," but today it's more like "a nation of shop spenders."
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I had earlier bid farewell to my grand nephew for now as an "Oxford Fresher" at Wycliffe Hall,
which is a Permanent Private Hall of the University of Oxford, and to The Big Issue street vendors that I'd seen in town as I headed back to olde London Towne. There, I suspect it was also wet and damp as I journeyed south from Oxford to London's ever-growing capital city of England.

Cheers to one and all from Oxford, Monty. +The English Martyrs, 2oo7.