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July 2012

fave caffs (4): Zappi’s

  Bike shop married to a cafe. Combinations of utilitarian/practical with no-nonsense food work well if the food has some heart and the utility is gritty and functional- eating to live and all that. Zappi’s on St Michael Street in the centre of Oxford offers refreshment in a brightly lit space upstairs. Sit and read […] Read more

Jane Fanner-Hoskin serving her coffee-walnut gateau and scones with cream   Jane and Vyvyan, her wheelwright hubby, live in a canal boat close to Kirtlington Quarry. I first knew them when they were moored on the canal at the bottom of Frenchay Road in Oxford, but the Council rudely moved them away. They let me […] Read more

Favourite caffs (2): nine beanrows and a hive

where the bee sucks…. Smallholding,  sweetpeas, salad greens, succulent vegetables, a ‘Strine with many strings to his bow and his spouse (from Holland). Somehow David and Anneke have created a rural idyll just three miles from Oxford where you can buy the freshest organic produce and bask in the micro-climate of extravagantly planted  acreage with its […] Read more

My favourite caffs

(Please note that Marianne Bruel retired from the business in 2014, after 13 years of producing wonderful meals. The Rose no longer bears her stamp- in fact the very opposite of all she aspired to). One day, while  researching a book in the Bodleian, I found I was starving. Such is the effect on the […] Read more

Brouhaha in Upper Fisher Row

  The cries of a girl in distress made me leap up  from my desk  overlooking our cul-de-sac,  the river flowing sweetly alongside, and run down to investigate the commotion (I work at two desks,  one of which  is useless for work that needs serious concentration, while the other is conducive to deep thought). A […] Read more