Oxford Softball League

Back in July, about 2.5 weeks after I moved to the UK, and a few days after settling into my new flat, I was looking on the Oxford http://www.dailyinfo.co.uk/ website for things to do and see, and stumbled across this ad.

New Players Needed! (Especially Ladies)

Oxford Globetrotters are a team drawn from University Departments and several nationalities. They are keen to recruit some additional players to plug the holes appearing in their line-up now that the University term is drawing to a close.

Softball? In England? I decided to join. Apparently, it is actually a pretty big sport here and people from everywhere participate. Players in the league seem to be any age from 16 to 60 years old and my teammates were mostly Americans but we had players from Germany, Venezuela, England as well.

The Oxford Softball league has 10 teams and the some of them are really quite good and play in tournaments all over the UK. About Oxford Softball

The Globetrotters ended the season 3-10 (5 forfeits due to not enough players). I played the last 4 games of the season and we won 3 games. Coincidence? I think not. ;-)  But really, the team recruited about 5 new players to finish out the season and I met some new friends on the team.

Games are played at the Rover Sport & Social Club, next to the BMW Mini plant's test track. Occasionally we watched all the new Mini models speed down the fenced in road behind our field and then slam on the brakes!

Scarborough: Not Recommended

There are 2 Englands. The North and the South. It just took one trip up North to really see that divide. Of course, I didn't really get the local perspective on this very evident invisible line until after the fact when I got looks that said "You went where?".

There had to be a few rookie mistakes.

I suppose you could compare this to the Hamptons versus the Jersey Shore...?

One of my first weekends in England, my friend (who was an intern on our team in the U.S. so I've known her for a while) asked me if I want to go somewhere on the shore for the weekend. She said she had looked up places to go and Scarborough looked good. Since I had found a permanent place to live that week, and could not stay in my guest house that weekend on Saturday night, I decided to go with her the morning we departed.  That evening... 4.5 hour train ride later... we're not in Oxford anymore.

Scarborough is one of those places that looks great from far away and then you get up close and things aren’t as pretty.  

This place was the Jersey shore, but in England.  Snooki and The Situation's long lost distant English cousins surely live here somewhere.

We walked around for a few hours, walked up the hill to the castle, watched surfers try to catch waves and then were looking for things to do.

In it's heydey I'm sure the famous Scarborough Grand Hotel was all sorts of grand... but now it is anything but. The seagulls in this city have made themselves comfortable on every windowsill, gutter or available perch on this "grand" building. And they're seriously the size of bald eagles. I swear.

If you squint real hard you can imagine how great it was in the 1860s when it was built. Now it is covered in seagull poop.

 

The strip on the beach is lined with Casinos (i.e. games for kids and slot machines for adults), little markets selling cheap trinkets, cheap fish & chip stands, ice cream vendors, ferris wheels, and karaoke pubs that were bumping at 3pm.

 

We gambled a few slot machines, and promptly lost our money. In the evening we did a cheap 1 hour boat cruise that got rather boring after 20 minutes… although the sunset was pretty.

The people watching was outstanding… pretty much everyone had tattoos and were wearing interesting outfits (to say the least!!).

The accents up there are much different and I’m proud to say I’m now starting to pick up the difference in accent between regions. They definitely don’t see many Americans up there… the people in the hotel were very eager to know where I was from!

 Needless to say, I’ve seen it, but I probably won’t be going back again.

Pension Plan = Woman in a Cape

Apparently this picture is supposed to get me excited about my new Scottish Widows pension plan. So I can wear a cape in my old age and swing it about....

Isn't this what we all aspire to in our retirement?! Where is the picture of the couple on a beach with their grand kids and a Labrador retriever?

I will be really disappointed if the cape doesn't come in my welcome package.