I paid a flying visit to my beloved Oxford today (Sorry Suze'n'Jules....didn't have time to pop in on either of you) to see a 'prospect'. I had five minutes to spare, a camera in my bag and a desire to show a different side of the city to the lovely classical scenes that Michael Bo Hansen captured in his pic a day recently. I was racking my brains in the car trying to think of a suitable place that I could photograph that met the following criteria:

within 5 mins drive from my route
a more quirky side to the city
interesting image
could be photographed from the car

This is it. The house belongs to a local eccentric Bill Hynie (I think that's spelled right) who built the shark into the roof at least fifteen years ago. He also owned two cinemas in the city - one is certainly gone (I think its landmark can-can legs are now on a cinema in Brighton) and the other may or may not be still there - I didn't have time to check. They were called the 'Not The Moulin Rouge' (can-can legs) and the 'Penultimate Picture Palace' or PPP. They were wonderful flea pits - the toilets were called 'Pearl' for the ladies and 'Dean' for the gents. They both sold fudge brownies and coffee rather than the usual cinema muck.

They both showed wonderful films - I saw Babette's Feast, Jean de Florette, Children of a Lesser God, The Accidental Tourist, Sid and Nancy and, oddly, Top Gun there amongst others. How I loved them for their lack of obvious commercialism and their irreverence.

Funnily enough, there was an independent cinema in Camberley until quite recently but in my old age, I couldn't face the thought of going there - maybe it was because they didn't show the unusual films that the Oxford Cinemas showed with pride, they stuck to mainstream fare. Anyway, sadly it's gone now.

How I miss Oxford. I lived there for eight, on the whole very happy, years until I came to Sandhurst nine years ago. My childhood was one of continual change - I lived in so many places it's hard to recollect them all. Oxford was the one and only place I've lived where I felt I belonged. I've never felt like that here even though I've now been here longer.

I believe you should never look back, keep looking forward all the time but a trip down memory lane today was very welcome.