www.mattmunson.com

January, 2009

Why they call this place Summertown, I'll never know. It seems that every day I was here, it was anything but summer. Then again, it was January, and I'm quite sure England is not known for it's sunny winters. But I digress.

No trip to England would be complete without putting in a few days work, and this time the office I was working out of was in this pleasant little place on the outskirts of Oxford known as Summertown. Nice enough place, just deceivingly named.

This is sort of the main drag through the village. Apparently, this is a neighborhood in transition, and it's transitioning upwards. The local shopkeepers are all up in arms because their rents just tripled. Now that Starbucks has moved in, a bunch of big name stores have followed, allowing the owners to raise rents. Bummer for the little guy, I guess.

I thought it was kind of funny that the local bike shop was displaying their bikes outdoors. Did they not notice it was raining?

This is my favorite store in all of England. It's called "Marks & Spencer Simply Food". It's pretty much the grocery store from the future. Everything in the store is sold in little individually wrapped plastic containers. I mean EVERYTHING. Well, maybe the produce isn't, but everything ELSE is. EVERYTHING. It's wild. So England is on a big "be friendly to the environment" kick, which has gotten M&S a lot of flack, as the waste about a billion pounds of plastic every day.

Here's a shot from the top of the office. Nice view of the main drag. Despite all of my protestations, it's actually a really nice place. Lots of really cool/fun little shops and eateries, etc.

	This is sort of the main drag through the village. Apparently, this is a neighborhood in transition, and it's transitioning upwards. The local shopkeepers are all up in arms because their rents just tripled. Now that Starbucks has moved in, a bunch of big name stores have followed, allowing the owners to raise rents. Bummer for the little guy, I guess.		I thought it was kind of funny that the local bike shop was displaying their bikes outdoors. Did they not notice it was raining?
	This is my favorite store in all of England. It's called "Marks & Spencer Simply Food". It's pretty much the grocery store from the future. Everything in the store is sold in little individually wrapped plastic containers. I mean EVERYTHING. Well, maybe the produce isn't, but everything ELSE is. EVERYTHING. It's wild. So England is on a big "be friendly to the environment" kick, which has gotten M&S a lot of flack, as the waste about a billion pounds of plastic every day.		Here's a shot from the top of the office. Nice view of the main drag. Despite all of my protestations, it's actually a really nice place. Lots of really cool/fun little shops and eateries, etc.