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22 Feb 2003
I went for a walk with my camera in the University Botanic Gardens this morning (more pictures in Wings Open Wide tomorrow). I haven’t been there since I finished The Amber Spyglass by Philip Pullman, and I wanted to look at the bench featured in the book. Here Lyra and Will each agree to sit once a year – in their own worlds – and think about one another. I took this picture of what I thought was the most likely candidate, and then something strange happened. A fox appeared from a bush near the benches, shot underneath it and paused, looking out at me before it dashed off through the fence and into Christchurch meadows. The garden was full of people, but no-one else seemed to notice the fox. I was struck by the absurdly romantic idea that it might be someone’s daemon – perhaps mine.
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I just finished "The Amber Spyglass" light night, having read "His Dark Materials" based on recommendation by you and Mark Bernstein. When I finished, I remembered you had a picture of "the" bench on your weblog. I just had to come take a look at it, now that I understand the significance. Thanks much for posting the picture.
I wonder - living in Oxford, do you ever hear a tiny voice in the back of your head encouraging you to visit the Botanical Gardens on Midsummer's Eve, just to check? 
by Doug Miller @ 30/03/2004 2:04 am • Permalink •
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Doug Miller: Coincidentally, I'm reading the trilogy again myself at the moment. Even though it's quite a disturbing book in many ways, I find it comforting. At the time I took the picture, Philip Pullman was being quite tight-lipped about which was Lyra and Will's bench. I think that he wanted to avoid the place filling up with gawking tourists, but he relented later. It seems that I guessed at the wrong bench, but the real one looks the same, and is only a few metres away.
In answer to your question - yes, I do So many locations in Oxford are described so beautifully--the same, but utterly different in Lyra's world--that I often feel as if Lyra's world is overlaid on the real Oxford. I look very carefully at the area beneath the hornbeams in Sunderland Avenue every time I pass--I might just catch a glimpse of Cittagazze through a window between the worlds. Sometimes I'm a hopeless romantic (well, you've got the let The Scientist off the lead every now and again 
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I think I would have felt just the same
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I spent a fantastic sunny Sunday afternoon in the Botanical Gardens a few years ago, reading all the papers with my (now ex-) girlfriend, eating sandwiches and drinking wine. The best thing was that there was very little need to say anything, other than occasionally read out funny articles, because if you were bored of reading, you could sit, look out at the beauty and be comfortable. I miss it.
by Mark @ 25/02/2003 3:02 pm • Permalink •