WARNING: This post is of limited interest. It will only be of slight interest to two types: current and former residents of Hope Hall, University of Exeter, Devon, UK; and those Monty Python fans who are into keeping track of mind-numbing minutae.

Now that's out of the way... in 1989, with funding from the NEH and ESU, I managed to con my way onto the campus of the University of Exeter to conduct research on my thesis...hang on while I find a copy...*blows dust off the cover*...ah, here we go.

God as Ring-giver: Germanic Tradition and Christian Ethos in the Poetry of the Anglo-Saxon Exeter Book.

I could fill pages with stories of the Cathedral Library, tennis, the gardens, the univeristy library, the Vic, the Timepiece, busking on street corners, hours, days, weeks, months working on translations--quite often in the pub down the hall from my room. But you're saved from that. Instead I'm bringing up an interesting bit of Python trivia I stumbled across.

Here is a vidcap from a 1974 sketch of a bunch of Pythons in drag working on a street corner:



Some minutae-mad fans tried to identify the corner where this was filmed. As this is the Internet we're talking about, and we, as a species, no longer have to hunt and gather food, some folks found the answer. This picture:



That's a driveway off Prince William Road which leads up to my old residence at Exeter, Hope Hall. It looks a little different, but 30 years passed between pictures, and the vidcap source was confirmed to have been made in Exeter.

I got to know this entrance well. Sometimes walking back from research at the cathedral. Sometimes staggering back from a night on the town. Once on a motorcycle I could barely keep under control. Thankfully, the road was in good condition. Thanks be to John Cleese.

So this is my remote, oh-so-very-remote brush with Python lore.