It’s been a heavy old week. On Tuesday, before news of the Queen’s ill health broke, we followed events in the Commons as the announcements happened: any steep rise in energy bills will be potentially disastrous for businesses as well as individuals. Did you hear Chef Tom Kerridge talking about the pressures on restaurants and pubs in particular?
The price of vegetables, oil, food packaging – pretty much everything – has skyrocketed over recent months. We raised some of our prices slightly when we reopened last week and hope that our much-loved customers can understand. There’s no change to the price of (most of) the food in our freezers, so if you’re struggling like the rest of us we hope you can find something in there that will sustain and nourish you at a price point that you can afford (and if you’re really struggling Oxford Mutual Aid will always provide. We still supply weekly meals to them for free distribution in our community – thank you to those of you who contribute towards this effort).
As for the Queen’s passing, that’s been an interesting distraction. What is striking is how little prepared we were for it, despite her very advanced years. Now we look back at the pictures it was clear that she had been ailing for some time (Kathryn Mannix has written brilliantly about this – here’s a link to her beautiful short Twitter thread), but conversations about death are not easy in our culture – we usually do our best to avoid them.
How different in Tibet! For Tibetans, life is seen a joyful journey towards the end. As believers in reincarnation, the end is in itself is a new beginning, and so a “good” death becomes very important. Buddhists encourage us to spend as much of our useful life as possible considering and preparing for this singular inevitable outcome.
The Queen – we’ve all heard it many times now – lived a life of service to others. Buddhists say that a large store of good Karma such as this is our greatest resource at the point of death. Yeshi wonders how and where the Queen will show up next, but all signs are for a good rebirth.
Here are our opening hours at 109 Magdalen Road this week:
Wednesday: 5-9.30pm (dinner only)
Thursday – Saturday: 12-3 (lunch) / 5-9.30pm (dinner)
You can dine with us or take away – just turn up, either way. This week’s menu is live on the website now.
A question for you! Since Foodstuff withdrew from Oxford earlier in the summer we haven’t been running a delivery service, but we’re thinking of starting something up for ourselves in the near future. Would you be interested if so? Please tell us what you’d be looking for + anything else we might need to know so that we can build this into our plans. Thank you very much.
Take care everyone and see you soon,
Julie and Yeshi
Opening hours this week:
Weds: 5-9.30pm
Thurs – Sat: 12-3pm 🥢 5-9.30pm
☏ 01865 499318
