Alice Day 2011, Oxford

Some belated pictures from this year’s Alice Day in Oxford on Saturday. A great day out for all the family with activities like story telling, white rabbit petting zoo, plays, a geocache snark hunt, croquet, mad hatter hat making and of course, lots and lots of tea parties.

White Rabbit Petting Zoo

My boyfriend was confused because not all of the rabbits were pure white, though I was more concerned about the lack of waistcoat and timepiece.

Hookah Smoking Caterpillar

I bumped into this caterpillar when we went to view the bee hive at The Natural History Museum where the Red Queen was throwing a tea party and telling stories to all and sundry. It was great fun, and lots of people had brought their picnics. My boyfriend ran away when The Red Queen accosted him shouting, “Come on, come on, take a seat! We’ve been waiting for you!” The White Rabbit was also in attendance, and when I took the photo below was chatting away to a mother about how lovely it would be if we all had the time to sleep like her baby. I loved how well the actors stayed in character and interacted with everyone.

White Rabbit

I also had a good day on the book front buying a new copy of Alice in Wonderland with colour illustrations from The Alice Shop. The sales assistants were dressed in an amazing costumes and were giving away free bookmarks with the Alice Day guide which has come in very handy. It was great to see them really getting into the spirit of things, and they very kindly let me take this picture of them.

I also bought a copy of a craft book Everything Alice. I bought it from Waterstones but arrived a little bit early for the authors signing the books so didn’t get to meet them (though they’ve started following me on Twitter which is cool). The book is amazing and I’ll review it soon, but if I had the time again I’d buy it from the Alice shop who I later found were selling it. The Waterstones staff had done nothing special for the day beyond the author visit- no costume and the most half arsed display imaginable. When I asked when the authors would be arriving the staff seemed half asleep, so I just bought the book and left.

Another place which was marvellously into the spirit of Alice Day was George and Danvers on St. Aldates which had playing cards and rabbits galore, staff in fancy dress and a special Alice in Wonderland ice cream (no mock turtle, eggs which turn into Humpty Dumpty or jam tarts in sight) a delicious raspberry and white chocolate ice cream which just screamed eat me. I hope they start doing it all year round.

Eat Me