News from somewhere: Oxford

Artist, Ted Dewan phones me at 5.40am in the morning; "You'll have to be quick. I think they're about to shut us in."

I'm walking quickly toward the centre of Oxford. It's the first of May. Despite the early hour, the street is full of people who are all walking in the same direction as me.

Ted has found us tickets to get inside Magdalen College to watch the choir of the College School sing from the tower of the Chapel as they do at dawn every May morning. Tickets are limited to those with a close connection to the College. Everyone else watches from the street. How did he come by them?

He mutters something to do with a mathematician and a Tibetan actress.

Ted is wearing a fedora and fingerless gloves. He is carrying a large golf umbrella. Ted is American. He is always prepared for the British weather.

OK, there has to be an obligatory British note on the weather. It has rained for the last few days. Rained so much that any expectation of Spring last weekend, when I helped spit-roast whole lambs to celebrate the Russian Orthadox Easter (but that's another story), has almost disappeared. This morning the sky is cloudy, but not altogether covered with grey. There is some hope. On May Day, there always is.

We wind through a few of Magdalen's quads, past signs which say, do not enter.

"If you live in Oxford for any time," says Ted, "the first thing you learn is to walk all over 'no entry' signs."

The forbidden lawn in the centre of Magdalen is open today. I feel I'm stepping on hallowed ancient ground but it's just one of those particularly Oxford-ish illusions. The finest, greenest, most untouched lawn in the University is surrounded by a Medieval-looking  stone cloisters, whose - in fact 19th century - gargoyles are so secular, so un-Christian, that they could be fabulous figures from the mythology of another world. The University, imitating itself, has created something entirely new.

The crowd of people on the lawn is peering up at the square stone tower of the chapel. They're pointing to something tiny and white, glimpsed through the crenelations; a choirboy's surplice flapping like a white flag way up above as the choir assembles for the airborne service.

Two students are lying on a mattress in the centre of the lawn, staring at the sky, ostentatiously wearing pyjamas.

It's perfect. But Ted is not satisfied.

"There's a little door somewhere, that goes up to the other, smaller tower. We should find it. I've been up there before. We could get a better view."

"OK."

We walk round and back through the main quad and round again, looking for a little door in a wall.

Eventually we find one. But we do not have the blue tickets for the tower, says the gatekeeper. Our tickets are yellow, and only entitle us to stand in the grounds.

Ted thinks we should hang around, "With hope but not with expectation." Like me he has worked as an illustrator and this is a natual position.

The gatekeeper asks, "Where are you from?"

"Oxford," we both reply.

"You don't sound like it. Do you like it here."

"Yes."

"I hate it. Miserable place. Do you have tickets for the tower?"

We show our incorrectly-coloured tickets.

"Wait a bit and I'll see if anyone doesn't turn up who is on my list. It's your accent." The gatekeeper turns to Ted. "I think I can trust you to go up there. I think you know who you can trust, don't you?"

We wait, more in hope than expectation. Hope triumphs.

At the bottom of the tower, past another 'private' sign, we follow narrow spiral stone steps steeply up and up and round and round.

We pass a narrow oak door labelled, Library, then one named, Archives. I notice an obviously recent white scratch of graffiti in a flashily archaic Renaissance script; another near the top, more hastily written: Stutton (?) School, 1951. We get to the top. The spiral unravels into a door; a space of sky. A blue grey lead roof looms toward us at forehead level.

As soon as we walk out onto the leads, we both begin to suffer suddenly, alarmingly from vertigo. The roof slopes in two planes toward a central point; the castellations, level to the outward gaze, tilt at odd angles from within. Those near the edges of the peaked roof are deep, those near its peak alarming shallow. We loose our balance, our orientation. We lurch over the tiny figures on the lawn beneath us. We sway back into the centre. We edge away from the sides, toward the centre of the roof while (does vertigo increase with age?) children lean fearlessly between the castelations, pulling their feet off the ground, their weight on their elbows for a better view.

Then the college bells begin to ring. There's a great triumphant howl from the crowd below in the street. Their distant heads sway forward like a wave.

Someone must have jumped in. 

Then, quite abruptly, everything is still as the choir begin to sing.

I turn East. Over the crowd of rooftops, I can see the great, green bowl of country that surrounds Oxford. For a moment, it possesses the city. The sun breaks in a sheet of luminous orange through a screen of cloud.

...

A little later, we walk up Oxford High Street against the tide of up-all-night students. The boys don't seem to wear black tie any more, or the girls ball dresses. They wear Topshop frocks which show a lot more laddered and mud-splattered stockinged leg. One girl in front of me has been carrying her high heels for some time. There's a large, pink circle covering and the base of both her legs, tapering up toward the back of each knee in a teardrop shape. From a distance, it looks like something luridly and pinkly sticking to her foot but as I get nearer, I realise what I can see is her inflamed heels sticking through the back of her ruined tights.

We cross Radcliffe Sqare to discover some astonishingly assorted Scottish dancers; a Green Man entirely covered in leaves like a dancing conical Christmas tree; Melissa's band, (see last year's post) minus Melissa who is at home looking after her six-month-old son, stamping and dancing and beating drums with flowers in their hair.

I have to get back to work. Ted walks with me back to the University Parks where I've left my car. I ask Ted what he's working on.

A book about a teddy bear.

But now, he says, I'm going to find myself a beer.

He walks off, Paddington-ly, swaying gently, with his hat and his umbrella, to find one of the many pubs open on May Morning.

A book about a Teddy Bear?

About a Ted?

...

Below is the first part of a piece from the Idler Magazine, which was published on the first of May, 2008.

More news from somewhere else - and the second part of The Idler piece, next week.

Comments

[La Belette Rouge]

"When I see a spade I call it a spade." LOL! Congrats on th publication. I am happy to return to you your blog and see your art work. Sure, your writing is great--but once you have had cake and ice cream why would you settle just for cake?;-)

[maitresse]

lovely story. will have to get to oxford one of these mays.

[badaude]

Belette, I'm delighted to be your gateau!

Maitresse, I would love to do May Day with you sometime. Ted's great. I sometimes think he must be the twin of Matthew Rose. I wonder whether they could both exist in the same room a the same time...