This morning I woke up just after my first alarm went off at 5:00am. I almost missed my alarm, which would have defeated my entire purpose of coming back to Oxford. Anyway, finally got out of bed at about 5:30am, got dressed and headed down and out of the hostel towards Madgelan College. I noticed quite a few shops were open while I was making my way down George and the High street. When I got down and around the corner of High street I was met by a few thousand May celebrators hanging around in the street. The police had control of the street and the bridge to keep students from jumping off into the Isis. As I came up to the crowd someone had brought a super-human size Ché. I made my way through the crowd, it was pretty easy, and within 100 feet of Madgelan Tower and pretty much hung out until 6:00am when the bells went off and the choir began to sing. It was pretty cool, the choir sang an opening madrigal, then there was a very short sermon and the choir finished up with another madrigal and then the tower rang their bells.
Soon after the police unblocked the road to the bridge and I thought some students were going to jump into the Isis below, but they didn't. One particular student decided to BA the crowd from the bridge one too many times when the police took him aside for some questioning. It was pretty amusing, the poor bastard. It was a fairly brisk 1 May at 6:00am so it was probably a good thing none of the students jumped into the Isis below.
By this time I was getting pretty cold myself and the police were breaking down their barriers and allowing traffic to return to normal, so I headed back to the hostel. I fixed some breakfast when I made it back and talked to one of the master degree students who is on holiday here for a few months. She is trying to complete her thesis and is pretty interesting to talk with. I had planned to come back and take a nap but after eating breakfast and chatting with Victoria I was feeling awake so I eventually headed out to the Ashmolean Museum again and hung out for a few hours. I'm not certain if I'm fighting off a cold, maybe, but I got back to the hostel and took a little nap for a few hours and felt better afterwards. After the nap I read more of Ivanhoe, a book they happened to have on the shelf here at the hostel. Sir Walter Scott is the originator of the historic novel, and I've wanted to read the book for quite some time.