May Day

I'm back in blog land again today after a busy but fun couple of weeks....I can see my life through a series of photo's on my laptop and will eventually get round to posting them.....this is how May started for a couple of people from my old uni........and I believe in total a hundred from other colleges.

May the 1st in Oxford begins at 6am for some (8,000 this year) with the sound of Magdeline Collage choir singing Hymnus Eucharisiticus from the top of Magdeline Tower. It's a five hundred year old tradition. There is a great party atmosphere as many of the students have come straight from their May Ball the night before and are still dressed in black ties and ball gowns.

Others adorned with flowers in their hair and laurel wreaths look like they are trying to re-create a May Day scene from Camelot. Still others, faces painted green, look like something out of Midsummer Nights Dream and join in with the Morris Dancers before heading off for champagne breakfast somewhere......

Us? Well we had intended joining in the celebrations.......but it was a holiday morning.....and we get up so early every other day.............and we'd been up late the night before eating and drinking and talking with friends .........and the forecast predicted rain...........so we stayed in bed.....but we could hear the church bells chiming at 6am through the open window.......

.......and a bit later along with one of my sisters and her husband who were visiting us from Chester, we ventured off into Jericho.......

...to check out what was happening in Freud's, one of our favourite haunts......a bistro in an old early 19th century, shabby chic Greek Revival Church....

...it was very quiet by then........

...but there were still a few slightly boisterous revellers drinking outside............

...and champagne breakfast was still on the menu......

...so we just had to join in..............

....and you could even see the dreaming spires reflected in the champagne bubbles........

....well you could in mine, but maybe that was after I'd drunk some of it...............