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In the mid-80s, as a young teenager living in Oxford, the idea of the New College Ball (or the Christchurch Ball, or the St John's Ball or... well, you know) seemed impossibly romantic and awesome. Live music, hot girls, never ending champagne. You could hear the music, you heard rumours of sex and drugs, of people climbing over college walls to break in. As a 14 year old with little self-awareness, it seemed like one of the best things ever.
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Originally posted by San Bernardhinault View PostIn the mid-80s, as a young teenager living in Oxford, the idea of the New College Ball (or the Christchurch Ball, or the St John's Ball or... well, you know) seemed impossibly romantic and awesome. Live music, hot girls, never ending champagne. You could hear the music, you heard rumours of sex and drugs, of people climbing over college walls to break in. As a 14 year old with little self-awareness, it seemed like one of the best things ever.
As for the sex and drugs - no more than you'd expect from anyone that age, I'd have thought. More coke than pot.
It's not something I look back on with arcadian nostalgia, but I'm sure some do.
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I was a townie, but from an academic family, so I didn't view the university's less palatable traditions with the disdain that they may have deserved.
It was, of course, the Coke and Champagne that appealed - we all knew that there was beer and pot in our future, but glamourous-drugs-and-booze was another thing.Last edited by San Bernardhinault; 17-09-2018, 15:17.
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That's not me jumping over that burning boat in 1984, but I did stand next to a burning boat in 1991. It's a tradition for colleges who've won the Head of the River, I think. I remember at the time thinking it was a bit much, and I can't stand rowing. But I did have a great time at the celebration dinner to which I cadged a free ticket.
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I went to a May Ball and did the jumping over a burning boat thing.
The upper classes essentially used a classic rope-a-dope strategy in the 1980s. They managed to convince the mass of less objectionable people that their nonsense was a quaint and picturesque throwback that could be indulged (to a degree) because they were on the way out. It hasn't really panned out like that.
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People used to climb over the wall to get into the Fly Club Garden Party (which was the closest that "we" got to this kind of thing, but was nowhere close (for one thing, it started in the early afternoon and didn't require any tie, let alone white tie).
Doing so was just performative, though, as it wasn't hard to get invited if you had any interest in going.
I wonder how the boat burning tradition has been effected by the transition to fibreglass and composite shells.
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Looks like this is fairly recent.
https://www.joh.cam.ac.uk/maggie-ret...ship-may-bumps
St John's Cambridge burned "an old boat". How does this work, do they have burnable old boats? Or does a local Arthur Daley phone up the winners about 5 o'clock on the Saturday with a suitable boat?
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Originally posted by ursus arctos View PostI wonder how the boat burning tradition has been effected by the transition to fibreglass and composite shells.
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