While you are gently sleeping on a Saturday night in late October (OK, fine, while your feet are sticking to the floor in The Bridge), a college somewhere in Oxford dresses up in sub-fusc, stocks up on port and walks backwards around a quad, spinning at the corners. For an hour.
Yes, it’s the (in)famous Time Ceremony that has been part of Merton’s history since 1971. It seems the college that apparently never leaves the library has gone loopy. The ‘official’ website that you can find on Google doesn’t help much either – it describes the ceremony as “designed to remedy the ill effects of man’s abrupt interference with the diurnal cycle”. But let’s just think about it for a second. A Saturday doing something that is quirky, eccentric and quintessentially Oxfordian? Plus a chance to quaff stupid amounts of fortified wine? Surely it is better than yet another stale night dancing to the same old tunes in the same old place with the same old drinks on offer. Plus it gives you an interesting story for friends from other colleges and universities, or even ultimately the grandchildren. Provided that the port hasn’t messed with your brain’s memory stores by then, of course.
The ceremony itself is notoriously difficult to get into. The late gates of the College are locked and entry is only through the lodge, with a Bod card and provided no non-Mertonians accompany you. It seems that akin to the Freemasons, we think that we are the only ones able to save the world – in this case from the rupture in the space-time continuum that the putting back of the clocks inevitably leads to. Two toasts are held at the Sundial Lawn, a self-proclaimed centre of the universe – including a call for “Viva la counter-revolution”. The self-professed reactionaries then walk backwards for an hour, drinking vast quantities of port, making fools of themselves and generally trying not to fall on the grass. In the name of the universe of course.
Walking forwards doesn’t feel quite natural for some time afterwards, and you are reminded why port is in the same group as morris-dancing and Harry Hill: it’s an acquired taste. But the ceremony is an amazing experience in an all-Oxford way. Merton is often thought of as the ‘work hard’ college – and whilst that might be true, people shouldn’t forget that the phrase also contains a ‘play hard’ part. When we’re not walking around backwards at least.
