Mayday madness

A year ago, me, E and Andy set off on a mission to find the legendary big May Day party down on Port Meadow in Oxford with very little success, as documented here.

Not at all fazed by our lack of success, we decided to do it again this year. There were more incentives this year, in that the weather was much, much better, and we had figured out there was at least one more route to Port Meadow that we had not tried.

There were, of course, obstacles. They shut the bridge which divides our half of town with the half in which Port Meadow lies between 3am and 9am. We intended to stay up all night at the party, catch the May morning choristers, then go to a gig at the Port Mahon (confusingly enough not on the same side as Port Meadow but on the East Oxford side where we live) for 6am before falling into bed for many hours. This posed certain problems in that we would have to get across the bridge before they closed it at 3am.

The evening all started well with me cooking dinner for us as a belated birthday dinner for E, with a bit of champagne to go with and some wine because she brought it with us and it would have been rude not to. The next step was to go and purchase alcohol for the night that we would be able to open and drink in the middle of a field. So screwtop wine, then. No problems there.

Obviously, by this point we were all a bit tiddly so the best way to get to Port Meadow, we felt, would be to walk.

It's a bloody long way.

All the way walking there, over the bridge, through the city centre, down a few back alleys that E swore were shortcuts, through to Jericho and then Port Meadow, the only people we saw were walking in the OPPOSITE direction. Many of whom seemed like they were quite drunk and having a lot of fun, we considered gatecrashing at least one house party on the way.

Anyway, we arrived at Port Meadow to find - nothing. Again. Silence. But we did see a few people none of whom appeared to be going our way. Someone shouted at us from the river and we shouted back and walked towards them, thinking it could be the party. It wasn't. Then we thought we heard the distant sound of bongo drums.

We tried to follow the noise (which kept being drowned out by the nearby trainline) but got stuck in a very muddy area as the whole meadow floods every year. It transpired we had to walk a very long round. But ever hopeful, we followed a path, spurred on by the distant drum beats, into an area of the meadow none of us had visited before that was in complete darkness.

And then, there it was. A bonfire, surrounded by lots of people (E thought 250, HF thought 80, I reckon it was somewhere in the middle). Bongos. Guitars. Weird dancing. Result!

However, it had taken us the best part of an hour to walk there, and we still had to get back over the bridge so we were only actually at the legendary party for about an hour before we had to return. During which time we were asked if we wanted to buy beer for £2 a can (as if) and also asked if we would sell a swig of our wine for 60p. He looked a bit skanky so we said no.

Then we hotfooted it back through the meadow and through town making it across the bridge with just ten minutes to spare before it closed. We must literally have walked about 10 miles, including walking round and round in circles.

No dogs on strings though.

Did we make it back for the singing and the gig? Err, no, we went back to Es for cheese and cider and then I fell asleep in the kitchen and started talking in my sleep about Rowan Atkinson. Weird. I woke up 20 minutes before the gig (having retired to bed fully dressed in the meantime) but couldn't rouse anyone to go.

It was one of the most surreal experiences I've ever had. We're definitely doing it every year.
More on that story later.