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I am furious that as an Oxford resident, I can no longer celebrate OUR May Morning on OUR own Magdalen Bridge as I have done since I was old enough to cycle into Oxford from the village I was born in (I am now an OAP).

It seems the bridge is to be closed on May Morning for the next three years, all because ignorant visitors to our city have a notion that it is traditional to jump from the bridge into the river on May Morning.

What nonsense! That was never the case.

The students used to be much more imaginative than that. They used to entertain us in their punts below the bridge and that was the reason we used to gather on the bridge, to watch them from the parapet.

Their antics then were entertaining, not reckless, nor did they need the services of our ambulance crews, security guards and policemen to protect them.

Often, the girls would be wearing long evening dresses and the boys bow ties, having been for a romantic evening on the river, and they would end up congregating in their punts at the bridge.

They would have been drinking wine or Champagne so were not particularly sober.

Inevitably, the punt was not the easiest craft to step out of in a dignified manner and many of them would end up paddling around in their now bedraggled evening wear, dripping with water, looking very silly but not caring.

Some would be in fancy dress, offering us a poem or a song, or even juggling, all from a wobbly punt!

I remember one year, the students from the School of Architecture arrived in a beautiful Chinese junk, which they had built specially for May Morning.

There was a full jazz band on the junk, which we all enjoyed listening to while waiting for the clock to strike 6am.

Of course, the junk eventually began to sink as the 'paddlers' tried to hitch a lift, but the musicians, still undaunted, kept playing, with their piano sounding more and more peculiar as it filled with water!

Of course, no-one was in any danger because the water by the bridge is so shallow. It was simple, harmless fun.

I looked forward to it each year to see what new antics the revellers were going to think up to entertain us with and tried to get there early to get the best vantage point.

The only reason for having a policeman there then was for a lost child or to give people directions.

I even remember one policeman having a sprig of May blossom put in his helmet and he wore it with good humour - it was that kind of atmosphere!

Sadly, students today appear to have very little inventiveness.

If the most they can conjure up to celebrate is just jumping off a bridge or stealing a traffic cone, then maybe it's time we had a little less 'gown' and a bit more 'town' if we are to get OUR traditional May Morning celebrations back to how they always were!

Pamela Webber, Bullingdon Road, Oxford

4:30pm Monday 21st May 2007

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