6am: choir singing, coffees and crowds...it must be May Day again
Thousands of students filled Oxford’s streets on May Day morning, having stayed up all night. Doughnuts were given out in front of the Radcliffe Camera, morris dancers danced under the Bridge of Sighs, poetry was performed outside the Sheldonian and a band played in Broad Street. The crowds traditionally flock to Magdalen Bridge at 6am to listen to the Magdalen choir sing madrigals from their tower and students jump off the bridge.
This year the police closed the bridge between 3am and 7am in order to try and prevent people jumping off. Police and security guards manned the bridge, and only one person managed to climb over the barricades. Some students chanted and tried to encourage a charging of the barricades. When the bridge opened, crowds rushed forwards, and some made for the edge. Three Oxford Brookes students jumped off.
Paul Charles Tovey, a Brookes fi- nalist who jumped off the bridge, said, “I wanted to go out with a bang.” He landed on an inflatable dinghy below. “If I hadn’t landed on the boat I don’t know what would have happened. There are metal and concrete struts under the water.” The dinghy was owned by another Brookes finalist, Mike Tench. “We bought the dinghy for £20 from Argos. We got in the river down in Christ Church meadow and rowed up.
I didn’t jump off, but those who jumped didn’t touch the bottom, so it’s not that shallow.” A police spokesperson said, “It’s a nice, clear day, and the operation went successfully. A couple of people did jump off, but that is to be expected. They could have jumped off yesterday; the bridge is normally open."
3rd May 2007