Quincentenary May Ball – Or St. John’s 500-Year-Old Party

How to explain the splendor of a ball? The lights, the fireworks, the delicate press of feet against grass and under silk gowns, the swirling chaos of many stages, multiple stages, the temptation towards gluttony, the piles of food glistening under the stars, the way the college itself with all its old stone buildings sits lit up like a fatted calf, gleaming in reds and purples from the lights projected throughout it… how do you explain that?

What about the way students gather on the bridge, pressing together to look out over the river that is suddenly no longer filled with water, but punts? “You could walk across it,” said a friend of mine as we crushed together for a moment, staring out at the hundreds and hundreds of people below. They had come to watch the fireworks; they had come to watch the ball.

“I feel strange being here in my suit, like this, with everyone down there,” said N, holding his glass of wine and looking at me.

“Don’t. Just wave.”

How do you explain the nine stages, the 82 acts, the 300-something performers, scattered throughout St. John’s College like little forgotten gems? Comedy shows, silent discos, magic, a rave with neon colours and smoke machines casting the entire tent into the madness of a clown’s dream. How do you detail that?

“They want to make you feel almost frustrated,” a friend told me at one point. “There is so much to do. So many things. Performers. Acts. Games. Things to watch. But you can’t do it all. And that is the point of the ball…”

We tried though, rushing from the ponies that pranced delicately on their hind legs (“You don’t realize how -rare- it is to see this!” exclaimed Z as she remained stubbornly beside the horses) to the low-slung bean bag seats surrounding shisha pipes. We visited the silent disco. We considered the bumper cars. We wandered through the court that was covered in fake snow and smiling penguins, past the one draped in rich fabric to look like the Taj Mahal, around the one representing the Victorian Era (“Look! You can get your hair done!” “…my hair is already done.”) and on and on. But we didn’t see nearly half of it.

And the food… how in the world do you explain the food and drink, the decadence so strong it makes heads reel and stomachs stretch? So many courses, so many niblets, from crepes and waffles as the sun rose to curries, pies, cupcakes, meats, cheeses, plates and plates of cheeses (“But where is the bread?” “Shhh. Just eat the cheese.”), fruits piled onto tabletops, mangos and apples and berries (“I found passion fruit!” “That is NOT meant to be a drinks mixer”), and all of it just waiting to be consumed? We wandered the entire night never really ceasing to eat. It was more of a challenge than the bumper cars, more tempting than lazer quest, to taste and sample what every tent had to offer.

The drinks were just as varied and just as available: mixed cocktails of vodka, wines, mead, beer, juice, freshly pressed berry drinks in bright pinks that tasted like melted popsicles but carried the punch of something potent, champagne, gin and tonics, whiskey, rum, tequila.

Z and I marked each other’s arms every time we had a drink. “It’s a challenge,” I stated. “To see who can last the longest.”

We both lasted the longest.

How can you capture the fireworks, the powerful explosions lurching into the sky, casting light over so many young faces and so many black-tied students? Together they stood like little soldiers, arms and elbows draped together, swaying with the music even as one firework after another exploded upwards. I caught Z’s elbow. “Wow.” I could only gasp over and over, at loss for words. “Wow.” The rolling green that is St. John’s Backs was full of viewers, all of them likewise gasping, likewise holding their breath to the timing of the music and the pulse.

“It is so much better than Trinity’s fireworks,” said M. “So much.”

“Of course.”

These things perhaps can’t be explained, not in a way that fully captures the splendor and champagne-haze hours of ball. For even my best descriptions won’t quite capture the poignant beauty of the scene, the delicate realization that it was all amazing and simultaneously all timed, a ticking clock of splendor. The ball lasts for fourteen hours. I saw the sun go down and rise again over black-tied students. Yet as it starts, so it must end – and this is what makes it bitterly sweet, one of those things that even as you grasp at it, trying to claim each minute back, each second back, it is escaping away.

“It’s light out again,” said Z as we sat sipping tea and wine. “It’s daylight.”

“Don’t let it be daylight. That means the ball is almost over.”

“Not yet. It’s the summer solstice. We still have time.”

She was right and wrong; for we had time, time enough to eat and drink, seeing friends and playing games – but not enough. The ball ended with the St. John’s Gents standing in blazing red serenading in the morning. Breakfast was served.

“Not yet…” I wanted to say. Don’t let it be over yet, for this was my last St. John’s May Ball. It was also the marking of what ended my time as a student, as a Johnian and a Creighton-kid, as someone tied to school books and school norms.

The ball has ended. I have finished.

And while I’m not quite sure I can explain it all, the hazes and colors and love, the way the fireworks caught the silk of dresses and the students gasped together in delight, I can say one thing for sure: the journey was amazing.The ball was amazing.

…and the ponies didn’t hurt.

Why I’m vaguely concerned for my liver – or Suicide Saturday

They call the Sunday after exams have finished ‘Suicide Sunday.’ It’s an ill-fitting name.

A better one might be: ‘The Sunday, Saturday and Friday in which all students go out in pretty dresses and silly shoes, top hats, sports jackets, body paint and joy. Where they celebrate together and drink quite a lot, prancing around on grassy bits. Where there are boat races. Where livers die.’ …but I suppose this doesn’t have the same ring.

Shoot.

Suicide Sunday/Weekend is full of all sorts of weird traditions, most of which I’m only beginning to understand after two years of being here.

Case in point: The weird boaty fight.

Boaties are rowers in Cambridge speak. They wear hideous jackets and wake up around 6am most days to get out on the Cam. I admire them for their discipline while being very thankful I am not one.

My friend B, however, is one.

Garden Party Fun

“What did you do this morning?” I asked him yesterday as we rode together to another garden party. The sun was briefly out and B was taking advantage of it, wearing one of those half-blue blazers (a mark of reaching a high level of sport) and sunglasses.

“We fought Trinity.”

Trinity is the enemy college of St. John’s, our neighbour, our quiet enemy.

“What?”

“Well, not fought. But we fought. We walked through their college bumping shoulders. Then they walked through ours bumping shoulders. Then we stood in a line and tried to catch each other. If we caught someone from the opposite team, we had to take them to breakfast.”

Welcome to Cambridge fighting: Ritualistic, traditional, and pretty darn weird.

I couldn’t ask more though, because we had arrived at Newnham College for the CUMPC Annual Garden Party. Bread, cheese, grapes and biscuits were soon layed out among balloons across tables. Flowers stuck in wine bottles added color.

Newnham Gardens

“Want some Pimms?” Asked my friend, mixing together strawberries with the syrupy brown liquid that makes this weird fruity alcoholic English drink.

I had sparkling wine instead. Several glasses. It was only 11am.

Garden party sunshine

After hours of mingling, I made it down to Bumps, a Cambridge boat race where all those boaties in all their blazers get out on the water and try to ram into each other.

It’s like bumper cars, on boats, with boaties, in blazers.

Bump boat

As I joined friends at the Magdelen College tent, I was surrounded by dark blue and purple – certainly not St. John’s bright red.

“Drink Pimms,” advised an ami, a previous Magdelen rower. “It’ll make you feel better. And it’s free.”

More bumping boats

So we sat in the sunshine, watching rowers go past with leaves in their hair (which they grab from the riverbank and stick there if they end up hitting another boat, or ‘bumping’), drinking Pimms and eating pickle-cheese sandwiches.

“Do you see how they’re balancing their blades like that? It’s so hard to do. It takes so much practice,” commented my friend as boat after boat went past.

“They train so much.”

One boat, Downing College, went by with a burgundy flag waving. It was the women, all smiles and sweaty arm muscles and lyrca. They looked exhausted but delighted; as they should be, my friend explained. They had managed to stay on top the entire competition, for all four days.

“Right. Now I need to sleep,” I explained as the race finished. The sun, the rain and the early start had gotten to me. It was only 6pm.

Wait, you don't play hockey post-garden party?

Instead I bumped into more old friends who insisted I go to a pub in town, a quaint little place called The Plough located right on the river. “I think my head is falling off,” I tried to explain.

“Have some Pimms. It’ll make it feel better.”

After the pub, there was coffee back at St. John’s College, at which point I sunk into a couch and resigned myself to not moving.

Until I got a call, and a text, and a chastisement: “Man up! Come out! Another drink will make your head fill better.”

Blazers are sort of like this. In different clashing colors.

Resulting in another pub, another several hours of friendship time, and multiple large glasses of water consumed. The bartender seemed unimpressed. Perhaps because I didn’t have a striped blazer of red, green, blue, orange.

I briefly considered sticking some of the nearby potted foliage in my hair. Instead I polished off my water and bid my friends goodnight.

Finally, at long last, I sunk into my bed; the sound of May Ball preperations filtered into my window, as the staff was still outside at midnight tacking carpet over the John’s grass and arranging equipment.

It will be a good party. Today is round two, the actual Suicide Sunday.

I think I’m going to go get some Pimms.

**Photos from Col. Seb Pollington, Laura D, or google.

***Pimms from that strange world of English cuisine/drinks.

May, June, Male Body Parts, and Moldy Bookish Joys

Today, while doing a photo shoot for St. John’s College’s new website, I saw some students walking around with fake penises.

They were practicing a pantomime, something classical and Greek and pointing back to those days when comedy went hand-in-hand with genitals. The students had chosen a secluded rose garden. The photographer, unfortunately, had done the same.

“…So I’m going to try to snap these pictures -without- getting man bits in the background,” the photographer murmured.

While he snapped photos, we could hear the students practicing the same line: “We already have hard-ons!”

…It was interesting.

Photoshoot for SBR Committee

The scene pretty much summarizes my life as of late: unexpected, amusing, fascinating, sunny. And very, very Cambridge.

Cambridge is a funny place to be in May and June.

Last year, outside, sunshine

In May, the entire university shuts down. Students tuck into dark corners. They tuck into libraries. They tuck into old books with greek handwritten footnotes (true story) and dribbles of greek food (also, unfortunately, a true story).

In June, everyone reemerges. The weather is suddenly better. Exams are finished. Students remember to smile. There are garden parties, evening parties, parties held on grassy stretches of Cambridge land while girls frolic in pretty dresses and delicate heels, and men lounge in ruffled shirts and black jackets.

Pentathlon Garden Party

People go up and down the river with picnics in punts, drinking this weird mixture called Pimms and nibbling strawberries.

June is a lovely time.

So it is that I’ve been tucked away, hidden behind books and in a dusty library corner. I would surround myself with text after text. I had fourteen binders full of paper. I think they are still there, those binders, still piled into the corner of the library; after my last exam, I couldn’t bring myself to go and collect them.

“Don’t worry. We’ll have a bonfire out at the farm,” my friend Z promised me.

“Really?”

“…could do.”

SBR Committee

So now I’ve finished, written my last Cambridge exam, those long three-hour horrors that have questions like: “Can politicians be honest?” or “How do we answer the question, ‘what is equality?’”

It’s all over.

I’ve accepted a job working for Epoch PR, a London-based PR firm that does a lot of corporate/business/think tank/policy stuff. I’ll be a Junior Account Executive starting July 11.

July 11th is soon.

I only graduate June 30th.

I’ve also been busy with small tidbits of random life. I wrote another post for USA Today’s College blog, a post which became the most popular and has remained that way now for two days. The title? “Ten Things US Students Could Learn from Cambridge Students.” I wrote it on the day of my last exam, post-essay, pre-celebration, when my eyes felt like they were going to crawl from my head and dance on the keyboard.

It made me remember how much I love writing.

And now?

Now I get to enjoy Cambridge. I am sighing into the last savory days of student freedom, enjoying the events, the mixers and minglers and socials. I am reacquainting myself with all the friends I forgot when I was hidden beneath mounds of knowledge.

Pentathlon Annual Dinner

I am getting ready for the St. John’s College May Ball, the ball that was listed as the Seventh Best Party in the World by TIME Magazine. I am cooking cupcakes for the Pentathlon garden party. I am laying in the sun and reading Hunchback of Notre Dame.

Life is good.

Especially when it’s unexpected.