THE sturdy rugby-playing undergraduate with anarchic tendencies posed this question as we pressed against the barriers outside the Eastgate in High Street on a wet May Morning: "Are you up for it?"

"Up for what?" I asked, while trying to escape water trickling down my neck from a neighbouring umbrella.

"To rush the barricades," he shouted, not caring that six large and serious-looking police officers and a dozen even larger Frontline Securities' men and women were well within earshot.

"Not today," I said, adding in a bid not to appear wimpish, "It's old hat. It's been done before."

"That's always the excuse," came a second voice, a yard or so away. Its owner was of Middle Eastern persuasion, barely five feet tall. "Don't you want to fight fascism?"

I said I would if called upon, but not when the boys and girls in blue and their orange-coated back-up battalion were merely controlling the crowd and trying to prevent the foolhardy from jumping into the river from Magdalen Bridge.

"I jumped last year and I want the freedom to do so again. This is repression," he hissed, before giving up on me as a lost cause.

TO be fair, the heavy security presence seemed a little excessive. Why seal off a section of High Street between Longwall Street and the Eastgate Hotel, allowing no-one to cross this narrow no-man's land?

I pleaded that I was gathering information for this column. But clearly the 16-stone-plus security man was not one of my readers, and his size deterred further argument.

Meanwhile, the choir boomed over the loudspeakers from the unseen Magdalen Tower. It was like watching television without the picture.

BUT neither rain nor restrictions spoiled the morning. Among the curious and the curiosities were survivors of college balls and bottle parties; male undergraduates in tails and white tie, females in evening wear that ranged from the elegantly flowing to the downright revealing.

Striped blazers made a noticeable comeback while flower-bedecked straw boaters were much in evidence. However, it was a surprise to see and hear a blazered-and-boatered young man speaking in German to his companion.

Yes, they were from Berlin. No, they were not students. They were tourists and May Morning found their party staying in the city.

"So, as you English say, when in Oxford do as Oxford people do," he beamed.

I didn't argue over the accuracy of this, but got his meaning.

POST-6am breakfast was difficult to get without a struggle. One High Street caf accepted only those who had booked, while others experienced customers queuing to the door and beyond.

I found a table upstairs in a George Street caf-bar where a bacon roll had been promised to anyone buying drinks, alcoholic or otherwise. The move, explained one of the hard-pushed waitresses, was to attract customers. It was hardly necessary.

I got the cuppa, but the roll was so long coming that hunger persuaded me to head west to Mick's Caf by the railway station, where an early-morning rush is par for the course.