CURIOSITY got the better of me. What was creating such hilarity for the three undergraduates – two smartly groomed males and one fashionable female – as they peered over Magdalen Bridge into the river below?

Surely it wasn’t a May Morning party survivor still splashing around, two days after the event? The reason became clear – even if the waters were murky.

Two students, casually dressed, apart from their white fedoras, were in a punt. One chap was lying down, posing for the benefit of spectators like a refugee from Brideshead Revisited, while his companion was trying desperately to manoeuvre the vessel into open water.

His problem was that while trying to extricate it from the line of brightly coloured craft, it collided with a similar line-up tethered to the opposite bank. The space between the two rows was less than the length of the punt. Had Pythagoras been around he would have quickly devised a theorem to explain the problem.

From where I stood the punter was no expert. The more he drove the pole into the river bed, the more the punt headed in no direction – apart from the wrong one. Yet he remained calm and dignified.

My fellow observers on the bridge were offering tips. It was hardly good advice and not helped by the laughter.

After what seemed an age, the punt was pointed in what could have been the chosen direction. A muted cheer rose from the spectators. This was acknowledged by the two elegantly lifting their hats as the boat disappeared from view beneath the bridge, heading for who knows where. How very civilised. How very Oxford.

WHICH is more than could be said for two middle-aged couples as they left a book shop in St Aldate’s. Five young teenagers and a smartly dressed older woman, possibly a grandmother of someone in the group, were about to enter.

One of the boys rushed forward to open the door, motioning to his young friends to hold back until the ‘grown-ups’ left. The couples walked by without a word or a glance at the boy. No thanks. Nothing. It was hardly a good example the four adults had set.

The young doorman stuck to his task until his group was inside, leaving the woman and me on the pavement to watch the couples move off towards Carfax.

The woman, quietly seething, said such behaviour was to be expected from ‘people like that’. What did she mean?

She pointed. The men were walking on the ‘inside’, the women closest to the road.

That speaks volumes, doesn’t it?” she said.

A PRINTED sign displayed in a Walton Street shop window: ‘Wanted: Customers. No previous experience necessary’.