Dear Jolie,

The accompanying article may be of interest to JCR members.

I have also e-mailed it to the Merton Webmaster, for appending to the time-ceremony web-page.

Incidentally, that page has a couple of misprints: in the same paragraph, it should say "passim" instead of "passing", and "To Good Old Times!" instead of "To Good Old Time!"

      A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE TIME CEREMONY

The first Time Ceremony of the modern era was in 1971.

It was at the end of a three-and-a-half-year experimental period during which Greenwich Mean Time had been put in abeyance, under the British Summer Time Act 1968.

Invitations had been sent out "to take port around the sundial in Fellows' Garden, at 2.45am for 3.00am passim."

Only five people attended, all in full academic dress.

There were two toasts: "To a good old time!" and "Long live the counter-revolution!"

Just before 3.00am, we moved to the Tower of the Four Orders at the South side of Fellows Quad. At 3.00am, we all walked backwards and anti-clockwise round the Quad. After a few circuits, some of us had a rest under the Tower.

About half-way through the hour, one of us left: he had an essay that he had to finish by morning!

With only four of us now remaining, we continued, two resting and two walking, until just before the end of the hour, when we all walked round together.

In those years, there was scaffolding on the South side of the Quad. It was useful for putting the port bottles on while we were walking. At the end, we climbed up the scaffolding (mostly using the ladders), and left the empty bottles neck-down in the highest scaffolding-poles.

Over the next few years, there were a few more people. There was no publicity for the ceremony, apart from word of mouth.

Many second- or third-years would come to the ceremony and say that they had heard of it the previous year, but had assumed that it was a joke and that nobody would turn up.

In those years, we always made the Quad as dark as possible, removing the light-bulb from over the entrance to Fellows V, and we always spoke in whispers. There were plenty of bedrooms around the Quad, and we did not want to disturb anyone.

As numbers increased, it became more difficult to keep the noise down.

Twiglets were introduced in 1973, by Jonathan Madden.

For a short time, a Romish influence brought both candles and twirling.

Most of us particularly disapproved of twirling, as unseemly and dangerous. It was mostly abandoned when I published the admonition "Remember that you are at a walk, not a dance."

With candles, there was no point in removing light-bulbs. Unfortunately, candles dripped wax onto the path, which the College later found difficult to remove.

In 198 , the JCR, which until then had either ignored the ceremony or regarded it as a nuisance, completely changed tack and officially promoted the ceremony.

I remember coming into the JCR bar that evening and seeing a blackboard on the bar saying something like "Get your time ceremony kit here. One bottle of college port and one candle, only £"

That year, attendance jumped from a few dozen to well over a hundred. It has been well over a hundred ever since (it is always very difficult to make an accurate count, in the bad lighting, with nearly everyone looking the same in the distance, and with some overtaking).

Before then, it was easy to meet almost everyone. From that year on, it has become less friendly, with people mostly staying with those they already know.

In particular, there was less contact between ex-members and current members of college.

From the next year on, relatively few ex-members of college attended.

In the early years, we always went back to someone's room for coffee.

If you see a hooded stranger, please don't hesitate to offer him a cup of coffee. We're too proud to ask, but not too proud to accept!

Very few Fellows have attended.

One Fellow, Tom Braun, actually had rooms in Fellows III, and once invited "a few" people for hot soup afterwards. This continued for several years, first there and later in Kybald-street.

Only one professional poet has ever attended (Adrian Henry).

After a few years, candles were discontinued, perhaps because of objections from the College.

In the early years, there were always a few non-Mertonians. But they have been officially banned by the college and the JCR ever since an incident in 1992 when someone was injured (does anyone know the details of that?)

Standards of dress have remained high. Those few attending improperly dressed have nearly always had a good reason (usually forgetfulness!): after all, anyone who wants to stay up and take part in such a traditional ceremony is hardly likely to want to make some point by being wrongly dressed.

Squares (mortar-boards) and caps, however, have in recent years been brought by progressively fewer people. I am told that there is an urban myth that undergraduates may only carry them, and not wear them. This is not true. Wear them in good health (especially if it is raining)!

Hoods are worn by graduates. Post-graduate hoods have coloured silk trimmings, which do not show up well in the dark: so some people (myself included) deliberately do not "take" the degrees we are entitled to, so that we can continue to wear the highly visible rabbit-fur of the BA hood.

With the increase in numbers, the South side of the Quad has become rather crowded, and a lot of people now take their rests at the Fitzjames Arch, in the North-East corner.

Spectators, totally undressed (except for clothes), also congregate under the Fitzjames Arch. At first, they were rather noisy, but more recently they seem to watch almost in silence. I have never understood why these people take the trouble to stay awake for two hours so that they can then stand still in the cold for an hour and watch something that they presumably disapprove of.

Surprisingly for the end of October, the weather has nearly always been good. Very light rain occurs perhaps one year in five. I can remember only one year of heavy rain.

There is often a light mist over Christ Church Meadow. One year, the mist rolled right up to the College, and one ex-member of college was seen appearing out of the mist, as he climbed in.

Ex-members nowadays simply wait by the late-gate, for someone with a "key" (is that what the young people call it?) to let them in. In the early years, however, very few people used the late-gate. If I arrived after midnight, I would knock on the JCR window and get someone to let me in from the inside. Other ex-members would use their own favourite ways of climbing in.

The scaffolding is an obstruction that has gradually moved round the Quad, and eventually out of it. Different generations remember the obstruction in different places, and can point and say, as one John Law once wrote in Postmaster: "When I took Schools, the scaffolding reached there, but not yet there."

The hedge by the Hall is now the obstruction. In the early years, we took no notice of it. But it has steadily grown larger. In my opinion, it is now a serious hazard to traffic, and it should be cut back.

The basic ceremony has remained the same as it was the first time.

The first toast has varied between "To a good old time!" and "To good old times!".

The second toast has never varied.

There have been two "sandwich" toasts (between the first and the second). In 1984, the sundial was missing: it had been removed for repair after being injured after (I believe) a rugby club dinner. So we had the extra toast "To absent sundials!" And in 2000, there was the extra toast "To the number two!" Obviously, there will be a similar, but not identical, toast in the year 3000.

There will be another extra toast in 2003, the year of the eleventy-first anniversary of the birth of JRR Tolkien: this will be the subject of a separate e-mail.

I hope that other participants will e-mail their own memories of the time ceremony.

The time ceremony is of course the opening plenary session of the annual Merton Conference on Temporal Engineering.

This year's (2001) will be the XXXIst Conference.

Undergraduates should feel free to invite their tutors to make presentations at any of the conference's five Working Groups (History, Philosophy, Physiology, Science, and Lyric Poetry).

Barry Press (1968)
Keeper of the Watch

ADDENDUM (2009)

In 2002, the Time Ceremony was described by Jeremy Paxman, introducing the Merton team in University Challenge.

In 2003, there was indeed an extra toast: Tolkien's greeting "Elen síla lúmenn' omentielvo!" (A star shines on the hour of our meeting!).

In 2006, the Sundial Lawn had been recently re-turfed, and the College would not allow anyone onto it, and so that year there were two ceremonies, the "real" ceremony with only nine people present (on the path by the sundial), and a duplicate ceremony on the Chestnut Lawn for everyone else.

That year, we saw for the first time the extraordinary sight of Fellows Quad almost empty of people, except for a huge traffic jam on the North side, with no apparent cause: the result of a "shock wave" caused by excessive speed.

In 2006-7, there was an extra toast based Virgil's phrase "vestigia retro sequor" ("I follow the fotsteps backwards"), but this was not considered a success.

In 2007, for safety, glass bottles were banned inside Fellows Quad (though not at the sundial) for the first time: glasses had been banned several years earlier.

In recent years, circulation in the Quad has been much faster and more hectic than it used to be. The modern generation does not seem to have the same innate skill and grace at walking backwards as the old-timers had. Perhaps the JCR should arrange a practice session, during Freshers' Week, or just before matriculation?

Last year (2008), a new toast was added (between the original two): "O tempora! O more!" (O times! O mulberry tree!). It is intended that this addition will be permanent, increasing the standard number of toasts from two to three. Consequently, the first toast will take place slightly earlier than hitherto.

Long live the counter-revolution!

B.P.