THE MERTON TIME CEREMONY

The Merton Time Ceremony has no spiritual or recreational element like other Oxford ceremonies; nor is it an artificial ceremony conferring status on those who participate. It is a purely temporal and ephemeral ceremony, first held in its current form in AD1971, although it is believed to have much earlier origins, possibly in the form of an ancient Celtic autumnal ceremony. It is designed to remedy the ill effects of man's abrupt interference with the diurnal cycle.

It is performed during the hour each autumn in which the clocks in the United Kingdom return to Greenwich Mean Time. Although this is normally referred to as the hour in which the clocks are "put back", those who perform in the ceremony prefer to think of the hour as that in which the clocks "stand still". For, although it is difficult to accept the notion that time can go backwards, and even more so to accept that it can suddenly leap backwards, it is quite natural to visualise time slowing down eventually to zero.

During that hour the participants walk anticlockwise, in relays, around some suitably large horizontal area, which has, for reasons of convenience, always been Fellows' Quadrangle in Merton College, Oxford. The purpose and effect of this is to create a localised area in which natural time stands still for one hour, in the hope that into this void of depressed natural time thus created will flow sufficient natural time from other areas to nearly equalise civil time throughout the country within one revolution of the Earth, thus reducing by several seconds the time it would otherwise take nature and mankind to re-adapt their diurnal cycle after an abrupt "stationary jet-lag".

The ceremony is traditionally hosted by the Keeper of the Watch sending out invitations for the following Sunday "to take port around the sundial in Fellows' Garden at 1.30am for 2.00am passim". Accordingly at about 1.30am on the Sunday morning the participants congregate around the sundial, port is poured and introductions are made. There are traditionally two toasts, the first at 1.50am "To Good Old Times!", or "To a Good Old Time!", the second at 1.55am being "Long Live the Counter-revolution!!"

Despite the wording of the invitations there is no circumperambulation in Fellows' Garden. After the second toast the participants leave the sundial and walk the 53 yards to the Tower of the Four Orders at the middle of the south side of Fellows' Quadrangle. At 2.00am precisely, according to the Keeper of the Watch, the participants walk backwards and anti-clockwise around the quadrangle. Initially everyone does so, each person completing two circuits, and the senior participants three or four, before stopping. Throughout the hour, participants make further circuits at their leisure, but ensuring that there are always at least two people maintaining the counter-revolution. Immediately before the end of the hour, those not already walking embark upon a final circuit so as to be walking when the hour is up.

It is not in principle essential to walk backwards. This is done partly to increase the solemnity of the occasion and partly because when one walks in a circle, one sees where one is going sooner if one walks backwards, but chiefly because it has always seemed the obvious thing to do.

Dress for the occasion is full academic dress: for men, that is dark suit, white shirt, white bow-tie, black shows, gown and square. Graduates wear hoods: this is indeed one of only four occasions on the University calendar on which hoods are worn.

Some words of advice for Freshers

• Be quiet. The ceremony is impressive and effective by virtue of its hushedness. Noisiness would turn it into a rather ordinary occasion. If imperative, whisper loudly rather than talk softly (ideally do neither) and remember that people are trying to sleep.
• Do not carry full glasses of port while walking. Port will spill onto your hand making an already cold hand colder. When you need a refill, stop at the Tower, or on approach of the Tower hand your glass to an onlooker who will walk faster to the other side of the Tower and there fill your glass, returning it to you as you pass.
• If you must carry candles, a practice disapproved of by real old-timers since the quadrangle should be kept as solemn as possible, do not let the wax drip on the ground unless you intend to clear it up afterwards.
• Do not walk on the grass.
• Keep well to the right as you pass the archway into Front Quadrangle, so as not to walk backwards into the bushes.
• Twirling at the corners has recently become fashionable, though it is unseemly and should be discouraged. Remember that you are at a walk not a dance.

The Theory of the Merton Time Ceremony

Attempts to produce a rigorous theoretical explanation of the effects of physical rotation on natural time have so far been comprehensively unsuccessful.

Current research favours the idea that, just as physical matter is composed of particles, so time is composed of elementary objects called chronicles. Two sorts of chronicle have so far been discovered, provisionally named the quick and the quock.

Particles can be either virtual or real; chronicles can be either free or bound to a particle. A particle can only exist if bound to a chronicle. A free chronicle can be visualised as an event waiting for somewhere to happen.

Naturally chronicles exist in two "spin states", clockwise and anticlockwise. These states behave identically except in a gravitational field. In our particular section of the Universe, all chronicles exist in a clockwise spin state.

Chronicles, unlike particles, are exceptionally sensitive to gravity. Therefore free chronicles will fall, while virtual particles will float.

A sufficiently strong current of angular momentum anticlockwise relative to gravitational field lines reduces the effective binding energy of chronicles, freeing some chronicles completely. The freed chronicles migrate down the gravitational field lines where they are either trapped by virtual particles below the angular momentum current or collect in a cloud supported by negative degenerate chronicle pressure, but the virtual particles float, capturing chronicles from adjacent existing particles, thus producing a chronicle-deficit shockwave which radiates horizontally from the source of angular momentum.

If the current is turned on suddenly, maintained steadily, and turned off suddenly, the shockwave will be square. If it is maintained for long enough, statistical fluctuations will even out, and every particle will cease to exist for the same amount of time. Natural time will thus have been delayed.

Probably.