I’m not usually one to hold back from damning the woke and progressive forces which lie within my alma mater, the University of Cambridge. An initiative by the geography department to decolonise the study of icebergs in the Canadian north was the final straw. But there is one conservative cause that I won’t be putting my name to: saving the May Ball.
Several colleges are reported to have cancelled their balls this year in reaction to poor ticket sales and students complaining that the events are ‘extortionate, overpriced and exclusive’. Trinity college, one of the few whose balls survive, is charging £280 for a ticket. At Cambridge’s lower-rent end, Robinson college has cancelled its ball, which was to have charged £180, in favour of a more modest party which is ‘more accessible and inclusive’.
Cue outrage from some students and alumni, but you can count me out of that. Good riddance to May balls. I wasn’t exactly a left-wing student, yet I can’t say I appreciated being turfed out of my college room to clear the place so that a bunch of Hoorays on trust funds could spend a night of decadence while keeping half the town awake. I could hear May balls at 3 a.m. even when I lived five miles away.
Okay, you didn’t quite have to be on a trust fund to afford a ticket. In fact, in my first year, when I was on British Rail’s payroll as a research engineer, I bought a ticket myself to avoid having to wander the streets. But at £95 for a double ticket (that’s £270 in today’s money) it took up a whole week’s earnings. That didn’t even include dinner – dining tickets were extra – although it did include a free run of the baked potato stalls and an endless supply of Becks beer until breakfast time – which struck me as excessive even aged 20. Oh, and there was the chance to watch the then upcoming comedians Tony Slattery and Neil Mullarkey, who a couple of years earlier you could have watched at the Footlights for free.
It struck me as one of those Christmas wonderlands which promise the Earth, but ends up with a couple of shaggy reindeer in a muddy field and a miserable Santa Claus smoking a fag: it tried to offer everything and so ended up offering nothing satisfactory. I can’t speak for more recent occasions, although I understand since the 1980s, May balls have become an arms race in attracting well-known acts. And with it, ticket prices have accelerated to the point of absurdity for normal students.
I did once enjoy a May ball, though. Turfed out my college room again in third year, I decided to crash another college’s ball. It was surprisingly easy – a short hop over a wall into a dark and remarkably poorly-defended corner of the college’s gardens. It helped that the organisers were too posh to have insisted on wristbands for ball-goers, so there was no need to try to fashion one from a strip torn from an M&S bag (as I had on a previous occasion). The wall was supposed to have been painted with anti-vandal paint, but it was a hot day and had dried out.
That was fun, but for the challenge of getting in. Had I had to pay, I would have been cursing myself for paying for a ticket rather than having a cheap and cheerful meal at the Eraina tavern and spending the difference inter-railing around Europe for a month.
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