Actually rather nice...
First of all, I did my undergraduate degree at Oxford. I have never worn tweed, and most of the people I met there were a good laugh. However, if anyone wants to make some sweeping generalisation about Oxbridge, far be it from me to stop them.

Anyway, in 1845 a 'Merkin (I think he was from Kentucky) visited the college. He was horrified that when he tried to order a "mint julep" after dinner, the barman had no idea what he was on about. He consequently left a nice big endowment so that everyone in college could have a mint julep once a year.*
Consequently, every year on June 1st, several big trestle tables are set up outside the dinner hall and everyone gets a pre-dinner drink.

Two important things to note:
- there are two dinner sittings at this college
- the college staff have a few themselves while setting up, so they're unlikely to spot you coming round again. And again. And again.

By my second year, we'd discovered that if you rush early dinner, you can get approximately eight of these in before they clear up, which is useful knowledge indeed for a poor student such as myself.

Incidentally, the camp 'n' tweedy lot drank the endowment dry in the 1920's, but the college approached the descendants in the 80's and said "this was nice, everyone in England loved you guys because of it, why not renew the endowment?" and they did. Suckers!

* A mint julep is a mizx of bourbon, mint, crushed ice and sugary water. Depending on the mix it can be utterly foul or quite nice. And until I bothered looking for the linked Wikipedia article, I had no idea it had prompted the invention of the drinking straw. The silver/pewter cup bit is bollocks, though.
(/tweed)
(user_requested_deletion, Thu 28 Jul 2005, 15:50, Reply)