Four years ago, when I was living in London, I spent part of Paddy's Day with one of my housemates, working out with a calculator to the minute how long each of us had been alive. Since then, life has improved somewhat...
What usually happens these days in Oxford is that everyone tries to work out what they're doing well in advance. However, what actually tends to happen is that we all end up going for a curry on the Cowley Road, because we're so starving by the time we've worked out what it is we want to do on the night.
My best Paddy's day in Oxford so far was two years ago when the Woman in Ireland group here organised a fund-raising ceili with a poetry reading beforehand. The only trouble with organising the ceili was that nobody on the committee, bar one, could do any jigs and reels so the secretary called in her uncle to the rescue, Father Martin.
The week before Paddy's Day, he arrived from Reading with a ghettoblaster and a load of tapes. A living room was duly cleared for the occasion and Father Martin herded nine of us into formation, started the tape and began to shout, "Leim amach, is a haon do tri!" On the 17th, 180 people crowded into the venue. Charlie Garrigan was on the accordion. Any chance of doing the Walls of Limerick in the way we had done it a week before in practice was lost, as the melee took to the floor all at the same time. The committee tried to restore order, with not much success, but it was a wild evening all the same. We felt tired as sheepdogs by the end of the night.
Selina Guinness (27) is a D Phil student at Oxford. She has lived in England for almost five years.
