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| Sunday, 12 June 2005 |
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Student life in an alien word : Pushing the punt out by Jeevani Mantotta Summertime in England is fun. Everyone gets
infected with a kind of collective madness as they see the sun after so
many months and they all rush off to spend as much time outside as they
possibly can. The sun shines, the flowers are in bloom and its finally
warm enough to go
The day after our exams finished, it was beautiful and sunny, so we did what every student really wants to do when it's hot. We went punting. In keeping with tradition we went to the covered market and bought some (cheap) food and something to drink (you can get very dehydrated on a boat, taking lots of water is important). Then we piled into the college punt and went down the river, away from town. A punt is a large flat bottomed boat, which holds up to six people. They lie quite low in the water, are broad enough for two people to sit (cosily) side by side, and are quite difficult to capsize. There's usually four seats, with thin waterproof cushions in the middle and space enough for one person on either end. All of which makes them ideal for students to gad about in. The punt is propelled using a long pole. You shove the pole into the river until it touches the bottom (the Cherwell is not very deep, although sometimes it can surprise you by swallowing up the whole length of the pole) and then push. As a method of locomotion, it's not very fast, but then, you don't punting for the speed. The pole also doubles as the rudder. I never got the hang of it and always ended up ploughing into the stinging nettles on the bank. My friends got annoyed with that and banned me from manning the pole, so I had to sit down and relax all the way instead (tee hee hee). Every so often you get a particularly muddy patch at the bottom of the river and your punting pole gets stuck in the goop. Seasoned punters know to let go of the pole. If you keep a hold of it, the punt glides away, and you end up in the middle river, wrapped around the pole looking very silly indeed. At the weekends it's not unusual to see whole families out for a punting picnic. The tourists tend to hire punts from near Magdalen Bridge and explore the area near town, whilst the students and locals tend to use the Cherwell boathouse further out of town and punt down to the pub for lunch. At Oxford, we punt from the bow of the boat, so that the rest of the boat is ahead of you, whilst in Cambridge they punt standing on the box at the stern, with the boat behind them. And of course, each University claims that their way is the best. |
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out
wearing less than four layers of clothing. The only trouble is, whilst
everyone else is soaking up the sunshine, most of us poor students are in
the library, cramming for the end of year exams. 
