It's summer. Oriel sub dean Alexander Ewing is not sure that he really likes it

As anyone attempting to walk down the High Street will already know, we have entered a new season on the Oxford calendar. The last of the Oxford undergraduates have filtered out, replaced by hordes of student groups still unaware of pavement protocol.

Always strolling at least three abreast, they are clueless that, unjust or not, cyclists dominate this city, no matter the season.

Yet sneaking through the passages either side of the University Church is no longer remotely possible, thanks to the flashy tourist information point the council installed right in front of the entrance to Catte Street.

The colleges are equally rammed. They metamorphose from academic institutions to conference facilities in under six hours.

Out go the students by noon and the beds are full that night.

The poor porters on duty that day deserve a double ration of rum.

Like many colleges, our summer population tends to hail from American shores.

They arrive with hoodies displaying the institution from which they originate — Amherst, UCLA or Northern Idaho State —and by the time they depart, are covered in every conceivable sort of Oxford branding, ready to strut back home.

Those who remain college-bound during summer months adjust accordingly by fleeing to the Bodleian, once again a place for scholarly refuge, pleasantly empty of speed-reading finalists.

We must try to avoid sweeping national stereotypes, but even the most tolerant college resident cannot help remarking on the increased noise levels. Why visit your new friends when you can shout at them across the quad?

Last year was worse.

So intense was the late-night gossiping and giggling under my window that, at my request, the programme organisers put a sign out by my staircase.

Apparently it read “shh, scholars at work”, encouraging our head porter to remove it on the grounds that it implied I was any sort of scholar. He is a true gent.

The problem is that as junior dean I am powerless when it comes to the summer school lot.

College inexplicably relaxes the rules I spend nine months painstakingly enforcing.

Quiet hours only begin at midnight, the quad lawns now strewn with sunbathers.

Exasperated, I send out my deputy — the part-time junior dean — to try to restore order.

Since one of our full-time junior deans swapped his post for a tour in Afghanistan (were our undergrads really that unbearable?), the deputy is keen to impress, hopeful that in my powers as ‘senior junior dean’, I will recommend him for a commission.

In case I do not check the deans’ email account every 15 minutes, he is there to inform me of goings-on. He can never attend too many training courses (and tell everyone else about them).

I worry my position is under threat. I suspect he also has sights set on writing for Quad Talk, especially after I told him Christopher Gray invited me to join him and Rosemarie for dinner next time he reviews Raymond Blanc’s Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons.

Easily envious, my deputy has no appreciation of what it took to get here.