BROAD Street, the Sheldonian Theatre and Radcliffe Square had been in the grip of a film company making the latest X-Men spectacular.

It was impossible to move for cameras, lighting equipment, lorries, tents and massive cranes, while extras and the wardrobe department had turned the theatre’s hallowed hall into a sprawling changing room.

Climbing to the cupola for a view was out of the question.

That was last week. This Tuesday was vastly different. The filmmakers’ gear had gone; there was peace and calm again – that is if you accept peace includes two crocodiles of chattering Chinese visitors, cameras at the ready, French and Italian youngsters laughing and shouting noisily and countless Freshers excitedly exploring what will be their home for the next three years. What’s more, the ticket desk was open.

“Back to normal?” I suggested to the receptionist.

Not really, she explained, pointing to a notice on the front of her desk. Scaffolding was now dominating the theatre floor. Chandeliers, installed in the 1960s and frequently subject to criticism from those sitting in the gallery at concerts, were being removed to be replaced by something “more in keeping with Christopher Wren’s original colour scheme of 1726”. Surely not a return to candles! All will be revealed by mid-November The thought of workmen banging around below made climbing those steps to the top of the building less attractive. Still, there’s always another day.

l WHILE on the subject of scaffolding, only the unobservant would have missed the extraordinary amount adorning buildings old and new. One could be forgiven for believing the dreaming spires et al were in terminal decay.

The subject was raised by two middle-aged Canadian visitors with their elderly trilby-hatted host waiting in the queue at a Covered Market café. Had age and pollution taken their toll? Were priceless buildings in danger?

“It's nothing like that,” he said with a superior air, dismissing such thoughts with a cheerful wave of the hand. “It’s just that everybody is rushing to get work done before VAT goes up in the new year.”

He sounded so convincing I was almost prepared to believe the explanation.

l LATER, walking past the polythene adorned Christ Church Meadow Tower I turned along the pathway that flanks the rugby pitches. A dozen young lads, probably no older than eight or nine, recognisable by their Magdalen College School rugger strip, were getting down to the serious business of learning how to ruck or ride a heavy tackle.

I was not the only spectator. A handful of visitors from the West Midlands admired the boys’ enthusiasm.

“That little chap wearing the scrum cap looks as if he could charge down a brick wall,” said one man before going on to tell me of his past rugby triumphs.

Fine – just as long as it’s not one of Oxford’s historic walls.