Oxford is a place of hidden noises. Late at night, cycling through once-cobbled streets, scuttling behind the backs of colleges, there is often the faint hum of choir singers behind stained glass or instruments frantically being learnt.

The young hours of weekend mornings reveal shouts and breaking glass from freshers newly adorning Cornmarket.

There are – if you listen very carefully – the hidden sounds of dusty book pages turning and mantras of newly learnt facts uttered under breath as students cram for exams. Oxford is a space for hidden noises.

Yet for all the late-night freshers, irate bus-drivers and dawn-dwelling bin-men, Oxford isn’t really a place for shouting.

You whisper in cloistered corners. You hush other people in libraries. You say sorry – a lot – elbowing your way around Tesco on Magdalen Street. But you rarely shout. That’s not the Oxford way.

However, I was speaking with a friend recently who has a solution for our Oxford hush.

A small place in Sweden called Flogsta has a shouting vigil every night.

If you YouTube “Flogsta shouting” you will stumble across a dark video with little light-filled windows, from which come screams and shouts of various pitches and volumes. The residents there apparently let off steam by screaming into the night each evening at 10pm.

There is controversy over how the tradition started – some say it is merely a stress reliever while others say it commemorates a student who committed suicide in the 1970s – but there does not seem to be controversy over the act itself. It’s perfectly acceptable.

Can you imagine this being allowed in Oxford?

It’s just not the British way, is it? All of our pent-up aggression being spilled on to the street is just not OK.

The neighbours would hear our woes, our fears, our ecstasies. Heaven forbid.

No, no – much better to passive aggressively mutter, “thank you!” and tut, because somebody failed to acknowledge your door-holding skills. That’s the Oxford way.