I kept noticing this decidedly cool bar a little way down the Cowley Road. With fairy-lights strung across its wooden terrace and ‘Bigfoot’ scrawled in playful letters across the glass, it seemed slightly out of place on Cowley Road.
We all know that Oxford can feel like a bubble. Every day brings new challenges and new deadlines, to the extent that a week can pass in an instant and there is just no time to peek outside of the blinkered existence of tutorials and the occasional pub trip. But this tunnel vision can become restrictive, and even self-perpetuating.
Recently, I found myself marooned in that most demoralising of places, the NHS waiting list. I was soon falling down the rabbit hole of catastrophisation, after succumbing to the inevitable temptation of googling my symptoms (it wasn’t looking good).
Award winning co-creator of The Office and Extras, Stephen Merchant is embarking on his first everstand-up comedy tour. I got in touch to discuss returning to the stage, service station cuisine, and playdates with Johnny Depp.
The Oxford Hub has begun a project to convert 16-17 Turl Street, a building which has been left unused for two years, into a bar and restaurant; the profits of which will feed back into social enterprise projects in the local community