Saturday 11th April 2026
Blog Page 1006

Not so supertrees after all

Joe Morford
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Not so supertrees after all

In the final episode of David Attenborough’s Planet Earth II, after a depressing presentation of the disasters which befall living organisms on account of our cities, the focus shifted to a bright hope of a green future for urban environments. We were presented with the world’s first ‘vertical forests’ in Milan, two residential towers housing trees on their balconies. Next we saw the green infrastructure of the city of Singapore, with ‘supertrees’—artificial solar-powered structures—packed with plants, providing niches for thousands of animals and allowing life to return to the city.

The reversal these changes represented initially filled me with a warm glow of hope, and began to dissolve my despair over our species’ destructive effect.  However, I have come to believe that these great plans for a green urban future are no substitute for traditional methods of saving and sustaining the natural world.

The first issue with growing trees on skycrapers is the large amount of concrete that must be produced to support the weight of a tree. Producing this concrete is likely to release more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than the tree will ever absorb. This doesn’t sound very green. Equally damning is the fact that the biology of a tree is far from conducive to living on a skyscraper. Where will roots grow on top of a building? Also, the exposure to the elements several hundred feet in the air is orders of magnitude greater than it is on the ground. The oxygen concentration is lower, the wind speeds are greater, and the sun is dazzling. The only organisms able to live at such heights are birds of prey. While it is true that the trees are being selected for their hardiness and receive botanical care, I predict they will neither grow very much, nor survive long. This is not the way to increase green spaces in cities.

The ‘supertrees’ of Singapore do not suffer as many of the flaws as the vertical forests of Milan, although they too struggle to counterbalance the carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere in producing their giant concrete trunks. With their great swathes of solar panels, they are more likely to have a net positive effect in terms of atmospheric levels of greenhouse gases. They also collect rainwater and act as air venting ducts for nearby conservatories. Yet, costing millions to construct and taking up valuable space within the city, they are not a realistic solution to the problems of modern cities. Admittedly they are a great tourist attraction and spectacle, increasing awareness of environmental problems, but the solutions to these problems lie elsewhere.

These two projects have the right intention but the wrong execution. The large-scale return of life to our cities by creating alternative environments and niches is an unrealistic goal.  Instead we should reduce the environmental impact of cities. Reducing waste or exploiting it for other uses, reducing the air, noise, and light pollution of our cities, and preventing further expansion are better and more achievable goals, helping to protect the wildlife which still exists outside our cities. Rather than attempting to improve what has already been destroyed, we should strive to preserve what nature we have left.

Recipe: an alternative pizza experience

Sam Purnell
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Recipe: an alternative pizza experience

Everyone loves pizza. It’s the best comfort food there is, and with so many options for takeaway pizza in Oxford, from Domino’s to Pizza Hut to the myriad of places on Deliveroo, it’s often inevitable that you end up eating at least one unhealthy and expensive pizza a week. So to try and save both your waistlines and wallets, we’ve got this simple and tasty recipe that still allows you to get all that pizza goodness in your life. Although we have suggested some healthier ingredients here, beyond the basic foundation of cheese and tomato, the pizza is highly customisable so feel free to load it with all your favourite toppings.

Ingredients:

1 store-bought refrigerator pizza crust
4 large tomatoes, thinly sliced
A handful cherry tomatoes, halved
1 large courgette, thinly sliced using a peeler
1 large red bell pepper, sliced
25g mozzarella, torn into pieces
1 garlic clove, finely chopped
1 tbsp olive oil
2 tbsp chopped parsley, to serve (Optional)

SERVES 2

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 240C/ fan 220C/gas 9 or the highest setting.

2. Unroll your store-bought pizza crust and place on a baking tray. Prick the pizza base with a fork before topping.

3. Spread the sliced tomato on the base to within about 2cm of the edges.

4. Arrange the cherry tomatoes, bell pepper, and courgettes over the top, and then scatter with the mozzarella

5. Scatter the garlic over the top of this.

6. Drizzle evenly with the oil to allow the pizza to crisp up more in the oven.

7. Bake the pizza on the middle shelf for 10-15 minutes or until crisp and golden around the edges. Check that the base is crisp and then take out the oven and place on a heatproof tray.

8. Scatter with the parsley to taste and serve.

If you’re feeling adventurous and want to try your hand at making the pizza dough, here is a little guide for you…

Ingredients:

100g each strong white and strong wholewheat flour
1 tsp or 7g sachet easy-blend dried yeast
125ml warm water

Method:

1. Mix the flours and yeast with a pinch of salt by hand or with a whisk.

2. Pour in the water and mix to a soft dough, then work for around 5 minutes to allow the dough to firm up.

3. Remove the dough and roll out on a lightly floured surface to a round about 30cm across. Lift onto an oiled baking sheet.

4. Add the toppings at this stage.

5. Leave to rise for 20 minutes and then bake the pizza.

Home is where the art is—Doug Eaton and The Forest of Dean

Ewan Davis
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Home is where the art is—Doug Eaton and The Forest of Dean

Coming from the Forest of Dean, I am well used to looking at trees. Doug Eaton, also from the Forest, seems to be used to looking at trees, too. However, he reinvents them in a way so vibrant and fresh, that the landscapes he paints, through the colours he uses, seem alien.

Yet if you were to inspect the landscapes he takes his inspiration from, in the bursts of light between trunks, in the glisten of damp leaves, or the shadows in the bracken, these colours can be found. There is a believability in his paintings—remarkable when, with the palettes he uses, he veers on loosing such a cohesive and natural image, avoiding making something rather ‘tacky’ and ‘pop-arty’.

Doug’s style chases after what he terms as a “painterly style”, not afraid for the material to show the subject. It seems to be not just about simple depiction, but rather a deep evocation of place.

The landscapes he chooses are often places that have been previously industrialised, remains of a mining past. It is perhaps nice to think areas that were once sooty and black have now, through nature and human creativity, become colourful new environs.

As an artist, by depicting the locale of a relatively isolated community that doesn’t have much access to big galleries or a professional art scene, he does a remarkable thing in inspiring many to look at the landscape they live within in different lights, and from different perspectives.

Food diary: why we all should cook more

Kanak Shah
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Food diary: why we all should cook more

Every year, New Year’s food resolutions start promisingly yet many tend to dwindle rapidly. After the maelstrom year that was 2016, one can understand the desire to move into a completely new time, marked by an even firmer resolution. With a firmer resolution, however, comes a steeper slide back into old food habits. Perhaps 2017 is the year to try a new kind of resolution: forget trying to control what you eat, try cooking instead.

Among many of the greats lost in 2016 was that giant of all food critics, A. A. Gill, whose thorny humour and characteristically piercing critique granted him a place at the top of the food chain. A recovered alcoholic, Gill found cooking a sort of therapy—“four and 20 black thoughts baked in a pie”. As with much of his writing, this assessment seems to hit the nail on the head, especially when it comes to New Year’s resolutions for 2017 which seek to move away from the black mess that was the year before.

From working one’s way through a hefty cookbook, to conquering Buzzfeed Food, there’s plenty to do. Whether you aspire to be a dab hand at patisserie, or just an expert at microwave mug cakes, having a personal cooking goal for the year can be as serious or as casual as you want it to be.

All resolutions require some motivation in order to be kept up: this year, in memory of a true jewel in the crown of British television, I say we put those familiar Bake Off induced hunger pangs to good use. Cooking programmes dominate the TV scene at all times of year, and are one of the best ways to learn how to cook.

Whilst being a year of lows for the world, 2016 was happily punctuated by many highs in the world of British cookery television. The winners of both Masterchef and the Great British Bake Off, Jane Devonshire and Candice Brown, were incredibly entertaining to watch—if the latter was divisive, she was arguably just as endearing as the former. This year-long presence of achievements in and ideas about food on TV is constant motivation to cook, whereas the January ‘clean-eating’ craze usually quickly falters.

New Year’s resolutions seek to leave behind bad habits and memories. But a sudden change can be challenging, not to mention a change in something so fundamental as food. The best way to leave behind a bad time is to have a good one, and there’s a reason that food is at the centre of social life. Paying more attention to, and taking more enjoyment from something as everyday and communal as cooking might be much more fun than an often solitary diet resolution. Ultimately, making a resolution about cooking will end up changing how we eat.

Brandon Flowers: “Nobody ever had a dream round here'”

Henry Shalders
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Brandon Flowers: “Nobody ever had a dream round here'”

Not many people know the best moment in their life. I know mine. 2013, Wembley Stadium, when The Killers played their first stadium concert.

As the sun set on 80,000 people on that sultry Saturday night, a show began long on emotion, short on patience, as Brandon Flowers, the band’s lead singer and frontman pulled out every stop for a gig that defined his career. After a mesmeric three hour performance he got in a taxi, drove to the Islington Garage Club and did it all again. That takes commitment.

Brandon Flowers is a curiously reclusive figure in a pop age that valorises the extrovert. He broke-through in 2003, first in the UK and later the US, with ‘Mr Brightside’. Since then he’s released four studio albums with The Killers, and two solo works. Worldwide he’s sold about 22 million albums, is described by Elton John as one of the most inspirational musicians of this century, and has performed before the British Royal family.

Oh, and The Killers’ charity Christmas singles have raised over $1 million dollars for the HIV charity RED. Actions speak louder than words and Flowers may shake before he appears on national television, but he’s a man as driven as he is creative.

Commercially Flowers is big. Culturally he is well known. Musically he is respected. But he has never received the status he deserves as a wordsmith in the Lennon-Jagger tradition. His songs are powerful, political and pertinent, transcending his Las Vegan heritage. They present a clarity of thought and certainty of value increasingly unusual in our post-truth world.

Hot Fuss was his electrifying debut, ‘Mr Brightside’ now a dance-floor classic of every club. Like everywhere. The indie soft rock, auto-tuned vocals, and missionary lyrics about ‘destiny’ were immediately popular. “I must have performed that song a thousand times and I still don’t get bored of it,” Flowers told Zane Lowe in 2013. Nor does any club DJ I’ve ever heard.

Sam’s Town, Hot Fuss’ 2006 sequel, was the album where Flowers truly found his voice. He wasn’t bashful about it either. The Nevadan claimed it was “one of the best albums in the past twenty years”, that it would be “the album that keeps rock & roll afloat.”

The critics disagreed, with Rolling Stone delivering a miserly two-star rating. It was a radical and, many argued, unnecessary departure from The Killers globally successful debut. But if you listen to Sam’s Town, and I mean really listen, you understand what Flowers is on about. It’s an American masquerade about hope, success and failure. “Nobody ever had a dream round here” is the framing-opening lyric from the title track, a nostalgic throw-back to Flower’s tragic youth surrounded by gambling addicts in a rundown suburb of Las Vegas.

Sam’s Town takes its name from the casino across the road from where Flowers grew up. The tracks together form a biographical narrative of self-reflection. ‘This River is Wild’ is a cry of the tribulations of faith, ‘Uncle Jonny’ about watching your best friend break down, ‘When You Were Young’ a classic Springsteenrock song about dating the wrong girl.The manifesto song for the album ‘Read my Mind,’ is Flowers’ essay on the American Dream. “I never really gave up on/ Breakin’ out of this two-star town/I got the green light/I got a little fight/ I’m gonna turn this thing around”—aspiration courses through the bridging-guitar crescendo. I could go on, but that’s beside the point.

Individually the songs are great to listen to, but the album succeeds because it coheres so perfectly. This is the antonym to beige pop, the kind of thing that should keep Ed Sheeran awake at night. Flowers writes soul music in the original meaning of the term. Biblical in its reach, epic in its subject matter, the lyrics resonate the harsh non-conformist value system of Flowers’ Nevadan upbringing. “Decades disappear like sinking ships/ God gives us hope,” Flowers shouts in ‘A Dustland Fairytale’, the raw emotion of self-denial trilling through the cadences of that bitter-sweet symphony. God and religion are present in much of Flowers writing, highly unusual in an age in which secularism is writ-large across pop culture.

More than a musical mastermind Flowers is an indie rock fashion icon, an old-school practitioner of Las Vegas haute-pop-couture. In an era of fashion neurosis on stage, where Harry Styles is feted for donning a blank t-shirt and Chris Martin’s rent-a-sticker guitar becomes a cultural symbol, Flowers remains stubbornly gaudy. America’s synthrock cowboy, he’s worn everything from a Dior feathered epaulette jacket to lavish quantities of eye mascara. Flowers remains a vigilant 80s New Romantic revivalist, an unashamedly ostentatious showman.

“I’ve gone through life white-knuckled…” Flowers opens ‘Flesh and Bone’ the breakout track of The Killers fourth album Battle Born. This is music with a diaristic quality, a haunting resonance and melodic variance so out of step with contemporary synth-pop. It’s music which echoes Flowers’ life story; about succeeding in the face of adversity and fighting for what you believe in.

Together his oeuvre forms a go-to lyric book replete with every mode of human emotion and experience. The man is a genius and it’s time he is recognised as such.

Review: Bowie’s Lazarus

Julia Alsop
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Review: Bowie’s Lazarus

3 STARS

It was really no surprise that Lazarus, the musical composed by David Bowie and Enda Walsh, sold out in a matter of hours when it debuted on Broadway in 2014. Even less surprising is the gravity it then held after Bowie’s death, as his final musical gift following his iconic career. There was further excitement still, when in November 2016, the show crossed the Atlantic for a three-month spell at the King’s Cross Theatre.

Bowie famously starred as the humanoid alien, Thomas Jerome Newton, in the film adaptation of Walter Tevis’ The Man Who Fell to Earth. Originally seeking water for his own planet from Earth, Newton amasses great wealth but is eventually discovered as an alien and experimented on by the American government. Lazarus follows on from the film, with Michael C. Hall (of Dexter fame) taking on Newton, drinking his days away on gin, broken, and unable to return home.

Obviously, Bowie’s music—both much-loved classics and songs written especially for Lazarus—was the focal point of the show. However, with twenty songs in less than two hours and a complicated plot, it was more like a musical concert with an obscured storyline.

That being said, the music itself was fantastic: covers of classic Bowie songs such as ‘Changes’ were not just emulations, they were reimagined for the performer. Bowie played a big part in the casting, and in creating the fresh interpretations of his own music. The 15 year-old Sophia Anne Caruso particularly stood out as The Girl, an ethereal character whose mature, clear vocals and complete innocence of character contrasted brilliantly to Michael C. Hall’s depraved Thomas Newton.

The use of a screen in the centre of the stage was effective. It was used in a variety of ways: to show live close-ups of characters lying on the floor, to add depth to the stage, and to show scenes from the original film, with characters on stage mirroring similar events. This was brilliant design on the otherwise minimalistic stage: not just for the practical reason that a large theatre can swallow up finer details of a performance, but also as a creative way to add to the hallucinatory theme of the show.

The plot has received a lot of mixed reviews from critics. I found that, leaving the theatre, I was totally unable to explain what I had seen to anybody. The production was hard to follow, and some of the more climactic moments towards the end were weakened because the logic of what led to that moment was unclear.

Similarly, the incorporation of characters from the original The Man Who Fell to Earth seemed to have no real purpose besides novelty, and it deviated from the primary impetus of the storyline. However, with Newton as the protagonist in a delusional mental state, the confusing plot is ultimately a reflection of his mind: and what could be more Bowie than a psychedelic, and equally unfathomable character?

SPRING PRINTS

Natasha McCabe
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SPRING PRINTS

This week, Anoushka styled Ebere in colourful prints for some vibrant spring inspiration to lift you out of any January gloom.

Spring 1 spring 4 spring 3 Spring 2

CREATIVE DIRECTOR/STYLIST/PHOTOGRAPHER: Anoushka Kavanagh

MODEL: Ebere Nweze

Holiday snaps

Cherwell Visuals
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Holiday snaps

Time Tunnel: Edward II

Susannah Goldsbrough
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Time Tunnel: Edward II

Unsurprisingly for such an iconic play, Charlotte Vickers’ production is not the first to hit the Oxford drama scene. While it is exciting to produce work in dialogue with a rich theatrical history, a glance over the Cherwell archives reveals a rather checkered history when it comes to Oxford productions of Edward II.

Let’s hope our reviewer this year will be more impressed than Ellie Wade was with Francesca Petruzzi’s “comically bad” direction in 2012. Sounds pretty harsh, you might think, but Wade supports her damning conclusions with such examples as, “I think critics are entitled to have a pop when that ‘glittering’ crown you’re monologuing about came free with a Happy Meal and weighs visibly less than a Satsuma.”

She went on to describe the much-hyped gay element of the play as “a lot of groping and not much chemistry” and noted that three actors had “an amusing habit of standing in height order.” Vickers should take note: this publication does not take kindly to height-related stage direction. Big no-no.

While far removed from the dire straits of 2012, Cherwell also had reservations about Tom Richards’ 2008 production. Like Vickers, Richards used a modern setting, and certainly, “the sweet-sour smell of weed, star-cross’d lovers, and violence” all sound pretty evocative, although perhaps reviewer Chen-Li Yiu should avoid mixing her Shakespeare-Marlowe metaphors.

However, modern settings clearly have their pitfalls, as she went on to note that the actors seem, “never quite sure whether they are playing nobles or gangsters.” Second note to Vickers: make sure your actors know which parts they’re playing. What would Oxford theatre do without Cherwell’s sage advice?

Review: George Street Social

Emily Beswick
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Review: George Street Social

The George Street Social is the kind of cafe-bistro-bar conglomerate that Oxford does so well. Situated half-way down the city’s main food street, it definitely holds its own amidst the strong competition.

The GSS prides itself on its locality, making it the perfect place to visit if you’ve found yourself missing Oxford over the vac. Portraits of the city’s finest adorn the upstairs walls, inspiring the many students typing away diligently on their laptops. The décor is industrial inspired—think exposed panelling, steel lamps and vintage objects—but there is a hint of fun in the puns on the literature themed stairs (‘Olives and Twist’, ‘Gone with the Wine’).

Any menu with ‘heritage carrot’ as a salad ingredient maybe takes itself a little too seriously, but there is a variety of options ranging from light brunch plates to hefty main meals and also some exciting sharing boards. There is also a pleasingly broad selection of vegetarian and vegan dishes, as well as good catering for anybody with allergens.

My co-editor, who had dragged me here after raving about the baked eggs, had the shakshouka with tomato, peppers and feta. I, meanwhile, had the smashed avocado on toasted campaillou, with poached egg & chilli (campaillou, as I discovered, was an enjoyably crusty sourdough-type bread that was sourced from a local bakery up in Summertown). The flavours of this posh avocado on toast were all perfectly balanced, but I did find myself wishing there was more for my £5.50. Nevertheless, the prices are around the standard for most middle range Oxford restaurants.

Things we didn’t try but wish we had were drinks from the inventive cocktail menu, including a delicious sounding ‘Raspberry Collins’ with Beefeater gin, lemon juice, sugar and fresh raspberries, and the mouth-watering cake selection. The restaurant also very much lives up to its ‘social’ label, with weekday happy hours between 5-8pm and Friday evening events. All in all, the George Street Social is a great place to experience the buzz of Oxford again after six weeks at home.

George Street Social, 35 New Inn Hall Street.

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