“I told you not to smoke.”

“I thought you just meant crack.”

These were some of the first lines in Sacha Baron Cohen’s recent movie, Grimsby. The comedy sees Nobby (Baron Cohen), an unemployed father of nine living in the northern English fishing town of Grimsby. From the outset we are told he is still searching for his long-lost brother after a 28 year separation. Queue, Sebastian (Strong). At a charity event, Nobby is reunited with his brother – who happens to be an MI6 agent with a surprisingly RP accent. After Nobby causes Sebastian to be blamed for a murder, forcing them on the run, a chain of ‘humorous’ events unfold which culminate in the two brothers making peace and saving the world. Rebel Wilson and Penelope Cruz both made the questionable decision to take minor roles in the movie, though the focus remains on the brothers’ relationship.

The description above makes it seem as though this film has a storyline, albeit a far-fetched one. It does not. The plot is a confused mix of a mocking take on working-class life in Grimsby, a conventional ‘spy-gone-rogue’ tale and an attempt at a heart-warming reunion with the message of family. All of this was paired with outrageous attempts at humour and crude sexual references. For me, it was so bad I had to cover my eyes. Perhaps I was being too harsh, but just one of the vulgar running jokes in this film was that numerous celebrities were diagnosed with AIDS from the blood of a young, wheelchair-bound Palestinian boy, said to be the ‘international symbol of peace.’ These celebrities included Daniel Radcliffe (though not the real one), and Donald Trump, whom, when infected actually roused applause from some members of the cinema audience. Perhaps that tells us more about opinions towards American politics than it does about the entertainment this film offered, but clearly such outrageous humour was, at times, enjoyed by other spectators. Or maybe they were just laughing because they didn’t know what else to do.

Sacha Baron Cohen has been in the press a lot recently after the controversial revival of ‘Ali G’ at the Oscars this year. He affronted the #OscarsSoWhite debate about lack of racial diversity in the nominees for this year’s Academy Awards by referring to himself “just another token black presenter.” He is renowned for his less-than politically correct attempts to use humour to bring attention to social issues, and the characters of Ali G and Borat were received well by critics. So, was that the case in Grimsby? I personally struggle to see how pointed generalisations about a working-class lifestyle will have a positive outcome. Any stereotypes which exist about the people of northern fishing towns are amplified; the opening sequence of the movie sees a queue of people outside the Job Centre, everyone walks around in England football shirts, and Nobby’s son Luke has a shaved head, a ploy for the family to claim benefits for his inexistent leukaemia.

The film does, however raise an interesting point on class inequality. Penelope Cruz’s character turns out to be the evil mastermind has a plan to “cure the world” by infecting all those present at the World Cup final, in her words, “the imbeciles”, with AIDS. In response, Cohen makes a rousing speech to his fellow Grimsby residents about their worth; they are the “scum” responsible for building the hospitals which are closed down by upper-class members of society. Can this be taken as a direct criticism of the current government cuts? He ends with the line, “scum cannot be washed away, ever”; if so, it’s one which still kicks the poor.

The film does reflect on positive aspects of working-class culture in other respects. The sense of community amongst the people of Grimsby means we always see them together, and the theme of family is prominent amongst the characters. We are obliged, in some ways to sympathise with the plight of those who are burdened with the stereotype of being worthless. But overall the film is counter-productive,  perpetuating negative assumptions of the ‘idle’ and ‘feckless’ poor who don’t know how to help themselves.

Whilst the film raises interesting arguments regarding social inequality, it failed to do so in a tasteful and productive way. Any attempt at progressive ideas amongst the crude humour were diminished by exaggerated stereotypes and a tiring plotline. If this were Sacha Baron Cohen’s first film, and he wasn’t propped up by past successes, I’m sure he would find himself as jobless as Nobby.

She doesn’t want to talk about it and I don’t want to hear her say it, so instead she asks me, “Clayton, how high are we?” I run my tongue across my lips and peer over the edge of the cliff. The tops of pine trees hover a few dozen feet below the soles of my shoes. I spit over the edge. It hits one of the lower rock formations, splatters. It is almost dark already. Off in the distance our town looks like a cluster of lightning bugs. Mom will be calling us home for dinner soon. My palms are sweating. I concentrate on the way the pebbles dig into my skin so I don’t have to look at her and ask about it.

“Pretty high,” I say.

“How high is ‘pretty’?”

“Really damn high.”

She sighs and leans her head back and reaches for her purse. She pulls out a pack of cigarettes, knocks it twice against her palm out of habit, and removes one. Next a lighter. Flick. The tip of the cigarette catches. Orange sparks glow at the end of her mouth. ‘“Really damn high’,” she repeats.

She offers me the pack. I decline with a scrunch of my lips and a jerky movement of my head. We’ve been here for nearly two hours and done nothing but smoke cigarettes and point vaguely to the distant shapes of buildings and try to assign the shapes to familiar places on the ground. We haven’t said anything important.

She blows a column of smoke out over the trees. We’ve always liked the smell of cigarette smoke—she and I—ever since we were kids—younger kids. Not sixteen and eighteen year old kids. Kids who didn’t smoke or drive shit cars or have sex or get pregnant. Little kids.

She’s smoking a cigarette now but I know she has joints tucked away in an old Altoids tin at the bottom of her purse. In another universe we’re up here smoking weed together and I’m a better brother. In this universe she smokes cigarettes with me and weed with her friends and drinks Fireball and coke at parties and probably blacks out and takes Polaroid pictures and doesn’t read books. She paints instead: India ink words surrounding acrylic girls with stick figure forms, letters curling around them like body fat and safety.

“So,” I say.

She says “so”, too. She takes another drag. I should tell her not to smoke, but I don’t. I think, maybe the smoke will kill it. I think, maybe the smoke will kill her, and regret it instantly.

“We should get home,” I say.

“Can you drop me off at Adam’s?” she says, not “What’s for dinner?” or “Yeah.”

“No,” I say. “Mom said she wants us to come home.”

She takes another drag. I don’t like Adam, even though I don’t know really him. I think about her carving apologies for breathing into her legs and asking guys she barely knows to drive her to abortion clinics and liquor stores and her sitting on the edges of parties drinking Fireball and coke and taking Polaroid pictures and guys talking about her ripped leggings and the things they’ll do to her when she’s drunk enough.

“Please?” she says, less like begging. More like she knows I’ll give in.

“I don’t think so,” I say.

She finishes her cigarette. She tosses the burning end over the edge of the cliff. We watch it fall, hit rocks softly, anti-climatic. Without meaning to, the image of her jumping plays in my head: Not thinking about what it would be like to hit the bottom. Just for the fun of it.

She says, “Can you drop me off at Molly’s then?”

“Mom wants us home.” It has worn thin, this threat of disappointment. I wonder what she’ll do when I’m gone. When she’s up here with her friends smoking weed and the trees are brown and I’m at school and I have forgotten to call.

“I’ll call Mom on the way there and ask,” she lies.

It’s dark now. Molly lives on the other side of the mountain. If we leave now, I’ll be home after the leftovers are put away. Dad will be in the living room, not speaking. Home but not home. Mom will be doing dishes. I bet she only set the table for three. I bet she knew I’d come home alone.

“Are you pregnant?” I ask.

She laughs. “What?”

I will not ask again, the advantage of answering a question with a question.

“Come on,” I say. “Let’s go.”

We stand and walk back to the car. Evenings are cold now. I left my sweatshirt on someone’s floor. It smells like other people’s sweat and spilled beer and accidents and mistakes. The things I tell her not to do but she does because she’s sixteen.

We get in the car. I start the engine. The headlights chase a deer into the safety of the trees. I say, “I’ll take you to Adam’s” because it’s closer to home.

“Cool. Thanks,” she says.

She turns on the radio and rolls the window down. I don’t object even though the wind is cold as we drive down the mountain. I picture her painting a girl in a brightly colored dress with words curled around her in a series of “yeses” that all read like “help”. Somewhere, in a book I haven’t read yet but probably said I have, are all the words I’m supposed to say. But I don’t want to talk about it and she doesn’t want to say it so we drive, slowly, and I wait for her to change her mind and she hums along to the music like an apology burning the insides of her lips.

Rob Da Bank’s Common People Oxford will be ruling the May Bank Holiday in style on May 28 and 29. Here are some of the best tracks from the line-up’s offerings to get you in the festival mood.

1. Duran Duran – ‘Girls On Film’

You could go for the obscure, the underrated, but when a band have a banger like this one, there is no point trying to be clever about it. Everyone’s hoping the Birmingham group will bring out this groovy number as they headline Common People’s Saturday night.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCjMZMxNr-0]

2. Primal Scream – ‘Movin’ On Up’

Again, it is Primal Scream’s likeliest Common People crowd pleaser that we are all hoping for. The end notes of this orginal version sway into a motown-like feel, and waiting to see if and how the group put a current spin on this 1991 release is half the fun as they are set to headline the Sunday night.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SnkjvECEQr4]

3. Katy B – ‘5AM’

Not as eponymous with the Peckham-raised singer as her hit single ‘Katy on a Mission,’ ‘5AM’ is set to get the party started in preparation for Duran Duran on Saturday night. With classic pop builds and an easy sing-along chorus, the beats in this song are unmissable.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VDE2OMZtExY]

4. Craig David’s TS5

Craig David started his TS5 DJ sets as exclusive Miami pre-parties, and now plays to full clubs in Cannes, St Tropez and Dubai. There is not just one hit that we can count on to fill the ‘Fill Me In’ star’s set, but watching some footage of his previous nights is a good starting point for the Sunday night atmosphere we can expect come the May Bank Holiday weekend.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MXgDsA_UTjY]

5. Public Enemy – ‘Don’t Believe the Hype’

Classic 80s hip-hop from the New York group will be infiltrating the Oxfordshire countryside in May, and what better song could prove their politicaly outspoken credentials than 1988’s ‘Don’t Believe the Hype’?

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vQaVIoEjOM]

6. Jamie Lawson – ‘Wasn’t Expecting That’

Amongst a whole host of more raucous festival flavours, Jamie Lawson’s calmer acoustic guitar-driven pop will be a welcome addition to Saturday’s early evening programme, particularly if the sun comes out. ‘I Wasn’t Expecting That’ epitomises Lawson’s Ed Sheeran-like vibe.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-lI_tgQMMk]

7. Cuban Brothers – ‘So Sweet’

It’s unlikely anyone will be complaining during the Cuban Brothers’ smooth, soulful set as ‘So Sweet’ is just one of a multitude of similarly lively summery tunes. This group are set to charm their way through Saturday afternoon with groovy dance moves and a truly eclectic performance onstage.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ca9cxelkQbY]

8. Ghostpoet – ‘Sorry My Love, It’s You Not Me’

Whilst a lot of these acts will be a fantastic accompaniment to a cider and a dance in the May sun (we can only hope), Ghostpoet’s performance will require a little more concentration. Obaro Ejimiwe weaves spoken-word and raspy soul against tackling beats and riffs to give an honest soundtrack to urban life. This track particularly exposes Ejimiwe’s talent of poignancy and frankess in lyrics, alongside a soulful melody line.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BIR_Qs3tbFU]

For more information and to buy tickets, check out the Common People Oxford website here.

When asked to describe his approach to writing, Heaney replied that it was ‘like being an altar boy in the sacristy getting ready to go out onto the main altar’. His translation of Aeneid VI is certainly worthy of that description, steeped as it is in humility and respect for its author. There is more of Heaney in this than the boy in the sacristy, though: it is a gift for all whom he taught, and who taught him. He reminds us in his preface of the debt owed to his Latin teacher at A Level, who was ‘forever sighing, ‘Och, boys, I wish it were Book VI’’ they were studying, instead of Book IX – this is a last piece of homework, completed fifty years late. It was, however, also an ‘impulse’, brought on by the birth of his first granddaughter. Heaney, in breathing life into Book VI, is very much aware of his own, ever changing relationship with the text, as well as how much he has changed. In this book – neither ‘version nor crib’, he becomes both Aeneas and Anchises: at once headstrong schoolboy, loving father, and grandfather.

His style is unadorned, Latinate expressions couched in earthy, almost onomatopoeic utterances. Charon, in language which surely rivals the original, is ‘surly, filthy and bedraggled’, clothed in ‘a grimy cloak’. Plain, blunt to the point of aggression, they typify a manner which is both rural and sophisticated. Earlier, the Golden Bough is ‘green-leafed’ and ‘refulgent’ in the same breath. Heaney’s word choice, to my mind, reveals yet more markedly his love-hate relationship with Book VI – why he thought it ‘the best of books and the worst of books’: smatterings of ostentation remind us that it was, he thought ‘worst because of its imperial certitude, its celebration of Rome’s manifest destiny’. It remains best, though for the ‘twilit fetch of its language’, and this is something Heaney has unequivocally mastered.

Heaney – dare I say it – might even trump Virgil in this respect, at least as far as the final portion of the book goes: he makes all these empty platitudes palatable. I found, in Anchises’ potted history of Roman victories, moments where Heaney turned this into something more than just the beleaguered scribblings of a ‘sixth form homunculus’ – moments like ‘Fabricius, the indomitable and frugal’, a pairing far richer than Virgil’s own ‘powerful in poverty’ (parvoque potentem). I don’t mean to provoke any classicists’ complaints, it’s just that it works, really really well. Heaney is the master of using an intriguing, atypical word to render the ordinary as something more. Here, amidst a conscious programme of Augustan propaganda, he grapples with, and, I think, truly succeeds in making this vision Anchises presents – he bemoaned it as ‘something of a test for reader and translator alike’ – a triumph of ordinary marvels over imperial.

Anchises, who lingers ‘fatherly and intent’, must have been a difficult figure to write up for Heaney. Their first moment of meeting, tender as it is, is shot through with reminders of the father’s mortality. The moment of their embrace, where Anchises passes through Aeneas ‘like a breeze between his hands’ cannot be read without thinking of Heaney’s absence. The whole book now functions as a kind of farewell letter, this episode – of the intermingling of death and life – is poignant in its prescience.

There are, however, moments which are poignant in and of themselves. No more so than Aeneas’ unrequited entreaties to Dido. When she blanks him – the greatest ‘bitch, please’ moment in literature – she does so ‘no more than if her features had been carved in flint or Parian marble’. Heaney has Virgil’s knack for condensing whole emotional cataclysms into a mere sentence: here, ‘flint’ suggests the former flame of her passion; it becomes ‘marble’, cold and unresponsive. These are words crafted to inspire close reading; they also demand to be read aloud. The speeches, especially the Sibyl’s, are truly magnificent in scope – try Ian McKellen’s version, recorded for Radio 4, for a suitably impassioned attempt – and phrases like ‘an elm, copious, darkly aflutter’ float on the tongue as much as in the mind.

Undoubtedly, then, Heaney overcomes ‘the fleeting, fitful anxieties that afflict the literary translator’. And translator, I think, is too paltry a word: though Heaney typically dismisses it as nothing more than ‘classics homework’, it is far more than an homage. At the final line, the last few words, ‘sterns cushion on sand’ are the same phrasing Heaney uses as the ships first land in Italia in the first few lines. His repetition is not Virgil’s own. It is, I think, Heaney suggesting that this journey he has undertaken, alongside Aeneas, from young to old, is only the beginning. If this is a farewell letter, its final note is one of hope.