We hit up Oxford’s favourite authentic Japanese eatery for its first Sushi Thursday of term. Put off by college’s stodgy-sounding offering of beef bourguignon, we found a delightfully fresh alternative in Holywell Street’s Edamame. The early evening sushi night on a Thursday seems, from the size of the queues, to have become an Oxford institution, and rightly so.

On arrival at Edamame – the restaurant takes no bookings and has limited space so an early arrival is advised (we arrived at 17:30 and by 17:45 there were queues out the door) – we were promptly given a menu of the evening’s fare.Thursday night’s menu is restricted to sushi or sashimi, yet there is an impressive variety of styles to be tried. As a party of three, we decided to share a selection of the sushi on offer and picked five sushi dishes and three sides.

We began our feast with the eponymous edamame beans and went on to choose a Gunkan set (mixed fish sushi wrapped in seaweed), a more classic nigiri set, a tuna and salmon sashimi dish, and a Makizushi special set. This selection gave us the chance to try different sushi styles, as well as a variety of fish–the Gunkan set included salmon eggs and the nigiri featured octopus for the more intrepid gastronomes.

The sushi itself was excellent, and the freshness of the fish, particularly the tuna and salmon sashimi, was evident. Edamame makes all its sushi on site and this certainly comes through in the food; this said, the homemade nature of the nigiri resulted in a lack of cohesion between the rice and salmon, causing some crumbling issues. The Makizushi set was a special – be sure to check the walls for these, they are not made obvious on the menus – and the strongly flavoured seaweed wrapping, as well as the crunchy pickled radish in this dish, provided an interesting taste not to be found in high-street sushi chains.

As well as the edamame beans, we had side dishes of spinach and sushi rice. While satisfying and delicious, these dishes were a little overpriced at £3 each, given their size. Those seeking a more authentic experience should try fish flakes on the spinach, something we were too cowardly to do. The sushi rice had the perfect sticky texture and tones of vinegar and it provided a good dose of carbs to thicken out the otherwise light meal.

To kick off Hilary in style we ordered a tokkura (150ml jug) of sake, which is served in small, traditionally painted ceramic cups, as well as cups of green tea and an oolong cha. While sake is most probably not to everyone’s liking, it once again made our experience more authentic and was a nice touch.

Overall, Edamame offers a great eating experience conveniently located in the heart of Oxford. While there are cheaper restaurants to be found, Edamame does not compromise on quality or freshness for what is essentially a well-priced meal. A great find for sushi lovers and ‘shinnichi’, but be prepared to queue.

Walking in through a sea of Nike Roshes, ironic sweatshirts, and pictures of Beyonce, I wasn’t really sure what Wadham bar would be like at all. Entering through the front quad, I thought the bar, like most college bars, would be tucked away in some underground cavern just off the main quad.

Alas, 15 minutes later, I was still lost in the complicated maze that is the back end of Wadham. Having finally found the right staircase, I walked in through a quad which had a somewhat tragic resemblance to a Floridian retirement home.

Walking in, the place essentially looked like a corridor which, as if by accident, happens to have a bar. To be honest, the whole thing looks a bit like an accident and this is not helped by the sparse number of blades above the bar and the random assortment of old photos hanging on the walls.

With the bar on the right-hand side and the booths on the left, the weird chasm in between initially made me think that this was a bar for the most hacky of hacks who were paranoid that someone would overhear their conversation. However, there isn’t actually glass between the booths, so you can hear the next table’s conversation on the politics of dildos.

It also means that the acoustics are a bit odd and so it’s easier to hear others’ conversations than your own. It was also fairly small and it not particularly full (even on a Tuesday), so I guess even Wadhamites themselves aren’t that fond of it. On the bright side, the bar was admittedly very well stocked and had an excellent range of liquors. Approaching the bartender, who was reading the paper and looked a bit bored, I asked if Wadham had a signature drink.

Looking somewhat confused as to why I was talking to him, he told me that it was a tequila and pineapple juice. Being both a fan of pineapple juice and tequila, I was looking forward to what I expected to be some kind of variant of a tequila sunrise (especially since I paid a decent amount for it).

I have great memories that all involve tequila sunrise, so the pressure was on. What I got was a shot of tequila which had a chaser of a shot of pineapple juice. It was alright, but realistically, for the price I paid, the tequila should have been better quality.

There’s nothing exceptionally terrible about Wadham bar but it just feels like no one really cares, like it’s a little bit too much of an effort to do anything really well.

Rating: ★☆☆☆☆  (1/5)

I met Tina in a popular pub which is usually busy by night, but during the day we were the only ones there. Tina is in her mid-twenties and is currently completing a Master’s Degree. She also happens to be in a ‘Daddy relationship’.

Most of us tend to associate BDSM with the stereotypes of PVC, whips and masks, but we don’t tend to focus on the actual relationship aspects. Daddy relationships involve a ‘Daddy’ and a ‘Little’. In simple terms, the Daddy treats theLittle as a child and the Little treats the Daddy as a parent. This can involve the Daddy choosing the Little’s clothing, having the Little do the chores, and the Daddy financially supporting the Little, although this is not always the case, unlike in ‘Sugar Daddy’ relationships.

Tina lives with her boyfriend, Hugh, and they have been together for about three years. A typical day for her involves getting up at six, making a full cooked breakfast and a packed lunch for him, getting dressed in clothes he picked out for her the night before and then, after he has gone to work, working on her thesis for her master’s and doing chores (such as cleaning the house, doing the grocery shopping, and doing the laundry). After Hugh returns home she makes him dinner.

Although this sounds a bit like a day in the life of a 1950s housewife and not that of a BDSM practitioner, Tina calls her boyfriend “Daddy”, acts like a child around him and they engage in ‘age-play’ which is when she roleplays being an actual child.

Tina began our interview saying that she absolutely did not want to be named (Tina is a pseudonym) because of the social stigma still surrounding BDSM practices. She says she once revealed her sexual lifestyle to a friend, who immediately told her she was mentally ill and needed psychiatric evaluation. This fear of persecution seems to be very common among practitioners of the more intense parts of BDSM.

And whilst some might find this behaviour disturbing, Tina argues that she has never felt happier. Before this current relationship, she felt that she was bored of sex and considered herself to be “asexual”.

She met her boyfriend through mutual friends and after a month of dating, he suggested a Daddy relationship. Tina decided to give it a go and currently enjoys sex significantly more than before. Identifying as a feminst, she says, “This relationship helped me feel far more confident in both my personal and work life. Before I met Hugh, I would never have considered even applying for an MA but now I’m studying the thing I love and I’m getting better grades than ever.”

Because of the rise of books such as 50 Shades of Grey and the popularity of stores like Ann Summers, people seem to have become more aware of BDSM.I personally think it’s sexist that the only media depictions (and I include this article in that) are of submissive women and there are barely any of dominant women. However, I really don’t think that Tina’s lifestyle encourages misogyny, because it makes her feel happier and more confident in her life, allowing her to achieve her goals. What can be wrong with that?

So, dry spells. Hell on earth. The ultimate enemy. A deathly desert. The feeling when you’re so frustrated that your head is swimming with clichés to illustrate your pain. I’m sure you’ve been there before, but you don’t have a forum to yell it out at strangers, so just shut up and listen to my ramblings. If you’re at all sane you probably don’t want to yell it at strangers anyway, but that’s beside the point.

Far from being the island of debauchery that I usually carefully cultivate, my life has recently taken a ghastly turn. There are no dirty little games and sexy nights anywhere, and I wail in a corner, alone. The reason? Bloody coursework. You don’t need a crazy student to tell you stress and sex don’t work together. After a day of hard work, it could be a perfect release, but if that day of hard work is followed by another and then another and the deadline’s coming and you haven’t started planning how many all-nighters you can do without dying, then sex is usually the last thing on your mind. People tell me that’s normal.

In our little bubble of spires, most of us have experienced the crushing feeling of utter panic and accompanying loss of libido. Well, it’s a first for me, and I don’t like it. And I started liking it even less when I tried to do something about it, and failed completely. Having finally managed to arrange an evening off furious typing, I was hopeful to get a little boost from a handsome male.

Since I had a suitable one available, arrangements were not a problem. He wasn’t a problem either; knowing me and my body well, he is skilled at making me happy. Despite all that, I just couldn’t get into it. It was impossible to relax with snippets of my essay flashing before my eyes. In the end, after reassuring my poor friend that no, he hadn’t done anything wrong, I returned to my cold bed with a strong sense of failure and disappointment. If I’m not good at my subject AND at sex, what am I good at? If I can’t control my body and its pleasure, what can I control? An identity crisis entered full bloom. I don’t think my coursework benefited from its creator’s frustration…

Of course, there is the obvious masturbation, but I’m a social beast. I can’t do it alone all the time. There are only so many ways to satisfy oneself, and sometimes all I want is a sexy someone to bite my neck. They havn’t invented a toy for that yet.

Humans need sleep, food, and sex. I’ve been having only one of them in satisfactory quantity (thank the Universe for lemon and coriander houmous), and this is the terrifying result. If you see a wild-eyed girl wandering the streets and ogling you, don’t be mean. Ask me out. It’ll be fun.

Maybe.

After two years of studying French and Spanish, the time had come to start planning my year abroad. I applied to teach English for the British Council in the Academy of Rouen and eventually learnt that I’d successfully made it onto the programme and had been posted to Le Havre.

However, following my initial relief that I was moving to a respectably sized town and not a tiny village in the middle of nowhere, heard conflicting accounts of the place. As it is one of the country’s biggest ferry ports, many people I know have driven through the town and described it as being uniformly grey and grim. A lot of my French friends said the same thing, which was more worrying.

Yet at the same time, tourist guides assured me that the city was in fact a UNESCO World Heritage Site. When I looked online, I started to wonder if UNESCO ever awarded heritage status out of pity; I spent about 20 minutes trying to adjust the contrast on my computer screen before finally accepting that the city was actually that grey.

Le Havre isn’t particularly exotic or far-flung, with the nearest big city after Rouen being Portsmouth, but this did mean I was was able to take a ferry directly into the town. The distance is not too far, but the night crossing isdeliberately slowed to eight hours so passengers can arrive well-rested and refreshed at eight in the morning French time.

Sleepless and tired, I watched the town appear before me and realised that UNESCO was right after all. It was true that, as far as the eye could see, the buildings were all square, sombre, and made of concrete; but somehow, instead of looking bleak, they caught the morning sun and gave off a strange golden glow.

I could see why some people would write it off as an eyesore, especially in poor weather, but in the late September light it had an austere charm. What I was looking at was the downtown ‘Perret’ quarter, named after the architect Auguste Perret who rebuilt this city in his own unique style after it was substantially bombed in the Second World War.

I had read that this had happened, but it was not until a few days after my arrival that I learnt it was the British who bombed Le Havre, something for which many older generations in Le Havre still resent us for.

I discovered this British impact on Le Havre when I was told the history of the town by Marcel, a teacher from the school where I would be working. He told me the town fell to German forces early in the war and, although the Nazis had a presence here, it was in no way significant enough to justify the extent of the Allies’ bombing campaign.

According to him, the destruction was financially motivated. Although the French were allies of the British in the war, France was one of our main economic rivals during peacetime and, as Le Havre was one of their busiest and most lucrative ports, the British bombed it heavily. The destruction was so extensive that from the train station, you could see all the way to the beach two kilometres away.

Marcel also told me that the new city was built directly onto the rubble, two metres higher than the old one. We lapsed into silence. I didn’t know whether I should apologise or not. It seemed like the British thing to do, so I did.