Blog Page 1338
Killing the Mockingbird
Michael Gove has a talent for making himself unpopular with the media. Ever since tuition fees he has become a sort of ghoul, a man hell bent on ruining the British education system. Now he’s put his foot in it again with his reforms to the English GCSE, in a move heralded by the press as the “banning” of To Kill a Mockingbird and Of Mice and Men from the syllabuses.
I don’t necessarily want to speak in defence of Gove – who knows what kind of nationalistic idea he might be trying to appeal to – but one can’t help but be astonished at the eagerness of journalists to spice up their stories. However much people bang on about the banning of American books, if one actually examines the issue, it is quite clear that Gove has done nothing of the sort.
The impetus for the change, it turns out, is Worcester College’s very own Provost, Jonathan Bate, who sits on a board of experts reporting recommendations to the government concerning the English syllabus.
The group came to the conclusion that the current GCSE English syllabus is terrifyingly narrow, with 90% of AQA students reading only one novel (or should that be novella?) – Of Mice and Men. Bate himself has said in The Guardian that many children found this book “tedious, undeveloped, overly schematic and all too easy to reduce to a set of themes”.
The board thus suggested a broadening of the syllabus, with a pre-Twentieth Century novel, a play, and a selection of poetry. They even recommended that, since teachers evidently teach best what they are passionate about, we abandon set texts altogether and leave only this general framework. If Of Mice and Men is not tedious in itself, then surely the fact that the vast majority of anyone reading this has studied it, makes it so.
Unfortunately, the reforms to the GCSE have had the result that American literature seems to have been dropped from the syllabus. Our Provost, and Gove alongside him, have blamed the exam boards, as unable to move away from the idea of a small corpus of fixed set texts.
One suspects there is more to it than this, but it is worth bearing in mind next time the headlines run and Twitter buzzes that the drastic and draconian measures being touted – here the eradication of American literature from the syllabuses – are rarely the reality.
Oxford students hold vigil at the Union
Oxford students took part in a vigil at the Oxford Union on Thursday evening, calling for the Society to “take every rape allegation seriously”.
Approximately 150 people gathered outside the Union entrance, in a “quiet and dignified display”, holding a two minute silence in respect for survivors of sexual violence. Attendees listened to testimonies offered by people from amongst the crowd, some of whom had themselves experienced sexual assault.
Speaking to Cherwell, one of the organisers of the vigil, Caitlin Tickell, explained, “We wanted to do it for three different reasons: firstly, to show solidarity with survivors of sexual violence; secondly, we wanted to show the Union how angry we are about the way they have handled this; thirdly, we wanted to voice our demands to the Union, for example we are asking them to put in place consent workshops for officials.”
OUSU VP for Women Sarah Pine explained why she had helped to organise the event, commenting, “Everything that happened at last week’s no confidence debate demonstrated a fundamental lack of respect for survivors of sexual violence, whether this is someone getting up and shouting ‘irrelevant’ at someone who was speaking about rape, or the flippant comments and the idea that taking allegations seriously is a breach of ‘innocent until proven guilty’ – that’s not true.
She continued, “I was so happy to come here today because everything that happened last week appeared to play a part in rape culture more broadly, and demonstrates how people at the Union are buying into that rape culture and perpetuating it.”
The vigil took place a week after the controversial debate of no confidence in President Ben Sullivan. The debate ended after two hours of discussion with the House voting to abandon the motion.
Those in attendance carried placards stating, “reform the Union” and “end rape culture”. Union security staff removed banners that had been hung on the fences after the vigil disbanded.
The vigil took place on the same day that the Union Standing Committee discussed introducing sexual constent workshops for elected officials and making future no confidence votes binding.
Although the moves were met with support from protestors, many felt the Union still needs to do more. Charlotte Sykes, one of the editors of Cuntry Living, commented, “the Union still has a lot of work to do to show us that it’s serious about taking rape allegations and rape culture seriously.”
Sykes’s reservations were echoed by campaigner Barnaby Raine, who pointed out, “There is a slightly amusing panic in the Union where they know that people are angry with them, they are desperate for people to be not angry with them but they are also desperate not to change anything.
“Today in Standing Committee they discussed making no confidence motions binding, however they also discussed ensuring that to have a no confidence motion you’d have to get 300 signatures within 24 hours, which is designed to make those binding no confidence motions never happen. We want the Union to take real action to change things but they shouldn’t try to do PR jobs.”
President Ben Sullivan commented, “Last week the Union held a free and open debate on a no confidence motion. After nearly two hours of debate members voted, with 254 in favour and 101 against, to dismiss the motion.
“We understand however that this is not the end of the matter and that a number of members still have concerns, as such a vigil was held outside the Union tonight. We intend to take steps to put some of those worries at ease, such as instigating a rules change that would make motions of no confidence binding. We are also going to hold non-directional sexual consent workshops for members starting this Michaelmas.”
He continued, “We do ask that this criticism be based on facts and not on hearsay. We would like to make clear that the Union never dismissed the idea of consent workshops, simply that we believe they would be most effective at the beginning of Michaelmas when the Union is much busier and a new group of Freshers can be reached. We hope this will have the most impact in fostering a positive culture of consent across Oxford.”
Review: Edge of Tomorrow
★★★★☆
Four Stars
Tom Cruise is the most consistently bankable star in Hollywood because he has never made a remotely controversial film in his thirty-year career. This proves to be the case once again in Edge of Tomorrow, a strong sci-fi action offering from previous Cruise collaborator Doug Liman. Having worked on The Bourne Identity, Mr. and Mrs. Smith and Jumper, Liman is in familiar territory with this film revolving around aliens, explosions and the manipulation of time based on Japanese light novel All You Need Is Kill.
Cruise stars as William Cage, a smarmy PR man turned soldier who has never seen combat in a war for Earth against an extra-terrestrial hive mind. Cage is thrown into action alongside Emily Blunt’s Rita Vrataski, heroine of the only battle humanity has yet won against the invaders, known as mimics. Moments before his inevitable and brutal demise, an encounter with one of the mimics grants Cage the ability to manipulate time, “resetting” him 24 hours earlier but with full knowledge of his previous life. Cue repeated attempts by the duo to figure out a way to beat the alien menace, each ending in Cage’s death and restarting the day before.
It is an engaging premise, but aside from this, Edge of Tomorrow is happy not to push the boat out too much – having a female lead who can kick ass and setting the majority of the action in Europe rather than the USA is as far as Liman goes. Casting-wise, Brendan Gleeson’s gruff, stubborn general and Noah Taylor’s eccentric scientist are somewhat contrived stereotypes who nonetheless provide good foils to Cruise and Blunt respectively. As for the leads themselves, Cruise has played this role a hundred times before and does so again with as much flair as one might expect (hint: not loads). Blunt, meanwhile, gives the kind of brusque performance we have come to expect – and enjoy – from her, but the script does not allow her a huge amount of depth in which to move.
It is, understandably, the action set-pieces and the aesthetic of Edge of Tomorrow rather than the characterisation that truly carries the film. The battle sequences are truly awesome, pitting an international force of humans in mechanical suits against the terrifying octopean mimics. “Groundhog Day x Starship Troopers” was how one Twitter user hailed the film, but this perhaps doesn’t do it justice; a potent mix of The Matrix and Saving Private Ryan would be more accurate a description. Indeed, certain scenes of soldiers aflame and dismembered on Normandy beaches appear to be in direct tribute to Spielberg’s epic; imagine D-Day but replace the Wehrmacht with Sentinels from the Matrix franchise and the result is something close to Edge of Tomorrow. Video games, too, are central to the film’s aesthetic, and any teenage boy would recognise elements of Gears of War and Final Fantasy in Vrataski’s mecha suit and massive sword. The plot, which closely resembles Cage replaying a difficult level of a war game over and over again, lends itself to this vibe, and whilst engaging with gaming has the potential to make the film childish, it doesn’t. Equally, Liman builds intense drama without over-relying on bloody violence.
The film suffers only one awful moment of tacky Tom Cruise-action-vehicle symptoms, and that’s during the final five minutes. Without elaborating, it’s a disappointing loss of nerve from an otherwise riotously entertaining and high-octane film. Sure, it takes itself a bit too seriously, and sure, it doesn’t reinvent sci-fi, but Edge of Tomorrow is proof that a good concept in the hands of an accomplished action director can still make for an enthralling and engaging viewing experience.
The cinema of Kelly Reichardt
After some bumbling back-and-forth between Kelly Reichardt and the Humanitas Master of Ceremonies at St. Anne’s College, the director answered one question last Friday with unheralded clarity: asked why she is drawn to “quieter” characters, she said that “the language of film is outside the dialogue; where the cut is, or where the lines end, or where the camera is pointing.” Reichardt half-joked that this had been a contentious issue for the actors who featured in her 2010 film, Meek’s Cutoff. With more than a hint of a gendered criticism, she noted that some “found themselves shooting a film which wasn’t quite the wild Western they had signed up for;” her later characterisation of Paul Dano as “heroic” also carried this tinge of irony. She describes how lines which seem to hold great significance for certain characters in the script became a whole lot less grandiose (or “heroic”) when the final, edited version had the character delivering them at a distance, with their back to the camera, in one of the few wide shots in the film.
In this sense, Reichardt describes her approach to filmmaking as entirely director-centred. Her camera refuses to follow the speaker in scenes of dialogue, stressing the direction and composition of each shot, rather than the performance. Though she claimed her greatest regret in film was once snapping at her favoured lead actress, Michelle Williams – “just say the fucking line!” – she admitted that it was closely followed by the decision precisely not to be so blunt when filming the ending to Meek’s Cutoff, which ultimately cost her a more “satisfactory” conclusion: the final shot of Williams, staring through the branches of a dying tree at a wandering Native American, had to be filmed on a different day, in a different season, using artificial lighting, due to the delay. Even four years later, sat on a stage discussing a film now quite removed from her present career, Reichardt looked visibly irked by the memory of it. Similarly irritated by the decision to screen DVDs, rather than prints of her films, Reichardt refused to watch clips of her films being displayed as a prelude to the staged conversation. Despite being open and genial for the duration of the talk, and receptive to the suggestions of the audience, she stressed repeatedly the importance of not budging an inch where the compromise of her creative values was threatened.
Meek’s Cutoff (2010), screened on a dour Friday morning at St. Anne’s, is the perfect embodiment of those values. Filmed entirely in the Oregonian desert, it is a painstaking exploration of the hopeless journey undertaken by Stephen Meek and his charges on the Oregon Trail. Journeys, particularly failed ones, are recurrent in all of Kelly Reichardt’s films, a theme which she says is in part due to the duty she feels to erode the romance of the road narrative we might find in films like Badlands (1973) and its ilk. Long journeys are wearying, repetitive, and thankless, and Reichardt does not shy away from this; she aims to show the harsh reality of Meek’s company, particularly how it would have been for those traversing the desert in 19th century America. Her direction, as in her comments on her films, consistently returns to this focus on being true to the characters’ experiences. She puts her claustrophobic use of the academy (4:3) image ratio down to this fact, explaining that she chose it to replicate the limited vision of the bonnets the females would have been forced to wear, which permitted no peripheral vision. Reichardt calls widescreen Westerns “a lie,” and maintains that the closed off camera keeps the characters’ reality in centre focus. A widescreen shot would show entire days worth of travel stretching out in front of them, rendering any plot development artificial – the desert yields no surprises, only constant, wearying terrain.
The only thing worse for Reichardt than this stuttering, unending journey is the alternative, which is the only motivation: being stuck, or unable to move at all. This is the plight of protagonist Wendy in Wendy and Lucy (2008), a deceptively heavy film, despite its simple subject matter and gentle aesthetic. When Wendy’s car breaks down on her way to Alaska and she loses her dog, the alternative is the gaping social abyss: unemployment, homelessness, and isolation. Reichardt argues that she doesn’t make political films, but her characters are too “real” for their political situation not to be felt, and 2008’s economic depression is unmistakeably present in Wendy and Lucy. Like her treatment of road narratives and the West, Kelly Reichardt’s portrayal of the people on the margins of American society is never romanticised. It is in this absence of deception that their reality – political, gendered, or otherwise – becomes inevitably present.
Interview: Peter Tatchell
Peter Tatchell cuts a tall, slim, striking figure when you see him for the first time, but not in the way that you might expect from a politician or activist. He speaks clearly, with a distinctively deep voice and calm manner. After listening to him speak for a while, it’s possible to detect the slightest of hints of an Australian accent slipping in between syllables. Born in the 1950s in Australia, Tatchell has lived an extraordinarily varied and busy life since moving to UK.
Sceptics need not look any further than his political record. He first came to public prominence when he stood as Labour’s parliamentary candidate in Bermondsey in 1981 and when he was publicly condemned by then-Party Leader Michael Foot shortly after winning the nomination for writing an article in which he called for direct action against the Thatcher government. He later joined the Green Party, standing as their prospective parliamentary candidate in Oxford East from 2007 until 2009.
Is he a politician though? No, he tells me. “I’m a member and supporter of the Green Party… but I had to stand down as a parliamentary candidate in 2009.” I hesitate to ask why, but he senses my curiosity and fills me in on the details. “I had to stand down because of brain and eye injuries incurred when I was beaten up by neo-Nazis in Moscow.” He explains this in such an expressionless manner that it takes me somewhat aback
“Wow”, I remark clumsily, “not many people can say that.” He does not look impressed.
“I’m not heavily involved with the Green Party,” he continues, “because to ensure the success of my human rights work I have to be fairly neutral, because I’m trying to appeal to people of all parties and none… My Green Party work is not major.” I get the impression that for all his political activity, it is his current work on LGBT rights that is the source of all his energy.
The conversation turns to the position of members of the LGBT community in Britain. “More than half of all young kids suffer homophobic bullying at school, a third of LGBT people at school have suffered hate crimes,” he tells me. “An astonishingly high number. We see people singled out in all walks of life”, he says , “in the street, in clubs, in the work place.”
Despite the clear pressures though, Tatchell is definitely optimistic. He compares the current standing of LGBT members of our society to those of ethnic minorities in the past. He claims he’s not unconvinced by the idea put forward by some campaigners that homophobia is where racism was a few decades ago. In the speech he gave at Corpus Christi shortly before speaking to me, he insisted that at first sight, the recent introduction of same-sex marriage in the UK makes it look like “a battle won”. He goes on to make the case that, as a society, we’re not quite there yet. But he does make it clear that achieving same-sex marriage is “a remarkable achievement”, and one that came about with a pace that is uncharacteristic of most civil-rights movements.
When it comes to channelling his and many other people’s optimism, Tatchell has some clear ideas. On the subject of young people, I ask him, is it just a matter of education? He replies bluntly. “Yes,” he says. A pause follows, after which he adds, “the long-term solution is something like equality and diversity lessons in schools.” On top of this he is adamant that “prosecuting perpetrators is second best. It’s after the abuse has happened. What we want to do is prevent homophobic and transphobic abuse in the first place. That’s why early and on-going education is so important. It can very significantly reduce anti-LGBT hate crime.” This reminds me of something he said in his talk beforehand, namely that children are not born bigoted – it’s society that makes them narrow-minded.
Tackling head-on the values and communal views of a society is something Tatchell is not afraid of. Indeed, on a personal level Tatchell is no stranger to peril and challenging authority. After leaving school at 16, he became a keen surfer and mountain climber. He attributes his willingness to take political risks with this early exposure to the outdoors and to adventure. After moving from Australia to the UK in 1971, Tatchell helped organise sit-ins in pubs that refused to serve homosexuals. He campaigned against the Iraq war, and reportedly sustained severe injuries after attempting a citizen’s arrest on the President of Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe. Twice.
If he is radical and adventurous by nature, however, he doesn’t let it show during the course of our interview. He sits opposite me, dressed in a shirt and tie, in one of the backrooms of Corpus Christi College, perhaps one of the most famous colleges in a university known more as the breeding ground for career politicians than for revolutionary activity.
Certainly his vision of achieving real change is entirely consistent with working within the law. He tells me that the government should be at the forefront of ensuring complete equality. “Governments need to ensure that sex and relationship education is mandatory in every school and that it is inclusive of LGBT issues and people. Likewise with HIV prevention, and safer sex education. There’s also a potentially valuable role to be played by equality and diversity lessons to challenge all forms of prejudice, including homophobia, transphobia.”
But sadly “parliament is often the last place to get the message”. And, when the government isn’t up for the job, it’s the ordinary person turned active campaigner that comes to the forefront. “Nearly all initiatives for progressive social reform start outside of parliament, often in marginal fringe groups and communities… with persistence and a good plan of action, ultimately they triumph. Protest is the lifeblood of democracy. Without it we’d still be living in the dark ages”.
One such community that is leading the way for the next wave of social reform is the transgender community. They’ve been subjected to increased discrimination up to this point.
“It’s partly because transgender people on the whole have not been as visible as lesbians, gays, and bisexuals. It’s also probably because trans issues make a lot of people uncomfortable in that they challenge traditional ideas of masculinity and feminism, they question gender norms that other people accept as natural and inevitable”.
Can this change though? Yes, suggests Tatchell. The idea that transgender individuals are unnatural is simply wrong. “That’s not the reality”, he says, before going on to point out the way existing campaigns have already improved the situation. He tells me, “sexuality and gender have a strong biological component, but they’re also subject to cultural influences and values. LGBT people have been at the forefront of presenting alternative ideas about what it means to be a man or a woman. Mostly we haven’t fitted the traditional gender stereotypes. In the process of educating and pressuring people to be more accepting of gender and sexual diversity, we’ve helped make Britain a gentler, kinder, more compassionate society.”
In terms of LGBT representation in society, we’ve come along leaps and bounds too. It’s no secret that there are vastly more LGBT people in the media, in sport, in politics. We’ve seen massive changes “compared even to just twenty years ago,” as Tatchell puts it. As a result, it “gives young LGBT people role models they can identify with and helps normalise homosexuality and transgenderism.”
But Britain’s not perfect. The same-sex marriage bill that parliament passed last year hasn’t resulted in total equality. Tatchell popularised the phrase ‘sexual apartheid’ several years ago. He told me, to my surprise, that the ban on gay marriage that existed until recently was very much a modern piece of legislation. The Marriage Act of 1971 was the first to criminalise same-sex marriage. Before then “there was no prohibition”.
He goes on to stress the fact that, although Britain has gone in the last half-century from one of the world’s countries with the highest number of laws discriminating against homosexuality to one of the world’s countries with the fewest, LGBT community members are still actively treated differently. Why do we need an extra set of laws for homosexuals when the government could simply have repealed the Marriage Act of 1971? Why should heterosexual couples be barred from civil-partnerships? These are the questions Tatchell wants answering. Because as it stands, “This is not equality. It is segregation in law.”
Tatchell argues that religious groups should also not be above the law, but that the same anti-discrimination legislation that businesses, governments, and individuals have to comply with should apply to religious organisations too.
Tatchell’s has long been one of the world’s most recognisable faces in the fight for social equality for the LGBT community. For someone like me, who hadn’t necessarily given much thought to the future of the LGBT community after the passing of the same-sex marriage legislation, he certainly makes an impression. And, as my limited time with him comes to a close, I can’t help but feel that, given his passion and drive, he won’t be going away any time soon.
Interview: The Last Lib Dem MEP
On Sunday evening, Catherine Bearder had a near-death experience. Well, figuratively speaking. The literal part is how her party, the Liberal Democrats, were decimated during Sunday’s European election results. Last week, they had eleven MEPs, this week, just the one: her. Decimated, almost, in the true Roman military sense – a brutal inversion of it.
It was the first thing David Dimbleby commented on after the results for South East England came in. “Just worth noting – that’s the first Liberal Democrat seat held,” he said on the BBC’s late night marathon. “It’s very close,” remarked the relevant expert beside him. “They just crept in there with around 187,000 votes. If they’d got 180,000 they wouldn’t have got it.”
Decimation was a punishment dished out to groups of Roman soldiers who deserted or mutinied. Some of the charges thrown at Bearder echo with comparable condemnation. You’ve broken ranks with the electorate, haven’t you? She vigorously denies this. “The latest poll I saw said 65% of the British public want to stay in the European Union. Less than 40% of the population voted at the election.
“The more worrying thing is why 60% of people didn’t vote. That is very serious in any democracy. People are so disconnected they didn’t feel it was worth ten minutes of their time walking down to the polling station.”
“We knew we were in for a tough fight, but I didn’t think we were going to be hit badly as we have been.”
Sceptics might hear complacency in these words. Martin Tod, a fellow high-ranking member of the party – and on the federal executive committee that runs it – thinks this is a real risk to the Liberal Democrats’ health. Live on the BBC’s programme, he dressed down Lib Dem Treasury Secretary Danny Alexander, leaving the senior minister nonplussed. “I’m really concerned… with the current strategy,” Tod rebuked. Something had to give. He implied ditching Nick Clegg, since having a national punchbag as party leader is no fun when you’re the one keeping it steady.
“I don’t agree with Martin on removing Clegg,” said Bearder. “We are a democratic party; we can ask for that if he gets enough support. If so, then we can move forward on that. But I’m confident he won’t find that support.
“We should be concentrating on our message, what we stand for, and delivering it to the electorate in most effective way. We failed in the election; we have to do better next time because we have MPs to defend.” A resolute rallying cry. But it’s easier to make war plans than go over the top. And if the apparatchiks don’t give Clegg the boot, the public might come for him in 2015. A leaked ICM poll commissioned by his own party supporters put the Liberal Democrats on 15% in his own Sheffield constituency, behind both Labour (20%) and the Conservatives (16%).
What of the new disrupters in European politics, UKIP, and their Wat Tyler, Nigel Farage? One thing’s patent: Bearder can’t stand him. Farage has a democratic right to be there, she concedes, but “I find some of the things he says eye-wateringly embarrassing for the UK. He uses [the European Parliament] as a platform for his own self-promotion.
“There is a feeling afoot that the European elections don’t matter, and you can give the government of the day a good kicking. Unfortunately, it does matter, because we’re now left with UKIP MEPs who don’t turn up to do the work.”
Out rolls an unflattering list of blasé UKIP callousness. “In the last Parliament we had a report calling for member states to increase sentencing and police cooperation on human trafficking – they voted against that. We had a report castigating Russia for homophobia – they voted against that. New rules that guarantee British victims of crime when visiting other European countries – they voted against that. Their policy of voting against everything on principle damages British citizens.”
Bearder holds out hope, however, describing UKIP as just an overrated blip. It’s “scaremongering”, she asserts, citing the absence of emigration figures as part of why it’s been so difficult to fight that argument. Alas though, her allusion to voter apathy in 1930s Germany as the alternative, look-what-happens-if-you-don’t scenario was a rather ironic riposte.
UKIP’s vote will “collapse” at next year’s general election, she insisted. “The academics, and history, tell us that people will swing back after a European election.” History is also cruel, especially to junior coalition partners. Only last year, at Germany’s general election, the Liberals (FDP) were totally eliminated after a one-term love-in with Angela Merkel’s conservative Christian Democrats (CDU). Comfort in theory and the past alone is a leap of faith. Bearder seems well aware of this.
“We need to say, ‘If you feel there’s too many people, is that because you haven’t got enough housing, jobs, or skills the newcomers have?’ We need to counteract xenophobic arguments with the truth, and address those problems. For students, I will be standing up for Erasmus, postgraduate and research funding as well.”
The Lib Dem package will be a tough sell to a tough crowd, and Bearder knows her life has just got harder. “I’m moving now into a 30-hour day,” she jokes. ‘Pack up your troubles in your old kit bag’ sang British soldiers as they set off for the Continent in bygone times. The Lib Dems’ last trooper, too, keeps her chin up. “At least I won’t have delegation meetings to go to – I just have to meet with myself!”
(published 30-05-14)
Athens: souvlaki and political graffiti
What always amuses me about Greek air stewardesses is how they give you the absolute worst-case scenario disaster-related safety information and leave out the “Please make sure your seatbelt is securely fastened” spiel. This nation of cynics doesn’t give a toss about turbulence; when you’re genetically predisposed to neuroticism it’s really death that you’re worrying about when you pack yourself into a pressurised vessel some 30,000 feet above the ground. Grateful that death wasn’t on the cards just yet, my fellow passengers clapped heartily as we landed in Athens’ main airport in mid-February, but my mind was focused more on whether my classes at the university would actually start the following Monday following months of strikes, and less on our impending doom.
With my father (read: translator, ATM and all-round saviour) in tow, I was ready to start the second half of my year abroad in the land of feta, chiselled statues and economic woe. After an enlightening taxi ride from the airport to my new flat, during which the driver showed us the run-down Nazi building on the side of the motorway, assuring us that these were “the good Nazis” before throwing a Hitler salute – Golden Dawn alert – I was particularly happy to step out of that car and into the safer hands of my jolly Greek landlord, who had kindly filled my cupboards with some essentials: olive oil and three types of coffee. What else could one need?
Making Greek friends has been interesting, primarily because when I introduce myself as Theo Louloudis what they hear is “God Flower”. I’ve been sticking to Theodora and getting used to the subsequent barrage of questions. The problem is they can’t place me. Who is this faux deity? She looks Greek – she’s certainly got the name, plus a half-decent accent, marred by glaring gaps in her vocabulary, but whilst the Greek teenagers with half a brain ship themselves off to the UK or the States to study, she’s chosen to leave Oxford for the concrete jungle of Athens University.
Administrative problems surface often round here, perhaps because the Greeks’ laid-back approach means that nothing gets done before 10am and the idea of working past 4pm is laughable. After an hour and a half bickering with the local Vodafone salesman in an attempt to set up a phone contract without a Greek VAT number, we began to clock what the deal was. One 20 euro-loaded handshake later and I was texting friends all over the globe, making the most of the extra free texts that my new pal, Sotiris, had thrown in.
The dreaming spire is to Oxford what communist graffiti, broken windows and fag ends are to the University of Athens. Every surface is covered in scrawled slogans, only visible once you wade through the clouds of cigarette smoke wafting down each corridor. Whilst the Athenians are proud of their tradition of open political commentary and accompanying street art, the recent financial crisis has spurred the young to express their discontent with a scarily nihilistic vigour, which means that the university ain’t no oil painting.
But what the University lacks in aesthetics it makes up for in cheap coffee. While the spectrum of cultural events is nowhere near on a par with the diverse offerings of Paris or London (fair enough given the circumstances), the cafés are always full, because this is Greece, where the coffee break is a human right and people-watching is a well-practiced sport. Although someone is trying to tackle the nation’s inertia: “WAKE UP” is one of the ubiquitous graffiti tags found all over the city.
I ought to say that despite my frustrations, Athens is certainly not a fun-free zone. Pay in cash and you’ll bag yourself a hefty discount, giving shops a get-out-of-jail-free card from declaring their true income; tax avoidance is a national sport here, and boy do they play it well. Life is inexpensive anyway, and if the cheap ouzo doesn’t do the trick, the weather can’t fail to put one in a good mood. And despite the strikes, the protests, the idleness and the astonishing lack of functional technology, who could scorn a nation with such fondness for the British? While the French spoke of “binge drinking”, “sluts” and “deeezgusteeng fud”, the Greeks take the more sensible view that our women are all Kate Middleton, our politicians all amiable (if bumbling) Boris Johnson figures and our drinking culture a hell of a lot of fun.
I’m the first to admit that my decision to move to Greece was a curious one. My Greek cousins had scarpered from Athens at the first opportunity, choosing pretty much any university they could scramble their way into, so it was much to their surprise, that i undertook a reverse journey.
I’m really happy here though, and things look set to stay that way, provided my local souvlaki joint doesn’t run out of meat, the sun keeps shining, and the country doesn’t cease to exist before the end of June.
Creaming Spires – 6th week Trinity
He may be at LMH, or live so far down Cowley that you’re fairly sure you’ve reached the ring road, or Christ, maybe even in Summertown, and the next morning you will have no idea how to get home. Google maps on a dying iPhone may try and show you the way, but when you get stuck in the grounds of Hugh’s and have to scale over a stone wall at half past three in the morning onto Banbury road – and are questioned by a porter as a suspected thief (the only thing stolen was my dignity) – you begin to question just why you have gone to the literal ends of the earth for a semi-decent fuck. You’ve been hit with an Outlier.
There are two ways you have ended up here – either you left Bridge and he gave you no clue as to quite how long the walk was, and you kept going, convinced by your achingly horny drunk alter-ego that it was just around the corner, or you did something slightly more shameful: the ‘Sober Day Trip’.
The shameful sober day-trip happened for the first time when I ran into an acquaintance in the city centre – in WHSmiths, the library, McDonald’s, and we ended up gradually traversing our way across the city via cafes and pubs that got closer and closer to his room. It was such a gradual migration that I barely even noticed until I was suddenly far, far away from the centre and it was still light out – being summer – and I didn’t want to do an essay. So we fucked, on a large and sturdy desk (that far out they have lots of space) because what else was there to do out there in the virtual wilderness?
I was sure that only townies and Brookes students lived this far away, but I knew that leaving the next morning would be OK because, hey, I was in day clothes, even though the walk would be hell. On this particular sober daytrip, I actually spent the next day in the same clothes because I a) am lazy b) I couldn’t be bothered to change and c) bantz. I’m all for shagging the odd outlier or two – it’s a great way to see the city, though the sex may be fairly dull because you’re both knackered from the journey – but next time, make sure to bring a bike.