If you like board games then I’m preaching to the converted; there’s the perfect café for you that’s just opened in Gloucester Green. Stop reading now and go. I, however, am not sure whether there’s room for many new games in my life, or even if I have the time to play the ones for which I do know the rules. Don’t get me wrong, organised fun in the form of cardboard-mounted amusements can sometimes be just that – fun. I love the the odd Christmas Cluedo, or even occasionally pursuing a quest for world domination in that notorious home-wrecker – Risk. It’s just that rarely, I imagine, would one think ‘it’s such a shame there’s no café specifically open for the playing of board games’. My local coffee shop has Jenga, Connect Four and Yahtzee stuck up on a shelf in the corner, where they usually remain.

Concept-based issues aside, I’m sure the café appeals to a certain demographic, even if it is not my own. When I went to check it out Meeples was actually totally empty, but that’s probably not unrelated to the fact that it was 11 o’clock on a Monday morning. The interior is a cosy cross between a library and a restaurant. Look closer at the shelves and you will see just a cross-section of the 400 games they have on offer to play or buy (cheaper than the RRP). 99% of the titles on their website I haven’t even heard of. There’s a £3.50 cover charge to pay on arrival, before you even order any food (which doesn’t scream good value, especially when a sandwich will set you back £4). It’s not the place to go for a couple of hours to curl up in the quiet and read a book. That said, you are encouraged to ‘STAY AND PLAY AS MANY GAMES AS YOU LIKE, FOR AS LONG AS YOU LIKE!’; I suppose if you have an entire day free to devote to this then it starts to look more appealing, especially as it’s open until midnight. If you plan on playing Monopoly then you’ll probably need that long.

Having such a panoply of easily accessible and ready to use board games also means you don’t have to agonise over what to fill the last space in the car with when you come up for term; because, let’s face it, your 101 Encyclopedia of Games boxset is always going to lose out in any episode of ‘Do You Think We Can Fit Anything Else In?’. Their website claims it’s a good place to just turn up and find other game fans to play with. If you can’t agree on which game to choose or even what to order don’t panic. Within the café there are ‘Game Gurus’ who will ‘help find the right game for you’: who knew board games were so personality-specific? You can even roll Thirsty Meeples Menu Cubes – dice designed to choose your food and drink for you.

Thirsty Meeples claims to be Oxford’s first and only board game café and I wouldn’t bet against them being correct. What remains to be seen is if there is a proliferation of other establishments offering something else other than merely coffee and a cupcake in other cities. One thing’s for sure, it’s more interesting than the Coffee Giants drudgery you get on Cornmarket, where the most you can hope for is a free phone app while you wait half an hour for your drink.

If you’ve not ventured past the Cowley Road Tesco’s you won’t have come across Red Star. Even if you have, you might not have noticed the innocuous front. On my first visit I ordered “what they’re having over there”; as much a testament to the hugely varied and appealing menu as well as my inevitable panic when perusing it. It turned out to be a chilli beef ramen, and I couldn’t help but compare it to similar offerings around town. Wagamama immediately sprang to mind. I’ve always had it in for the place (much to the chagrin of devotees of the chain) ever since they put chicken into my takeaway ramen rather than the prawns for which I’d paid. Now I’ve found a far better and cheaper replacement, and haven’t looked back since. Many visits later there’s still plenty of the menu I’ve got left to try, even if their ‘Specials Board’ seemingly hasn’t changed for the last two years.

Miscellaneous plates and bowls that look like they’re from a charity shop came full to the brim. Rather than needing to fish through lukewarm broth, my ramen (like everything else) was stuffed with flavour and full of fresh vegetables and beef (I hope). It’s as close as you’ll get to the street food in South East Asia those who gap year-ed there won’t shut up about. There are plenty of safe opportunities to dip your toe (or chopsticks) into the waters of Asian cooking if you’re feeling a tad conservative. The downright reckless amongst you can try a “dish for the bold and the brave to battle with” – a super spicy noodle soup. Those successful get a Polaroid on the Wall of Fame, complete with the inevitable streaming eyes and sweaty brow. My veggie friend was spoilt for choice, with far more enticing options than in most Western restaurants which seem to rotate their menu around the same four or five uninspiring choices (feta and pea risotto anyone?).

You’d struggle to spend over a tenner here, even with a Tsingtao or Singha beer as the main courses hover around £5.50. Food comes when it’s ready, even if it leaves the rest of your party jealously looking on. I’d rather that than have it sitting under a hot plate slowly congealing and overcooking. I’ve tried to make several of the dishes myself, pad thai, tom yam soup and the like but the price of obscure ingredients in the supermarket (and a considerable lack of expertise) means it’s far quicker and tastier to go here; they even do takeaways. If you’re a Cowley dweller or a fan of Asian food, if you haven’t already, you should pay a visit to Red Star.

Our waiter was ostensibly French, and, as is their custom, welcomed us in his native tongue. From then on the proceedings had a distinctly francophone tinge, most of which was lost on me. Perhaps my dining partner, very much an English rose, but three months into a year abroad, had begun to emanate a distinctly continental vibe. I had panicked that I was dressed unsuitably for the occasion, as is my custom, as this seemed, to all intents and purposes, a ‘very nice restaurant’. I’d booked nearly a week in advance, and even then go the feeling we were very lucky to have got in at a semi-sensible time. This fear was quickly allayed. The atmosphere was laid back, warm and vibrant; the lay out was cleverly done so couples could be coupley (and not make everyone else feel ill) and those out with friends could get through a bottle of vino in relative space.

Aware of my incapacity to multi-task whilst eating out, for instance to both converse and read the menu at the same time, I thought I’d look at the menu online so I could be both engaging and able to make a well-informed decision at the restaurant. This menu proved not to be the one placed in front of me on the night, and so my plan was foiled. My company’s decision was basically made for her, the French being renowned for their unsympathetic attitude towards vegetarians. Her choices for the three courses ended up being cheese soufflé, cheese crépe and the cheese board. The dessert choices were not as limited, but I felt this was an excellent choice.

I opted for prawns and scallops to start, and roast duck on a spring onion and potato rosti to follow. I mused that the seafood might be few and their flavour lacking, but was happily wrong. The king prawns were fresh and cooked perfectly (unlike those that gave me food poisoning just a few days later, but ‘I fought the prawn, and the prawn won’ is another story for another time). The scallops, although almost certainly not hand-dived bay scallops (how dare they?), were tasty nonetheless. A mollusc fan might have been disappointed that they were served without the roe, but I was unperturbed. The main course was a mistake. This was not because there was anything wrong with the duck per se; indeed it was crispy on the outside and pink on the inside and a generous portion. I just don’t like rostis. This personal issue would never arisen had I not inevitably panicked in my decision-making, when confronted with so many appealing options. There was also a distinct lack of greenery on the table; the majority of it was part of the table decoration. Alas, we had neglected to order side dishes due to being deep in discussion about the intrinsic (or otherwise) value of art. Tant pis.

Given the quality of the food, and the choice for all but the herbivores, the prix fixe menu is great value at £22. Available every day (except Saturday) you can have most things off their regular menu. Inevitably, though, one forgets about the heftier price tag attached to good quality alcohol. Having emptied our pockets, finding only euros, cigarettes and ironic polaroids we were forced to do a runner. Perfect for a special occasion, sufficiently away from the main drag and one to go to with your parents to at every opportunity.

This festive season left my vagina as dry and unseasoned as Gran’s turkey breast. In lieu of titillating new chronicles, I hope the reader might be satisfied with a cock of Christmas past. Apologies for the antiquity of the anecdote, although on second thought it couldn’t be more appropriate. Were Freud living he’d be sending me boxes of mini-muffins each December; I personify his theories like no other I know. Sex-obsessed? Could rival Hugh Hefner’s libido, notta problem. Penis envy? My heart weeps for a meaty flute to call my own. Electra complex? Ah. Here’s the big ’un. The desire to partake in coitus with Pa. Don’t look so dismayed, reader. I stress now that dear old Dad was never on the scene, and my interest is not literal. Many a girl enjoys a more mature fella. My second ever sexual encounter, I was thrilled to report to my classmates, was with the Silver Fox. I was thrilled because he had been long-coveted; the experience in itself was, sadly, rather less satisfying.

He was certainly a well-practised pair of hands. Eight out of ten for technique. Stamina, on the other hand, was a different matter: several minutes in I was relishing yet another novel position afforded to us by the powers of middleaged sexual experience. Climax, however, was snatched away from us in a loud ‘Crack!’; panicking, I swung round to find my Silver Fox writhing in an uncomfortably geriatric injury. His back, he explained ashamedly through pained gasps, “was not what it used to be”. I looked forward to some friendly pillow-talk. A veteran of youth, Silver Fox would have stories to tell and wisdom to impart. Not so. Foolishly, I had not counted on the utter dearth of mutual interests that accompanies a generational gap. A turn around the cabbage
patch is not my idea of fun. As I feigned a polite interest in garden trowels, I mourned the demise of my glamorous fantasy. My beloved Granddad had an enthusiasm for growing his own greens. The comparison was unwelcome.

If you’re a typical member of the Cherwell readership, you might never have even heard of Mumsnet – let alone checked out its huge range of forums or began to decipher the bewildering range of acronyms littering the contributions to them. But the ten million users of this parenting website have a significant, ever growing sway in public life – and Justine Roberts, CEO of the website since its very beginning, is right at the centre of it all.

However, when I ask Roberts about whether she envisaged the parenting website she began in early 2000 to garner such sway in public life, she explains that she had never thought about it in such a way when she first conceived the idea behind Mumsnet. “It wasn’t like that in those days; it was about going and starting something and just seeing what happened. The inspiration for the website came from a botched family holiday, leading to a lightbulb moment where I thought, ‘If only we’d known about this before we came.’”

The opportunity for parents to ask a variety of questions: one of the most popular topics on the site is ‘Am I Being Unreasonable?’, ranging in tone from mundaneness (‘To hate when people say they have the flu?’), to anger (‘To want to smash his van into pieces and then pay for it?’), to the somewhat bizarre (‘To want Sherlock to kiss me like that?’), remains a key feature of the website. However, recent coverage of Mumsnet has increasingly focused on the campaigning on concerns relevant to its visitors – from raising awareness of concerns over attitudes towards families with children with additional needs, to a joint campaign with Stonewall addressing the misuse of the word ‘gay’. However, Roberts tells me, the launching of campaigns is not a top down process, but a much more organic one, generated by users of the website themselves. “I didn’t particularly envisage us campaigning when I conceived the idea Mumsnet .Most of our campaigns have come from the user base, often from regarding an issue that affects members of the site profoundly, and always from problems they raise themselves.”

It is clear that for Roberts, the user base is always at the forefront of the way in which the website develops – and recently, she has spent much time defending Mumsnetters in the face of criticism in the media. One such incident is that of the infamous ‘penis beaker’ discussion, which almost crashed the site’s server with more than double its usual traffic, as people flocked to read about one couple’s post-sex cleaning ritual, many of them commenting on Twitter as #penisbeaker went viral. I ask her what she thinks the uproar over the discussion says about the coverage of women in the press. “There is still a lot of prejudice about women and especially about mothers,” she tells me. “I think the ‘penis beaker’ incident revealed two things: firstly, that mothers have sex and talk about it; and, secondly, that strong feelings still exist about what women should and shouldn’t discuss about their sex lives.”

Roberts’s role in changing attitudes towards mothers through her website makes me wonder what she thought about how women were regarded when she was an Oxford student herself, reading PPE at New in the 1980s. “It was a very male-dominated institution and there were some pretty old-fashioned customs. But then it felt like every minority was equally targeted – if you were a woman, foreign, black or gay you’d be the butt of quite a lot of ribbing.”

Of greater concern to Roberts was the representation of women in the workplace she entered after graduating: the City of London. “There was simply a lack of women there,” she says. “It was only one or two women out of hundreds of men on the trading floor. The only female role models who did have children seemed to have to pretend that their families didn’t exist to get on. At the root of it, in my view, is the division of responsibility at home. In so many households, women are still responsible for the all the responsibility concerning the children. They feel guilty because they do too much, and it’s hard to rise up the corporate ladder when you have sole responsibility at home.”

How should we address it? “We should be very clear with our partners; be very clear that having kids is a joint effort. Until you have a more even division of labour at home, it’s still going to be hard for women to be just as successful in their careers as their male counterparts. The fact is that, in a third of households in the country, the woman is the main breadwinner, and the division of responsibility at home should be changing to reflect this.”

All very well, but does Roberts have any sympathy with those who criticise many feminist movements, as well as the Mumsnet user base itself, for being too middle class despite their egalitarian aims? “Mumsnet’s a lot more diverse than it’s characterised. On the site there is are big communities of lone parents, of parents of children with special needs, of gay parents. It’s certainly not just a certain type of parent. And I don’t see how you can do more than spot an inequality and call it out.” Mumsnet’s role in lobbying in the interest of its members can only be a good thing – but I can’t help thinking that with such an influential lobby, the case might still be made that unless groups like Mumsnet with a powerful lobby represent a sufficiently diverse body of members, the political sphere will never broaden out as much as we might hope.  

And it is clear that Mumsnet does have significant weight in national politics. The general election of 2010 was dubbed the ‘Mumsnet election’ and its users continue to be targeted by national politicians. I ask Roberts why Mumsnet was so influential in the last national election and whether it will hold such sway in the election next year. “Firstly, the feeling [in 2010] was that the women’s vote was less tribal and more up for grabs; and secondly, it was the first election in this country where politicians had to do social media. ” I tell her about the growing importance of social media in elections back in Oxford and its hand in L J Trup’s winning the OUSU presidency last term, wondering in which direction she believes political campaigning is now heading. “Parties are going to have to engage more than they have in the past; social media teases out more authenticity and that’s a good thing as we don’t want government run by a distant elite run from an ivory tower. The more interaction the better. Brands have the same issue too – you can’t just broadcast any more, but you have to engage fully.”

But it’s not only the political world that faces a dearth of influential women, so I ask Roberts whether women should also be more entrepreneurial, and whether she would encourage others to follow in her footsteps by setting up their own businesses. “Setting up your own business is entering into the unknown. But though women are very unlikely to classify themselves as an entrepreneur, the evidence shows that more small businesses are started by mothers than any other demographic group. What’s important is whether you’ve got a proposition that you believe in. The key thing is, are you offering something different? Because I’m passionate [about Mumsnet] it doesn’t feel like work.”

And has she any advice to those keen to launch their own entrepreneurial careers? “Find something you’re passionate about and work very hard at it. You have to believe in what you do, or it’s unlikely you’ll have the reslience to last the course.” And that authenticity is what, even after a brief half an hour call – all we could fit into Roberts’s hectic schedule – really comes through. She is passionate about her readers, and constantly willing to speak up for them.

In the weeks since our interview, Mumsnet came up against it yet again in a piece written by Nick Cohen in the New Statesman which referred to the ‘Mumsnet racketeers’ when he was not offered payment to participate in a web chat on the site. The response from the indomitable Roberts? A balanced, polite letter to Cohen, which concluded, “Would you have another look at it please?” Yet another triumph for the calm and focused attitude that makes Roberts her such a powerful advocate for a previously underrepresented group of people who, it turns out, have a lot of things to say.