Houmous Girl stood forlorn in the midst of Tesco. Justitia, the Roman Goddess of justice, was traditionally depicted as holding a set of scales and a sword, emblemising the qualities of justice and honesty. Houmous Girl was holding a battered packet of ownbrand Weetabix, emblemising the quality of being completely fucking broke.

Perhaps she should sacrifice a virgin goat to the eldritch gods of student fi nance. Otherwise it looked as though she would be spending the rest of term subsisting on a diet of strained baked bean juice, toenail clippings and whatever booze she could suck out of the rug in her downstairs toilet.

At the start of term, that ASOS Marketplace crop-top knitted by hand out of the nipple hairs of Romanian nuns had seemed so very essential. At the bar in Bridge, those three shots of sickeningly purple syrup had seemed like a sensible micro-economic investment in an attractive capital asset. At Hassan’s afterwards, that tray of assorted rat trimmings had seemed like proof of a benevolent creator.

And now, it was all gone. Obnoxiously  Opinionated Guy maintained that money was a bourgeoisie affectation and a cancer on society: since he tended to make these observations in between sips of his tax-free Starbucks or from behind the Macbook mummy had bought him for his half-birthday, Houmous Girl had never taken him that seriously. At this point, staring down the barrel of Lidl, his opinions seemed a lot less obnoxious.

She came to her senses to see Rower Lad lumbering towards her past the tubs of discounted taramasalata. His motives for venturing into the whole foods section of the supermarket were unlikely to be dietary: this was a man who counted Lambrini as one of his five a day.

“Fancy bumping into you here,” he grunted unconvincingly. A gaze of smouldering passion is often metaphorically described as ‘undressing someone with your eyes’: Rower Lad was metaphorically right-swiping Houmous Girl with every lecherous glance. In vain she looked around for an exit. Shelves of falafel to her left, shelves of falafel to her right. Would there be any escape from the Valley Of The Shadow of Parkend?

The sunlight spilling onto author Marina Fiorato’s auburn locks and porcelain skin gives her a pre-Raphaelite air. I feel momentarily as though I am in Italy, speaking to one of the Renaissance heroines of her historical fiction novels. Marina’s books are steeped in Italian history and art, and her eyes light up as she tells me how, “all that burgeoning of art, and poetry, and every medium” that characterised Renaissance communities “seemed to have their moment.” She speaks of all the contemporary bloodletting, too, as well as the erudition and culture. “I think that’s what’s interesting. The juxtaposition of the culture and the savagery. That’s what the Renaissance is for me.” Marina’s latest novel, Beatrice and Benedick, narrates the past love aff air of Much Ado about Nothing’s well-loved pair in an homage to Shakespeare (who turned 450 this April).

Even this Shakespeare buff , who specialised in Shakespeare at the University of Venice after completing her History degree here at St. Peter’s college, tells me how the weight of Shakespeare’s genius was “very outfacing to start with”. Trying to take on his characters, she says, “felt like a very cheeky, audacious thing to do, because obviously they’re so wellestablished, and so well-written”.

Ditching her first draft because it sounded “too much like Blackadder”, she allowed herself, and the characters, a freer reign. A turbulent sea voyage in the middle act leads Beatrice and Benedick to realise their mutual love. “I think you have to have that sort of darkness”, she explains. “We all get tested. I mean a lot of people seem to be blessed and have a lot of luck, but everyone has a little bit of something or setback, so it felt true to write it that way.”

The stubborn nature and wit of Shakespeare’s Beatrice is seamlessly sustained, and we see just how tough and resilient she is. “She decided to stand up for Hero rather than take everything she’d ever wanted, and I liked that about her.” The motif of ink has a crucial importance in the lives of all the characters, but especially for Beatrice; she is encaged bythe lines of marriage contracts and certificates of virginity, yet liberated by the exchange of sonnets with Benedick.

Whilst I was reading the book, I wondered whether this signifi cance resonates with Marina’s own life. “Ink’s been my friend,” she tells me, “but for women in the past, ink has been a prison”. When writing about the marriage contract, she thought about the suppression of female agency in legal documents, which gets us both thinking about the interesting dichotomy even today. “Legally I’m Marina Bennett but when I
write, I am Marina Fiorato, so my freedom, my identity, is my maiden name.”

I ask Marina whether she thinks Beatrice would choose to change her name. “Not in a million years”, she says, like one would of a friend. It is this emotional investment in her characters’ lives that leaves her “feeling sad” having completed a book. The play’s Sicilian setting took the half-Venetian author out of her comfort zone, and drew her into the heart of the “very strange”cultural divide between North and South Italy. In Sicily, a woman’s reputation, “is and always has been extremely based around her chastity and her appearance,” she explains. “Women are much more emancipated now, but there are still behavioural codes that are placed upon them, and all of Hero’s tribulations in the book really feed into those Sicilian social codes,” which she says contrasts with a Northern play like Romeo and Juliet, “which is not really about Juliet’s chastity, but about rivalry and rival families.”When Marina did her research into clandestine marriages for her dissertation, she discovered the ordeals and public examinations that women like Beatrice underwent, to have their virginity checked. “You might even be in front of a court room and have somebody just stick their fingers in you, so it’s essentially an attack on your own personal space.”

I ask Marina whether as a writer of Renaissance Italy she found her time at Oxford formative, or whether the course was particularly parochial. “Well, it was both those things weirdly”, she says. “I was working on clandestine marriage with Martin Ingram at Brasenose, who was fantastic, but in a way, it was quite parochial and anglocentric, because I was dealing with particularly narrow bands of source material. But I was also working on Shakespeare as a historical source to see whether we could extrapolate any social codes from there, and Italy really spoke to Shakespeare, so he was sort of my conduit to the Italian Renaissance.”

She tells me how there has been a strong lobby in Sicily to name the Italian Michelangelo Crollalanza as the author of Shakespeare’s plays, having allegedly written the source material for Much Ado about Nothing before coming to England and anglicising his name. I press her for her own view. “I do like these authorship debates”, she tells me. “There’s so much evidence permeating all his Italian plays that he knew so much about Italy – things that you wouldn’t really know from hearsay…. although I wouldn’t really like to take Shakespeare away from England because I feel like he is such a massive part of us.” Her vivid and sensory descriptions of the Italian settings make me wonder whether she’d ever try her hand at poetry, after illustrating and reviewing films. “I’ve never really felt the call, but maybe one day” she says doubtfully. “But I think if I look back on any of my earlier eff orts it would be a bit embarrassing, so I’ll stick to books for now!”

Blues are by their very nature a rare breed, with a definite hierarchy in their ranks – rugby and rowing nearer the top, yachting and golf somewhat nearer the bottom. But all blues have one thing in common – a dedication to their sport that leaves little room for any other commitment, however casual it may be.

They’re an exotic oddity on the Oxford social scene – for one thing, they’re actually vaguely attractive – but almost inevitably they spend almost all of their time in a team and rarely leave the nest, as their training schedules demand absolute adherence to a non-alcoholic lifestyle.

That being said, when one encounters a Blue – as a rare, celebrated member of their old college team on an out-of-season crewdate, or just a random run-in at Wahoo, you’re in for a treat. Recently, one pounded shots with me like a champ before ripping his shirt open to the waist, slinging me over his shoulder and carrying me home like a sexy Neanderthal. Expect little-to-no sleep, a room decorated with trophies, protein powder and stash, and a solid high-five afterwards.

In the morning, however, things were different – his body was incredible (goes without saying), but his face…? Unfortunately, I was not guaranteed the same luck. And there have been times when I’ve woken up alone as practice starts at 5AM, on a godforsaken river somewhere or down at Iffley gym – and oddly
enough, seeing them blindly fumble their way into crumpled floor-stash which smells four weeks old isn’t that entertaining when they were inside you 20 minutes ago.

Additionally, they’re always just too busy to be a place to ‘just crash’ when you can’t be bothered for the trek home after a fruitless night on the parkend cheese floor, or when you fancy a library break on a slow Sunday.

All being said, Blues are a rare opportunity to shag someone who is actually fit, an extremely rare occurrence in Oxford – unless you’re a Blue yourself. In which case, please go back to the daily orgies that I assume happen behind the closed doors of Vinnie’s.

I’ll admit, we may have a slight bias towards our college, Worcester, but there is no one who can give a better review than two people who have a combined total of over 100 formals at Worcester. Dinner begins with an odd call and response of knocks and bangs between high table and hall staff at the door, followed by the second longest grace in the university. Bread is pre-laid on the table and a fair amount of surreptitious swapping goes on to get one’s favourite type.

The starter was the suspiciously-spelled gratinated fish – as dubious as the name sounded on the menu, it was surprisingly delicious. It was a delightful muddle of sea food, including salmon, cod and scallops, in a creamy cheese sauce, topped by crispy breadcrumbs. As a boneless dish, the fish knife was slightly unnecessary but a pleasant detail.

The braised steak for mains proved thick and juicy yet tender, and the accompanying gravy with mushrooms was rich and flavoursome, with a satisfyingly savouriness. Unfortunately, the sides were rather dull by comparison; the new potatoes were disappointingly bland, boiled and buttered, nice but average. The spring greens were equally fine but boring, and regrettably lacking in the bacon bits promised on the menu.

The dessert was Mango Delice, one of the many types of fruit mousse slices over a thin layer of cake which the Worcester kitchens like to serve up. The delice proved to be smooth and tart, served daintily with a swirl of cream and strawberry slice. It too however was fairly unexciting and missing the intense mango flavour I would have liked. Still, in the warm summer weather, it was refreshingly light and airy.

I have to add the disclaimer that we may be biased in another way; so many Worcester formals have made us expect impossibly high standards. Ultimately, however, this Worcester formal was tasty but boring; the starter was delicious, the steak was succulent but with uninteresting sides, and an uninspiring but “nice” dessert.

4 stars