Sunday 3rd August 2025
Blog Page 1436

So we’ve lost the Ashes, now what?

Samuele Volpe
-
0
So we’ve lost the Ashes, now what?

At about half past four yesterday morning I gave up. As Ben Stokes’ brave century innings came to an end – and even the faintest hopes that any Englishmen may have harboured of clinging to the Ashes were extinguished – I couldn’t quite bare to listen to the institution that is Test Match Special describing Mitchell Johnson tearing through the England tail, yet again.

It has been a painful month or so following the Ashes this time round. For a kid whose first real taste of cricket was the, now almost-mythical, 2005 series, watching England being simply blown away has been a weird sensation. That’s not to say that they’ve not been extremely poor in that period since ’05, just go back to the 06/07 Ashes whitewash for proof of that, but there has been a disturbing lack of fight around this England team that, a ginger northerner excepted, seems to have settled around the squad like a dense fog. Perhaps Jonathan Trott’s sad withdrawal due to illness is a microsm of the issues at play here, because far too many senior players just haven’t had their head in the right place. 

It’s hard to say why Alastair Cook’s form has been such a pained mirror image of his last trip down-under, and explaining how Matt Prior has gone from England’s player of the year just last June to a shivering wreck behind the stumps is equally mysterious, but to me what stands out is the way in which both batsmen and bowlers have struggled to show any fight.

The Aussies have had David Warner at the top of the order; infamous during the British summer for his pugilistic impulses, his aggressive demeanor has been channeled far more productively into making runs this winter. Meanwhile Mitchell Johnson has turned the English lower order into some extremely tentative bunny-rabbits. As much as Joe Root was clearly standing up Warner in a Walkabout bar over the summer months, he hasn’t been quite so pugnacious on the flat Aussie wickets. Kevin Pietersen deserves an article all too himself, but in playing his own little sideshow game in every innings he’s looked out of touch in more than one sense of the phrase. As a collective, the English side has failed to – forgive the simplistic cliché – want it as much as their antipodean counterparts.

I could continue to explain the deficiencies of the remaining English players, the coach, and even the selectors, but that has been done very well in a great number of other places on the internet. Instead let’s have a think about what happens next. The Australians are fired up and desperate to repeat the whitewash of seven years ago, whilst the English reaction to what has probably seemed inevitable for a while will be both fascinating, and incredibly telling.

The problem is that, for all those calling for wholesale changes, there isn’t a massive selection of options out in Australia. By all accounts, the three tall fast bowlers – Tremlett, Finn, and Rankin – are all just as mentally scrambled as the current XI, whilst from the batting ranks, Jonny Bairstow at least doesn’t seem to be trusted by the hierarchy. There’s no point in flogging dead horses though, so I’d like to see the likes of Bairstow, Gary Balance, and Finn given a shot. This Aussie team isn’t comprised of superheroes; perhaps a few younger players in a situation without the pressure of trying to retain the urn might be able to make a bit of an impact? Even if they fail, we’d have learnt something about there ability to face up to the likes of Warner and Johnson.

What I really want to see though, is an England team which worries Australia. I don’t think that’s even come close to happening yet this series, but it would make the late nights in the company of Boycott, Aggers, and the rest less like Chinese water torture. Let’s see Mr. Cook powering past 8000 test runs, Ian Bell continuing to look like a world XI batsman alongside his teammates rather than in spite of them. Let’s see Graeme Swann and James Anderson remind us how good they are, and best of all, it’d be great if we could get back to calling Shane Watson Mr. LBW.

Because if we can’t beat our Australian cousins, teasing them has to be the next best thing. And we can’t do that if we end up on the end of a 5-0.

Review: Nebraska

Joel Casey
-
0
Review: Nebraska

★★★★★

Five Stars

Filming in black and white within a world of colour cinematography is always a risky business. It has to feel intrinsic to the film or else you are left with monochrome monotony, never far from ‘Instagram’ levels of filter superficiality. Fortunately, Nebraska’s greyscale cinematography is entirely necessary. Bleak, grainy, muted and also darkly beautiful, it’s hard to imagine such a film being made in colour at all.

Retired mechanic Woody Grant (Bruce Dern) believes he has won one million dollars. Having failed to convince Woody that the competition is a scam, designed to sell magazines, his son David (Will Forte) agrees to take him to Nebraska where Woody can find out the unfortunate truth for himself.

En route, they stay for the weekend with an aunt in the town in which he grew up, meeting an array of family members and old friends who are unusually interested in Woody, under the impression that he is a millionaire.

The portrayal of old age and family relationships strained to breaking point by greed and miscommunication is hard-going. There are suggestions, though there is no concrete evidence, that Woody has dementia. Dern, permanently confused and disorientated, conveys this brilliantly. Surprisingly though, Alexander Payne allows the film to be lightened by the supporting characters. Woody’s wife Kate (June Squibb) and his two nephews Bart (Tim Driscoll) and Cole (Devin Ratray) are hilarious, perfectly counterbalancing a difficult subject matter.

Bruce Dern’s hard-to-watch performance was a worthy winner in the Cannes Festival ‘Best Actor’ category and he deserves a nomination at the very least when it comes to Oscar season, yet the film is also desperately funny and beautifully heart-warming. Hardship is juxtaposed with hilarity and Payne’s black and white world assumes a vibrant colour by virtue of the characters inhabiting it.

#copsoffcampus: Don’t target police officers

Max Long
-
0
#copsoffcampus: Don’t target police officers

I was sitting in the London Science Museum in South Kensignton, staring at a revolving globe depicting currents, weather patterns and lighting at night across the earth when I realised I really should be somewhere else. Although the #copsoffcampus protest had started roughly an hour earlier, and much of the action – including an attempt to take over Senate House Library – was over, I decided to make my way to Goodge Street to see if there was still much going on. 

I rushed out of the tube and made my way to the University of London Union (ULU), where a debris of scattered banners was all that remained of the protest. I moved on to SOAS, where a large group of protestors were making their way into Russell Square, and ended up embarking on a tour of London including Leicester Square, 10 Downing Street and Westminster. As a non-Londoner, the walking tour was certainly welcome. 

I’ve been to a few protests before, and have often been disheartened at the sight of young idealists taking the limelight and embarking on long impassioned speeches with elaborate sentences but little substance to speak of, clouding the real issues at stake. And, indeed, the issues being brought up by the protest in London last week were certainly important; increasingly bogged down by extortionate fees and smothered by police action in a number of universities, students certainly had plenty to shout about.

As thousands of us marched – or rather strolled – down London streets on our tour of the capital, I made my way to the front of the march, where a group of masked students were waving anarchist flags, and a sound system had been attached to a trolley in order to provide an upbeat soundtrack to the protest. 

In general, the protest was peaceful and constructive, with students flowing down the streets and shouting slogans or simply chatting as they made they way through London. Being a protest sparked by police action, moments of tension with police themselves were to be expected. In the few clashes with the police which I witnessed, my overall impression was that, whilst a select few sought a direct confrontation with police cars – at one point jumping on a police van, throwing garbage bags on it and repeatedly bashing it – the overwhelming majority of students present had no such intentions, and actively discouraged the more excited protestors to desist. 

However, the general attitude of the protest, with slogans such as “No Justice, No Peace, Fuck The Police”, together with a number of verbal attacks on individual police officers, made me think that perhaps many of the students protesting last week were slightly off the mark in the target of their protest. No doubt the police as an institution has been widely discredited recently; endemic racism and cases of undue violence within the police force have made many people – including students – distrust their agents of justice. There is no doubt either that responsibility has to be acknowledged, and that important changes – including a debate to drastically reconsider what role the police is meant to play in public life – must take place for that trust to be regained. The case of Mark Duggan, whose face was printed on many of the banners held by students last week, is perhaps the most high-profile, relevant example of the police’s weaknesses as an institution. The outrageous case of police spying on Cambridge students as revealed earlier this year is another. 

However, the officer on the street is simply too easy a target for student anger. Most officers are not too dissimilar to the average citizen. Their wages have also been cut, their children also pay extortionate fees to study at university, they also have bosses to answer to. By confronting the police as a whole, and in particular the individuals stationed across London last Wednesday, rather than seeking institutional responsibility, the #copsoffcampus protest attempted to simplify the issue: despite playing an important part in highlighting the need to address flaws in the police force, the protestors obscured the more complex, systematic nature of the problems.

Interview: Dannie Abse and Hannah Ellis

Haf Davies
-
0
Interview: Dannie Abse and Hannah Ellis

As 2013 and 2014 converge, so do the anniversary celebrations of two major Welsh poets, Dannie Abse and Dylan Thomas. During 2013, Cardiff born doctor and poet Dannie Abse celebrated his 90th birthday and published his latest collection Speak, Old Parrot, nominated for the TS Eliot Prize. The arrival of 2014 will mark the centenary of the birth of Dylan Thomas, the celebrations for which are being led by Hannah Ellis, his granddaughter and President of the Dylan Thomas Society.

In the grounds of Magdalen College, Hannah and I sit overlooking the Cherwell River within sight of Holywell Ford, a red roofed and vine covered house, where Dylan Thomas lived between 1946 and 1947.  Thomas’ oeuvre spans groundbreaking poetry, largely written in his teenage years, prose such as his autobiography Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog, and plays for voices including Under Milk Wood. Although she never met her grandfather, (the child of Dylan’s only daughter Aeronwy, she was born over 25 years after the poet’s early death, in 1953 at the age of 39), Hannah not only looks like him, she is also his official spokesperson, and is balancing life as a public figure, primary school teacher, wife, and mother.

Dylan’s work has provided Hannah with a way of interpreting her own experiences. Her favourite poem is ‘The Force that Through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower’: “Three and a half years ago my mum died, and my son was born within three weeks of that. I saw clear examples of what the poem is about: life and death.” In the face of her grandfather’s contentious reputation for heavy drinking and womanising, Hannah doesn’t indulge in denial, but calls for “a fair picture, a truer picture … he often would sit with just a pint of beer and watch the locals, and always supported the underdog.”

The centenary is an opportunity to refocus attention from the sensationalism epitomised by the 2008 film about Dylan’s life The Edge of Love, back onto his work: “Everything needs to come out; even the negative must be explored. I think we need a bit more critical analysis to reintroduce people to his work.  She adds: “I think the centenary celebration is in a strange way not about the centenary. It’s an opportunity. For me, it’s the start; the legacy is the important thing.” Hannah’s portrayal of her grandfather is earnestly honest, an attitude I encounter again in Dannie Abse’s house in North London.

The door into Dannie Abse’s tidy, book-lined study creaks loudly.  He laughs: “It’s like me! Old and creaky!” The same humorous honesty pervades the rest of the interview conducted at his large, altar-like desk. Our last meeting was at his 90th birthday meal at an Indian restaurant in south Wales, in a roomful of attentive Welsh literati as he read from his latest book. Abse writes poetry, plays, and prose, including his early autobiography Ash on a Young Man’s Sleeve and his novel The Presence which won the 2008 Wales Book of the Year award. He has written and edited 16 books of poetry, and was recently awarded a CBE. 

Speak, Old Parrot is a confrontation with old age, the transition from being the youngest of three brothers to being the oldest person in the room. Admitting that “people don’t like to recognise themselves as old” Dannie sees his poems as part of the process and the product of self-recognition; from his armchair, he speaks in almost-poetry: “poetry is not an escape from reality, but a motion into reality.” Dannie seems to share Hannah’s desire for an undeceived prospect of the world, but for a non-religious doctor, the objective reality of old age is often bleak. Dannie is reading the memoirs of his friends; he shows me his bookmarked copy of Walking Wounded: The Life and Poetry of Vernon Scannell, an old friend he met in Soho.  When asked ‘what’s next?’ his humour emerges again in a darker shade: “just stick around for a while, is all.” 

All poetry must confront mortality, whether prematurely as with Thomas, whose work was always haunted by transience, or, as with Abse, after a career which, now in its tenth decade, could hardly have been more illustrious or productive. Young dog or old parrot, long career or short, these two authors exemplify the power of words in the face of the realities of the human condition. In Speak, Old Parrot, the poem ‘Parrotscold’, mourns the loss of a loved one:

 

“yet though Beatrice is no more and nothing,

Beatrice is, her shadow hidden in the shade.

So this nightfall, with all your debts to her

Unpaid, raise high and higher the full red glass.”

 

Review: The Hobbit – The Desolation of Smaug

Damien Shannon
-
0
Review: The Hobbit – The Desolation of Smaug

★★★☆☆

Three Stars

A little over a decade ago it became a de facto Christmas holiday requirement to watch the latest Lord of the Rings film on its release in cinemas. After 2003 the franchise bowed out with enormous box office success, a sack full of academy awards and a vast following of fans. A decade later and here we are again; a J. R. R. Tolkien book, adapted for the screen in an epic trilogy, of which The Desolation of Smaug is the second instalment. Peter Jackson is again at the helm as Director. Almost all of the cast from the original trilogy have been brought back to reprise their roles. The stunning panoramic backdrop of New Zealand is laid out before our eyes on screen, just as before. The marketing, posters, even the soundtrack are almost identical to those of the earlier films. Why change what once was a winning formula?

Desolation finds our ensemble of characters (a familiar hobbit named Bilbo Baggins, several dwarfs, and Gandalf, an equally familiar wizard) continuing where they left off from last year’s An Unexpected Journey.That is, embarking on a perilous journey to ‘The Lonely Mountain’ where they intend to slay the mountain’s occupying dragon in order that the gold it jealously guards can be repossessed by said group of dwarfs. Whilst on their journey, they counter giant spiders, an ‘evil’ forest, blood-thirsty orcs, a dragon (named ‘Smaug’ – hence the film’s title) and generally the sort of villainous fodder well accommodated for by Computer Generated Imagery.

This is a very difficult tale for audiences to emotionally invest in. Its centrepiece is a group of greedy, mistrusting, selfish and rather vain dwarves convinced they were unjustly ejected from their homeland by an equally greedy dragon. They are willing to sacrifice everything – including their allies, and even each other – in their quest to repossess that homeland. Their prime motivation in recapturing it is not any particular affinity for the place, but rather a lust for the vast treasure of gold and jewels that dwell within. We also learn that one among their cohort (‘Thorin’) is the direct heir to a Monarchical dwarf ruler that presided as ‘King under the Mountain’ before being ejected, along with his kin, by the aforementioned Smaug.

These dwarves are presented on screen with an absurd degree of moral authority and legitimacy, and we as an audience are in essence asked to endorse the pursuits of an acquisitive hereditary dynasty seeking to recapture its familial wealth through the use of force, whilst ignoring their cynical manipulation of the naïve hobbit accompanying them and their eliciting cooperation from those they encounter by promising a share of the gold they anticipate recapturing.This stands in marked contrast to the self-sacrificial efforts to destroy the ring of power – a source of corrupting, absolutist authority – which made The Lord of the Rings and its heroes easy to invest in and enjoy. Reading his correspondence with friends suggests that Tolkein was fully conscious of the moral ambiguity of what the dwarves in The Hobbit were seeking to undertake, but on screen this ambiguity seems to have eluded Peter Jackson.

What saves Desolation from the status of An Unexpected Journey (which was dreadful) is a series of highly engaging action sequences and equally engaging lead performances. Although it runs to some two hours and forty minutes, the film does not feel unduly long, nor the plot in any way ‘stretched’ to meet the running time (both traits being present in the first film). There is also the welcome distraction of Bilbo’s developing relationship with the ‘Ring of Power’ he has come to possess, and the lengths he goes to in order to protect and conceal that relationship from his peers, all played with surprising panache by Martin Freeman. Yet the inescapable conclusion is that The Hobbit trilogy so far is simply no match for that of the Rings, and Desolation is at best a pleasant cinematic distraction for a lazy Christmas weekend, rather than a cinematic tour de force.

The internet needs to stop resembling the Wild West

Conor Dinan
-
0
The internet needs to stop resembling the Wild West

It came out recently that the website Ratemash has been linking the Facebook profiles and photos of unknowing Oxford students, for the anonymous throngs to pass judgment upon whether they are ‘hot or not’. Meanwhile, Twitter has attempted to amend its blocking rules, so that a blocked user could still see everything the blocker did. The firestorm that forced Twitter to back down aside, these two incidents, taken together (along with countless others), are a chilly reminder that, in the total freedom of the internet, individuals have surprisingly little independence from the passions and trespasses of the mass of humanity – and that enterprising behaviour can give the NSA a run for its money, when it comes to profiting from intrusions on private autonomy.

Whatever one’s views on the lately-revealed NSA surveillance apparatus, it is inescapable that its sort of activity is very much in keeping with the broader patterns of the online world. It is neither subversion of the internet’s original purpose, nor is it much of a departure from the behaviour of any of the corporate giants among whom almost the entire online infrastructure is partitioned. The billions and billions of pounds reaped by internet companies, and the accompanying explosion of human creativity and expression, rest upon the systematic harvesting of private information, no less inextricably than the early industrial revolution was built on the brutal exploitation of mill-workers and navvies. In both cases, the organising principle is the absence of any structures beyond those that emerge from the aggregation of purely private interactions.

If you want to remove your face from Ratemash along with your private information, all you can do is appeal to the conscience of the website owner, hoping there aren’t any strong financial incentives for them to ignore you. Facebook and Google have access to a vast amount of your personal details. If you want to ensure that this is never sold in bulk to advertisers or employers, all you can do is petition to this end and try to forget the ease with which these companies unilaterally change their privacy policies. Never mind, the magnetic appeal money has to them. These companies breathlessly tout their reluctance to cooperate with the NSA, as if that shows a real sense of obligation to their customers, but all it proves is that there’s no fortune to be made in state espionage. Spying for global capitalism, in contrast, has been proving infinitely more worthwhile – and they’re getting better at it.

The problem with a laissez-faire approach is that it places on the shoulders of the individual total responsibility for the consequences of their decision, as it percolates throughout eternity, including in ways one couldn’t possibly have expected it to. The unintended cumulative effect of a billion freely-made decisions has been the construction of an online world where privacy is breached on an industrial scale, under the banner of profit as well as national security. Moreover, it is a world in which constant access to hard-core pornography is now accepted as normal – a fact which could end up emotionally crippling an entire generation. This is to say nothing of the entire subcultures devoted to revenge porn, pro-ana propaganda and encouraging self-harm and suicide.

It would be less pressing if the internet was still a vast virtual playground, but it is not. Nowadays, it is yet another field of human social interaction – simply one more cylinder within our complex societies, whose dangers we accept because of the opportunities afforded by it. A commitment to a life online is a necessary precondition for full participation in society. Yet there is no proper discussion about extending the social contract to cover it. In the streets, in airports, in parks and at school, there is an expectation that the state will give some measure of protection, even at the cost of our total freedom of action. That is to say, there are public structures alongside the aggregation of private autonomy, which are accountable to society as a whole.

In a democratic society, public and private structures need to find a balance; this has been done (perhaps unsatisfactorily) in the physical world. But online, private always seems to trump public. We need a proper debate on where the actual limits should be – public structures of enforcement (not just ‘like’ counts and appeals to conscience) to protect Facebook pages from being unwittingly linked to lascivious websites, to curtail the permanent memorialisation of youthful mistakes and, in the longer term, maybe to protect women and men from the institutionalised degradation of easy-access pornography. The Wild West internet, like the Wild West itself, was always an illusion, evoked to justify the gradual hardening of an order predicated on exploitation; now we need an internet safe for democracy.

We cannot end NSA spying without also ending intrusion from Facebook and Google, because they are two sides of the same coin. To end both, however, requires extending public institutions until they are not only present but accepted online. The idea would be a world where the police treat Twitter death threats like real ones, where wholehearted measures would be taken to give parents control over their underage children’s access to pornography, where pro-ana websites would be treated like what they are – incitements to violence. There would be laws and effective enforcement mechanisms specifically dealing with the trade of personal information, by social-media companies. It is the internet’s blessing, and our poor fortune, that its emergence occurred at such a low point for our institutions of democratic governance. My hope, however, is that by opening a debate on replacing internet anarchy with internet democracy, we can revitalise and reclaim those institutions in every field of human life.

The 5 biggest music baddies of 2013

Helen Thomas
-
0
The 5 biggest music baddies of 2013

5. Rebecca Black

The internet went into meltdown when teen star Rebecca Black, who rose to fame in 2011 with famously awful music video ‘Friday’, released a follow up; ‘Saturday’. Maybe it’s a bit mean calling her a music baddy. It was, like, really bad, but amusing in a oh-dear-what-has-teenage-society-come-to sort of way. The song and video, produced with YouTube musician Dave Days, saw Miss Black recover from her Friday night partying and eat cereal, before hitting the beach and heading to a wild party with a Miley Cyrus look-a-like (there’s no escape!). Well at least it was entertaining.

4. James Arthur

Poor James. Like most of the X Factor winners, I sort of feel bad for him. A year after winning, who even is he? Someone who makes ill-advised homophobic insults, clearly. “You f***ing queer,” said Arthur in his “diss rap” to MC Micky Worthless, triggering an on-air apology when he made a repeat appearance on the X Factor earlier this month. As a result of the slur, he tweeted “#LOVE to my fans but I’m coming off twitter. HQ will be doing all my tweets from now on. PEACE!” Probably for the best.

3. Justin Bieber

When will this torment end? The hair may be shorter, but the crotches have got lower, he’s started assaulting photographers, and the all purple has been replaced by all white (eughhhh). If that wasn’t offensive enough, he showed up three hours late to his London show, disappointing hundreds of little girls, and he has punished twitter and instagram with topless snapback selfies and poor grammar. To make matters worse, he recently decided to release a new song every Monday. Lucky us.

2. Miley Cyrus

2013 was the year of the Miley takeover. The tongue brandishing songstress dominated and disturbed our TV screens, radios, and newsfeeds. She was even the butt of the winning gag in a Christmas cracker joke competition. It was all pretty repulsive, but Cyrus’ twerking and mockery of African American culture was probably the most disturbing. That and the foam finger thing, which was a bit weird.

1. Robin Thicke

The misogynist of the year award goes to the creepy Simon Cowell lookalike Robin Thicke, and his big… ego. The video for ‘Blurred Lines’ had lots of lady bums and boobs, whilst the three male stars were nicely covered up. Funny that. As the terrible singer stumbled his way through the repeated line “I know you want it,” feminists balked in disgust. It was so bad in fact, that several Oxford JCRs banned it from bops and areas around college, following a trend set by Edinburgh University. Intelligent and respectful students of Oxford, I implore you: next time ‘Blurred Lines’ comes on in a club, instead of tearing up that sticky dance floor shouting every sexist lyric, stand still and silent in protest. If not because of its horrible sentiment, because it’s an utterly rubbish song.

The other side of interviews

Liz English
-
0
The other side of interviews

I can’t quite believe that at this time two years ago, I had just finished my Oxford interviews. It feels such a long way in the past, but as I’ve met some of the interview candidates this week, it’s remarkable how quickly the feelings of anxiety and ‘what-is-the-interviewer-thinking?!’ come flooding back.

This year, though, I’m on the other side. I’m the cool, calm, collected second-year who just strolls through college, knowing all the door codes. I’m the one who sits down confidently in hall with an air of authority. I like to think so, anyway. At the very least I (albeit maybe tenuously), somewhat resemble those first and second-years that I remember meeting during my interviews. I’m also the girl who doesn’t appear to be embarrassed to run only towel-clad through college to get to the showers (interviewees – the same will happen to you).

The strangest thing I’ve noticed so far is how serious everybody is. I came to interviews expecting not to get in and planning to have a fun couple of days experiencing student life, seeing what other potential linguist were like and possibly even doing my Christmas shopping! These 17-year-olds seem so intent on mapping out their future that it puts me to shame. Perhaps eighth-week apathy is still lingering, but I could definitely do with a bit of what they’re having. Gone are the evenings chilling with and getting to know other interviewees in the JCR or a coffee shop and instead, more and more people are spending time in their rooms, worrying about what awaits them the next day. I’m not saying that interviews aren’t a big deal, but they’re also the best university taster you’ll get, apart from a summer school like UNIQ. At interviews you really do get to meet a huge variety of people and the chance to spend a few days living and working in a real student environment. It’s also a final check to see if Oxford’s the kind of place you’ll want to spend the next couple of years in.

Thinking about it, there’s actually quite an age gap between the interviewees and I. So much, it seems, that this week I was mistaken for a politics tutor. Slightly rushed off their feet, the interview helpers had positioned (and then left), a nervous-looking politics candidate at the end of a corridor, with the promise that the interviewer would come out to collect him when it was time for the interview. This so happened to be the corridor on which my room, the only other room than the politics tutor’s, was also stationed. Meanwhile, thinking that three coffees in one morning is probably a bit too much on the caffeine side, I got up and left my room for the inevitable loo break. Unbeknownst to me, the young (and extremely smartly-dressed) interviewee thought that this was his time to shine. Apparently knowing absolutely nothing about his tutor (perhaps it would have been wise to Google him beforehand), this prospective politician presumed that I was he. Completely unaware of this guy (I had just had three coffees, after all), I smiled and tried to pass, at which point he leapt up, grabbed my hand and proceeded to shake it violently, all the while introducing himself. It was with great embarrassment that I had to let him down, but I don’t think anyone could have been quite as red-faced as he was. After offering his apologies, I tried to assure him that I would have done the same (I wouldn’t have), and that his handshake was going to make a great impression (if not on the interviewer’s mind, then definitely on his fingers). Thankfully, when I returned from my break, he had already gone in for his interview. I hope his encounter with me didn’t distract him from the task at hand; I’m fairly confident that as a future politician, he’ll have many more awkward meetings to come.

Absence makes the heart (or rather, stomach) grow fonder

Tom Wood
-
0
Absence makes the heart (or rather, stomach) grow fonder

The end of another Michaelmas sees the well-worn ritual of clearing out my room, meeting the judging eyes of my parents through the post-Camera hangover and making the now-familiar drive back to the wilds of Essex. The novelty of this move has rather worn off by now and something has changed: I’ve come home to find my favourite local pub closed down. This has made me reflect on the food and drink desert my hometown has become, but more importantly how diverse and thriving the scene in Oxford really is. I’ve been home for less than a week, but already I’m desperate to get back and immerse myself in the huge variety of culinary delights  the city has to offer. So here are my Top 5 spots of this past Michaelmas – new openings, old favourites and unexpected finds. Absence really does make the heart – or rather stomach – grow a whole lot fonder.

1) My Sichuan (The Old School, Gloucester Green)

 Living out in my second year meant a load of oven pizza and even more Chinese takeaway, which meant my favourite oriental food was limited to prawn crackers and sweet and sour chicken balls. As lovely as these are, there is a reason My Sichuan comes first on my list: Sichuanese cuisine is to die for and something completely alien. The food is based largely around Sichuan pepper, a local variety of peppercorns that are simultaneously spicy and numbing, leaving your lips tingling and your mouth truly watering. This restaurant is one of the best places outside London to experience this food, and the portions are huge for the price you pay. The location (next to the bus station) is a bit of a shame, but the Old School’s glass dome roof more than makes up for this, and the food speaks for itself.

Best buy: Sizzling cumin lamb

2) Big Society (Cowley Rd)

 This pub has become a bit of a Cowley institution over the last year, and is now my regular. More of a village hall or a youth club in its look, there could be cries of ‘dirty hipster!’ at mentions of this place: old school chairs, 2/3 pint glasses and ping-pong all suggest something straight out of Shoreditch. Bear with me though; look past the jam jar cocktails and you’ll find a really great local with a decent selection of beers and ciders, and really good hot wings and chicken served until 10pm. The garden area is really lovely too – the move out into Cowley gives you the sort of space unimaginable at somewhere like the Turf.

Best buy: Thatchers Gold (draught)

3) Pierre Victoire (Little Clarendon St)

 As much as I’d be happy on a diet of Ahmed’s and Everyday Value vodka, there is occasionally the need to bite the bullet and head somewhere a little more impressive. A really reliable and romantic option, Pierre Victoire lets you pretend, at least for an hour or two, that you’re a real Grown Up capable of wining and dining a partner without ending the night passed out on Cornmarket. The menu is pretty typical French fare but it changes to follow the seasons, meaning the selection is far from static. Even better, Sunday to Friday they offer a three course menu for only £22, letting you spend a bit more on the really quite decent wine selection. Beware though, the popularity of this place shows so book at least a week in advance.

Best buy: Crème brûlée

4) Byron (George St)

 A slightly foolish urge to prove my masculinity to myself ended up with me doing Movember this year, which left me with upper lip fuzz bad enough to give me a good metre radius of empty space around me whenever I dared to show it in Bridge on a Thursday night. Disastrous as this may have been for my love life, one bonus of the scheme meant I could help myself to a daily burger at Byron for free. Extensive experience has proven that the burgers are pretty decent, if a little pricey – at ten quid a pop these are London prices for sure. What kept me spending there was their Oreo milkshake: creamy, super thick and so very sweet, making it basically the perfect milkshake in my eyes. You may get odd looks just ordering a drink, but this is really worth it!

Best buy: Oreo milkshake

5) Chocology (Covered Market)

 My last choice may seem a little odd, as this shop is mainly aimed at selling the sort of fiddly little truffles I can really live without. However, a chance visit had me come across something I’d never seen before: a 99% cocoa chocolate bar. This is made by Lindt and only available in specialist outlets, so the existence of this was news to me. The bar itself looks like tarmac, and the first taste seems to match the appearance – this isn’t for the sweet-toothed of you out there. But do as the packet recommends and start with a 70% and then a 85% cocoa chocolate to build yourself up, and the pure cocoa flavour becomes something quite different – rich and complex, like a good wine. Give it a go, even just to know what good cocoa tastes like, but a word of warning: the caffeine content is naturally high, so don’t eat too much too late at night. This was something I learned the hard way before a 9am tute – turns out tutors don’t appreciate you falling asleep in the middle of a heated discussion on Old English semantics…

Best buy: Lindt Excellence Dark 99%

It’s that time of year again!

Lifestyle Team
-
0
It’s that time of year again!

In my letter I was told I had to arrive at college for 10am, so like any normal nervous interviewee, I got there for 9.50, just to be on the safe side. After a calm train journey and a brisk walk from the station to the centre of Oxford I was feeling prepared and unflustered. I was directed from the porters lodge to the ‘interview gathering point’, only to be told that I was late and had an interview in 10 minutes. I had to drop my stuff and dash to the faculty. Needless to say I was no longer feeling so relaxed. Looking back, the mad rush was actually the best thing that could have happened; I had no time to worry about the interview or even worse, talk to all those awful self-professed super-humans who scare the hell out of you as they boast about all their achievements, but in the end don’t get in.

 A few weeks ago my friends and I were recounting our interview stories: here’s my favourite about two friends who didn’t quite hit it off at first but are now great friends. There was a quiz put on for all interviewees and one friend was writing the down the answers for their team. She forgot to insert an apostrophe, so my other friend went mad, saying that if she couldn’t even use the correct the grammar then why the hell was she applying to Oxford!  

 My then-girlfriend was also interviewing but at St Peters, so most of my time was spent dodging revision and the cold by seeing her. This would prove to be my downfall, however: she’d been so kind as not to tell me she’d recently had a bout of gastric flu, which I then caught in dramatic fashion. Little did I know at the time that chundering in the communal toilets was the most accurate taste of Teddy Hall life that I could’ve hoped for, so in some sense the interview period was actually a valuable learning experience!

 Whilst staying in college during my interviews, in my clumsiness I managed to drop my room key down the toilet (Don’t worry – it had been flushed!). Feeling far from a prime Oxford candidate at this stage, I had to fish them out of the toilet bowl and then coat them in half a bottle of hand sanitiser. I felt so guilty handing them back to the porter as I left at the thought of the poor student returning their room the next term, unaware of what I’d done with their keys…

 At interviews I met a guy applying for Spanish and Portuguese. This wasn’t his first choice of course; he really wanted to do Spanish and Japanese but Oxford doesn’t offer it. Unfortunately, the first question he was asked in his Portuguese interview was: ‘So, why Portuguese?’ To which he replied: ‘Well, to be honest it wasn’t my first choice…’ Unsurprisingly, he didn’t get in…

 One of my interviews for Modern Languages involved reading a French poem and then discussing it during the interview.Trying to show how much of a super-keen linguist I was, when they asked me at the end whether I had any questions, I asked, “I really enjoyed the poem; who was it by?”

After the tutor’s response (it was Baudelaire), I really stuck my foot in it.“I see. Did she write a lot of poetry?”“Yes” my tutor replied. “He is one of the most famous poets that France has ever produced.” Oops.

 Interviewing for history is like speed-dating for the manically nerdy. You have fifteen minutes to prove exactly how much you approve of books, then, if you’re very lucky, you win a three-year long relationship with a library pass. As I waited outside my first interview I gibbered hysterically, recalling the pack of lies that constituted my personal statement. Should I just confess, cut my losses?  No, I hadn’t read E.H. Carr. ‘I had this unfathomably sexy history teacher, you see…’ Happily, the interview only consisted of a source discussion. Unhappily, the source was written in Gaelic. 

1...1,4351,4361,437...2,517Page 1,436 of 2,517

Support Student Journalism

Cherwell is Oxford’s oldest independent newspaper, established in 1920. We are entirely student-run. By supporting us, you will contribute to keeping our paper in print and online. Every donation makes a difference.

Donate

Explore

Follow us

More

Oxford Student Publications Limited © 2025 - All Rights Reserved | Privacy Policy

Website by James Ashley