Saturday, April 26, 2025
Blog Page 1622

Iain Banks to attend Charity Literary Festival at LMH

ÁIne Quinn
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Iain Banks to attend Charity Literary Festival at LMH

Five writers, including Iain Banks and John O’Farrell, are taking part in literary festival ‘5 x 15’ at LMH on Friday.

On the day, the authors will each speak on any subject of their choice for 15 minutes, but without a script. The event is to raise money for the children’s charity First Story, which seeks to address educational disadvantage across the UK.

Celebrated Scottish author Iain Banks, famed for his novels such as the controversial The Wasp Factory, as well as his science fiction works like Consider Phlebas, will be joined by Esther Freud, author of Hideous Kinky. The festival also welcomes writer, poet and performer Salena Godden, and writers Ross Raisin and John O’Farrell.

Ross Raisin, winner of The Sunday Times Young Writer ofthe Year in 2009, is the author of God’s Own Country, which won a Betty Trask Award. O’Farrell is the best-selling author of The Best a Man Can Get, and May Contain Nuts; a vocal supporter of state education, he is currently writer in-residence at Burlington Danes Academy through the charity.

First Story helps to interest students aged 14 to 18 in creative writing by organising weekly creative writing workshops with acclaimed writers. Students’ work is then published in anthologies and showcased in public readings. Since 2008, First Story has worked with 150 authors, including Godden, Raisin and O’Farrell. Some 1,700 students have written an estimated 50,000 stories and poems, in 27 challenging schools across the country.

LMH JCR President George Barnes told Cherwell, ‘With speakers hailing from backgrounds as varied as science fiction to poetry, any student that attends will be able to explore new areas of literature and academia that lie far beyond those found in their narrow university syllabuses. It is also a point of pride for every student at LMH to see an event that works towards such an admirable goal, and is open to the whole community, being held at our College’.

The event will be held at LMH on Friday 28th September, at 6.30pm. Tickets for the event can be purchased via the First Story website www.firststory.org.uk. Full-priced tickets are £15 while concession ticketsare available for £9.

Re-freshers

Greta Keenan
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Re-freshers

Your three or four years at university are said to be the best of your life. Setting the tone for your university career, freshers week has a lot to live up to. You are eighteen years old with a chance to meet lots of new people, experience life away from home and do it One Direction style and ‘go crazy crazy crazy ‘til you see the sun.’ But with a stack of pre-course reading to do and the inevitable nervousness of having to make new friends from scratch, it’s actually the second years that have more fun. Cherwell’s Lifestyle looks at the reasons why re-freshers week trumps the original.

 

Meeting new people

Freshers week is an exciting blur of organised fun and meeting far too many people for successful name-face matching. The problem with the whistle-stop you-must-try-to-meet-everyone-on-day-one approach is vitally flawed in that you never get beyond the undeniably dull fresher small talk. What’s your name? Where are you from? What subject are you doing? are questions that will haunt you for the entirety of your freshers week experience. Despite providing an easy conversation starter with an equally nervous stranger, this set of interrogatory questions sound more like a hideously un-sexy version of Cilla Black’s Blind Date. Going back to college as a second year offers much brighter prospects in the form of the re-freshers week. You have already established a solid group of friends who you have either spent the summer with, or didn’t manage to see – in which case you have the whole of refreshers to catch up on your summer antics. No longer being pigeon-holed by the “Fresher” title allows you to return with a whole new air of maturity. You will all comment on how young the new freshers look. “We definitely never looked that young…”

 

Reputations

As mad and alcohol oriented as any university freshers week is, the collegiate system results in a rather justified fear of getting a college reputation. If your college parents haven’t already warned you – they should. Do not bring back strangers from Park End in your first week. Do not streak across the lawn because someone dares you to. Do not exchange clothes with a stranger from the waist down in the middle Jammals (I learned this the hard way). If you do, be prepared for all the Sunday brunch gossip that ensues. As a re-fresher, you can get away with reckless behaviour. Not only can you live safe in the knowledge that you cannot possibly undo all the hard work you put in in first year to earn that flawless reputation but you also have a long list of mates ready to put you in the recovery position if needs be. Central to any Oxford experience; as a second year, you know what makes a good BOP costume. Life as a fresher is spent worrying about being creative and politically correct so as not to get your face branded all over the student (if not national) papers. As a re-fresher, you are liberated of all the stress; you have perfected the art of the home-made, last-minute, low-budget fancy dress costume.

 

Free-time

Freshers week is far more structured than you would ever have imagined. Whilst the freshers spend their days attending-or feeling guilty that they didn’t attend-all the scheduled welcome/fire safety/introductory talks, the second years are sleeping in until 2pm, lunching at The Grand Café (when the student loan comes through) and having a long session down the pub.

 

Sharking

However controversial, there is no denying that sharking is a massive part of re-freshers week. No matter how much you try to withstand temptation to shark, the excitement of the new ‘fresh meat’ coming into college is all too overwhelming. So whether you are abusing your position as Freshers Week President or acting the role of over-friendly college parent/grandparent (Sounds creepy but it happens- I can testify) you are guaranteed to get a bit more nookie than you did in freshers week. Even if the fresher in question is bold enough to seduce you, the second year, you will inevitably be termed a shark, for the mere principle of the age gap. 

 

Drinking

Be it subject or sport initiations or the first crew date of term, it is the second year’s responsibility to prepare the freshers for the uni lifestyle that awaits them. For the sake of tradition other than anything else, “down it fresher” can be heard echoing through the city of spires for the duration of freshers week, if not most of Michaelmas, Hilary and Trinity. If you are a fresher, do not be intimidated. You can of course refuse to see off your drink, but over the year I found that the best tekkers was to always have a soft drink to hand, so that you are guaranteed the respect minus the intoxication. By the time you get to second year, you can wave goodbye to the binge drinking culture and welcome in the new academic year with a civilised glass of port amongst friends. “Down it second year” just doesn’t have the same ring to it…  

 

Freshers-flu-free

Two weeks into Michaelmas and half the population of freshers are overcome with sickness. The freshers flu epidemic is a phenomenon caused by a combination of a lack of sleep, excessive liver-bashing and a hell of a lot of germ sharing. You’re lucky if you can hear every third word of a lecture come 8th week, over the coughing Mexican-wave. Noone has ever heard of re-freshers flu. That’s because it doesn’t exist. With a year of experience behind them, second years come back to college with a stronger immune system and a cupboard full of berocca and lemsip.

Woman-To-Be

Angelika Benz
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Woman-To-Be

For more of Angelika’s gorgeous look on life through the lens, see her blog ɐ vantage, showing her ‘hunger for colour, the patience to stop and stand and observe and most importantly an immense love for people, their faces, their stories.’

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London Fashion Week: Observations of an Outsider

Daniella Shreir
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London Fashion Week: Observations of an Outsider

Between November and January, an ice rink adorns the cobblestones behind Somerset House’s neoclassical façade, providing a refuge from the steady rhythm of passing businessmen and students along The Strand. Some glide along the ice, others stumble; no heads turn. In February and September, no such sanctuary exists, nor any partition between the location’s interior and exterior, as the chaotic and exuberant spectacle spills out onto the street, and an unintentional misstep makes news. Welcome to London Fashion Week: an overwhelming fusion of masked rivalry and overt voyeurism.

In 1984, at the birth of London Fashion Week, it was the editors, stylists, designers and press who filled the rows at each show. They took notes, commented on emerging trends and lived out a half hour fantasy on behalf of their readers, as they watched an unattainable and alien body carry the outfit that they would soon burn to possess. The event’s 28-year history has led to the convergence of politics, history, pop culture and fashion. Margaret Thatcher, Princess Diana and, more recently, Samantha Cameron, have all attended shows, whilst homegrown models Kate Moss, Naomi Campbell and Lily Cole have all paraded down the runway.

In 2012, the fashion pack has been completely transformed. One no longer needs to belong to a particular magazine in order to be a fashion journalist, nor to be signed by an agency to adorn the pages of the next issue of Vogue, and you are equally likely to find Susie Bubble perched on the Front Row, as you are to find Anna Wintour. We are all legitimate members of the blogging generation, and there is no more definitive confirmation of this than at Fashion Week. This year, plugs were introduced on the Front Row, and I observed more eyes glued to their iPhones than to the podium, as those assembled frantically tweeted, hash-tagged, and instagrammed the show. The experience is no longer rooted in the moment, but in being perceived to have been at the moment, and being the conduit for its broader transmission to the world.  Being there is entirely secondary to being seen to be there. And I could not help feeling that the editors, and others, who sat before me, rendering the experience in front of them square with a 60’s tint, were deferring their experience: perhaps, in deference to the greater good of sharing it?

In that, it is no different to the manner in which we all live our lives.  How many gigs and parties do we realise, belatedly, that we have virtually missed, because our focus was on capturing the scene on our phones or cameras, and telling our friends all about it, rather than on what was there before us?  And so we go home, and savour our experiences the next day, as we review our photographs and upload them to Facebook. Nothing is truly lived until it is tweeted, as our identities are defined by the character of our presence on social media. It is through tweeting and blogging that we find authenticity and our existence is legitimised.

We live our lives at one remove, and it is not too much of an exaggeration to say that those who sat at home on their laptops, enjoying instant access to the images or the live feed of the London Fashion Week shows, in some sense, experienced it more immediately than many of those who were there. Far from being the exclusive event that it once was, London Fashion Week is now instantly accessible to all, and, ironically, may be enjoyed in a more immediate way by those who are absent. The once so-coveted seat on the Front Row at fashion shows is now The Frow; doubtless because it reduces the number of characters squandered on Twitter.

This year, anyone could enter into Somerset House’s courtyard, and I observed groups of ticketless teenage girls wandering in, wearing their most outrageous outfits, in order to attract the attention of street style photographers, before walking out five minutes later. Students from Central Saint Martins and London College of Fashion chose to become walking billboards, exhibiting their own designs, hoping to attract media attention. People exchanged business cards and blog URL’s, although, new to this game, when someone asked me “Where are you from?” (meaning magazine or blog), I naively replied “Islington”.

Having only once attended a show at Paris Fashion Week, whilst I was interning for a French magazine, I arrived on the first day in an understated outfit, attracting stares from a sea of neon green tights and metallic skirts. Whilst everyone else belonged to the street style photographer, editorial, or blogger ‘crowd’, and exchanged knowingly fake smiles of veiled rivalry, I rocked up alone, on Day Two, having missed the two shows on Day One due to being too terrified.

MARQUES ALMEIDA was my first London Fashion Week show experience. The Portico rooms were buzzing as the intro to 90’s hit ‘Drinking in LA’ played and the first model did the circuit of the square-shaped catwalk. The Portuguese designer duo Marta Marques and Paulo Almeida spent the winter in the woods together designing the collection, and this was evidenced in the earthy green tones and use of natural frayed edges.They have cited their inspiration as the moody, unfashionable teenage girl of the 90s and pride themselves on their collections being effortless, young, and wearable. Their shoes have always been a particular hit with buyers worldwide and the mix of platform, ‘bright white’ sandals and patent black boots didn’t fail to impress this time either. The show was a small, intimate affair, and fairly unintimidating, as the seating was molded around the square-shaped room, leaving no room for ‘front row politics’. Yes, they were ‘f***[ing] the system’ (see their mood board, below.)

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The second day of Fashion Week heralded personal favourite PETER PILOTTO and his cathedral-inspired technicolour offering. It was 9am, as a bleary eyed, yet still immaculate, crowd arrived at Topshop’s show space in Bedford Square, although some editors arrived more than fashionably late, having to sneak in round the back. (Of course, they proudly tweeted about it later). Peter Pilotto and Christopher de Vos crafted each dress in the collection from a single textile, and the pair even travelled to India for the beadwork, having to cross the Ganges every morning to check on its progress. The order in which the outfits emerged signalled a progression from the minimalist black and white, to an added detail of peplum skirt and neon stripe, to the pinnacle of their collection: no doubt, the sequin-embellished, ball gown-form dresses. This season, the Peter Piletto silhouette became much more defined, balancing out the increased eccentricity of print. Anna dello Russo and Franca Sozzani were seated in the front row, proof that Peter Pilotto’s collections have only gone from strength to strength, and previous collections were also spotted on much of the fashion crowd throughout Fashion Week.

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As the iconic British favourite, Burberry Prorsum was yet again the most highly anticipated show with the most glittering front row, including Dita Von Teese, Andy Murray and Harry Styles. Christopher Bailey had modestly said of the collection: “People are stopping work to watch. You’ve got to give them a good reason”. Indeed, despite the live streaming of nearly all runway shows, it was Burberry that had started the live revolution, and Burberry that still dominates it. The collection was cinematic, and featured a mix of outwear and underwear, worn as such. The finale featured a stream of metallic trenches in all different colours: a modern approach to the classic Burberry design. The previously extremely wearable Burberry has taken a step towards escapism, perhaps in an effort to shake off the checkers now associated with the British ‘chav’.

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Supplimetary image credits:
http://www.openingceremony.us/entry.asp?pid=6617
http://www.showtimestitches.blogspot.co.uk/
http://www.style.com

Another stab in the EBacc

Sarika Sharma
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Another stab in the EBacc

The world is a harsher place for young people exiting school. The three-fold increase in tuition fees, a political u-turn accompanied by little apology to Britain’s young people, has seen an approximate 7.7% decrease in university applications in just one year. Even if it amounted to a so-called graduate tax, it has created a climate of drastically depleted academic aspirations. And of those who have graduated in the past five years, many have had to come to terms with the saturation of the jobs market.   

Now another radical change has come about, the English Baccalaureate (EBacc), and it will make it even harder for a young person to succeed: all for a good purpose in the eyes of the government, of course. It is another part of the government cap on the aspiration of today’s young people, which has been especially damaging to the poorest. First, there were cuts to public services and education which saw library closures, the closing-down of youth centres and a decreased investment in schools. Libraries play a huge role in developing literacy, but the government nevertheless went about cutting their budgets. The EMA, which enabled thousands of poor children to attend sixth-form, was abolished. Kids had to make do with less, making hard times harder as their parents’ real incomes shrunk. Now Gove’s EBacc seeks to raise standards. It will certainly be harder to achieve the top marks than it was under GCSEs, but for whom will it be hardest?

There are a number of serious issues with the EBacc. Perhaps Gove is a romantic who believes compulsory French will increase children’s future prospects by knowing the language of love, but perhaps this nation’s future would benefit more pragmatically from Spanish or Chinese. Secondly, the Dyslexic association has warned that it would be illegal for Gove to introduce a qualification that would discriminate against dyslexics, whose struggle with exam environments is not a reflection of their intelligence, or how hard they worked. The exam emphasis would have a detrimental effect on the performance of all students with learning disabilities. Most serious are the comments from those in education, including Christine Blower, general secretary of the National Union of Teachers. They have suggested it will create a two-tier system, in which far more children will leave school without any qualifications at all. Certainly no credible, less academic route has yet been offered for those who will not suit the exam emphasis of the EBacc.

 Unnervingly, Gove seems poorly educated about education, and astonishingly in need of French practice as his recent announcement in parliament, ‘vive lE difference’ would not score him well in an EBacc exam. Education is not just how well you can sit exams, and if it were, most intelligent people would disengage from school very early on. For those with learning difficulties and from under-privileged family backgrounds, the EBacc is unlikely to recognize much of their intelligence at all. It is simply false to assert they will learn more in the process of preparing for the EBacc, just because it is exam focussed. School is about developing the whole individual, and learning valuable skills including in-depth research, interpersonal skills, creativity and problem solving, something that only coursework forms of assessment draw out. Exam success can be bought by a spoon-fed approach to teaching and focussed learning, something the private sector has always had the ability to achieve, whereas state run schools are far more challenging learning environments, sometimes with six times the class size. 

After considering how exactly Michael Gove’s EBacc intends to change standards, and the effect this is likely to have on education, it is not difficult to be appalled at how discriminatory the system will be on future minds. We should dread the effect the EBacc will have on the prospects of those who leave school with little or nothing to show for it. GCSE grades were inflated, but the EBacc is not the solution. It will not reward hard work or develop potential. It is more designed to burst kids’ bubbles and deflate aspiration. And has there not been enough of that from this government?

Review: Julius Caesar

Vickie Morrish
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Review: Julius Caesar

It’s a play where tricolons reign and rhetoric is king. And, although Julius Caesar inescapably concerns the assassination of its title character, the power in this play is generated more by the words themselves than by any tangible weapon of destruction. No dagger or knife wielded by the half a dozen conspirators is as pointed or as compelling as Mark Anthony’s appeal to his “Friends, Romans, Countrymen’; no death on the battlefield as resonant as the “Peace, Freedom, Liberty!” of the revolutionaries. 

And, fortunately for the 2pm Thursday matinee, director Gregory Doran proved he was more than worthy of realising this, his cast expertly showcasing oratory skills to rival that of any Downing Street quibble. Ray Fearon projects his Antony with real conviction and charisma during Casear’s funeral, his delivery moving both character and stage audiences, whilst the grizzly vocals of Jeffery Kissoon reveal a Caesar who is more benevolent leader than destructive dictator as reckoned by conspirators.

The link between Shakespeare and Africa may appear hazy, and at first, even irrelevant. After all, more than four hundred years have elapsed between the Elizabethan playwright and our Africa of today. But Doran’s motivations for recontextualise the piece becomes increasingly apparent as bubbling conspiracy is concocted, as the power hungry are never sated, and as political confrontation snowballs into furious civil war.

Catchy bongo rhythms and heavy African accents do more than to simply transport the play into a different continent; it makes the play as a whole become more intense, more immediate. These are the events we see all too regularly on the news, and designer Michael Vale’s statue of Caesar reminds us of this- it would be hard not to compare the looming statesman to that of Saddam Hussein’s toppling statue. 

Doran purposely omits any direct reference to specific locations of the vast continent, veiling the play in a certain air of ambiguity. For although the director may have decided to use an all-black cast, the generic label of ‘black’ spans a wide range of actors from different backgrounds and different locations- Nigeria, Ghana, Jamaica, Trinidad to name a few. A quality of the universal, then, is produced which allows Post-Colonial Africa to act as a timeless microcosm for the rest of the world.

Julius Caesar invites us to consider the nature of politics, to ponder: how can we really appraise our leaders until after they have finished leading? The dilemma is most apparent in Brutus’ pompous words that “we shall be called purgers, not murderers” following Caesar’s assassination, words which are undermined fully when civil war and turmoil blanket the land.  James Paterson wrangles into the character of Brutus perfectly, the actor revealing Brutus to be far from the noblest Roman of them all, but, perhaps more aptly, the most deluded; we witness a man who enthusiastically stabs Caesar in the genitals, a man who self-righteously beats his chest when talking about himself.

Shakespeare is prone to becoming stagnant if performed poorly, and what with the prospect of more than two hours of Julius Caesar to contend with, this was a very real threat. But Doran’s cast performed with a contagious energy and meticulous polish all around, even if the pace did falter somewhat during the military scenes – which had the tendency to be too drawn out. Nevertheless, the production has breathed new life into this tragedy, transforming a play of the past into a play of today.

Regrettable freshers’ facebook group behaviour

Cherwell Lifestyle Section Editors
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Regrettable freshers’ facebook group behaviour

This is it. This is your whole year on Facebook. Or most of it. Discounting those who don’t have Facebook, obviously. Quickly scour through your pictures, think twice about giving a blow by blow account of the saga that is your packing experience. Freshers’ group etiquette is difficult to judge but there some very basic pitfalls to avoid. Oh, and the really helpful second years… they’re judging you.

 

Stupid questions will come back to haunt you.

For most it’s the excitement of a notification followed by a groan of disappointment. Yeah, people have questions; no one knows what to expect. But no, college doesn’t do your laundry for you. Yes, bring a bike. And saying you might bring a Segway instead isn’t funny or going to make you many cyber friends in advance. Frankly, you look like a bit of a prat. The contents of your freshers’s group never die. You will probably be reminded somewhere down the line, when renowned as the college’s biggest rugby player, that you once asked if you needed to bring an ironing board and an apron. The stupid questions carry on once you start too, and probably well on into second year. There is the tired, nay exhausted, frape, but asking a couple of hundred-odd people if you can borrow a pin gets old really very quickly. 

 

Eagerness is embarrassing.

The problem with Freshers’ groups is that they breed keenness and, if there’s one thing you don’t want to appear if you’re going for that air of disaffected cool, it’s keen. Apathetic and disinterested are much better for your social standing. This is by no means restricted to incoming freshers. For every interviewee who posts a picture of their college from the last time they’ve been up (still looking fundamentally the same as it has done for the last 500 years, although perhaps augmented with a squirrel/snow/large group of Japanese tourists), there’s that second year who just has the be the first one to answer any questions. Sometimes this turns into an arms race, with two people frantically trying to be the quickest to reply or the most helpful. They say it’s good intentions, but chances are it’s just to make sure they’re the most recognisable one on the RnB floor of Park End…

 

You think you’re a LAD? This will impress no one.

We’ve all been there: this is your very first opportunity to stake your claim as your college’s premier LAD/ LADETTE, and it’s time to get in there first. Stories of your banter will be whispered in hushed tones as you stagger around the quad, nursing a hangover and a bruise from that particularly brutal match or race. It’ll be ok though, because while you stagger you’ll have at least one, maybe three, other freshers doting on your every move, just waiting to hear stories of your intrepid derring-do, the time that you scored that try or the time you got so drunk you were thrown out of three clubs and STILL pulled. Trust me when I say this, the time to demonstrate your laddish tendencies is not the freshers group.

 

Don’t brag, you’re not that great.

You’ve managed to get yourself an Oxford offer. You either got lucky or are genuinely intelligent. Well done. It might come as a surprise to you then that every single incoming fresher is in the same position as you. You are not exceptional. Gently informing your peers that you managed to achieve 100 UMS marks in your Chemistry January exams will just piss people off. Sugar coating it with humility by insisting that you are “so surprised” or that you don’t know how you “managed it” is even worse. You will not come across as a shining beacon of intelligence but as very insecure.

Cultural Conversation Starters

Nick Hilton
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Cultural Conversation Starters

It’s almost time for Freshers’ Week, when groups of gangly 18 year olds gather for uncomfortably repetitious greetings, fancy dress parties and a wholly disappointing number of sexual liaisons. Those first few conversations will be some of the worst of your life, full of inane details about your school career and desperate attempts to find some mutual interests. Here, for the delectation of zealously researching freshers and older sharks looking for the ‘trending topics’ of Fresher’s Week 2012, is a Guide to How to Appear More Interesting Than You Actually Are Through the Medium of Culture.

Music

Dr Dre- It’s important that you pretend to like at least one conventionally popular artist. Even the weird music students can get behind Coolio or Snoop Dogg at Baby Love. After years of fruitlessly attempting to make a hoe a housewife, I finally had the situation explained to me by Dr Dre. Once you’re sufficiently familiar with his works you can even drop the formal title and just call him ‘Dre’, although you should try and make sure you’re not wearing chinos if/when this happens. If you can’t respect a rapper with a PhD then there’s really very little hope for you.

Sigur Rós- I’d never heard of this Icelandic band until I was searching for some suitably dramatic background music to my Prelims crises. Even Wikipedia describes them as ‘ambient’ so they don’t require much active listening, but they’ll make you seem knowledgeable and alternative (both good things, in case you were wondering). I even managed to use them as an example on my Literary Theory paper (which I passed!) so there are plenty of curricular uses for this band too.

 TV

Game of Thrones- Nobody likes someone who’s too self-consciously highbrow and brings the entire 7-season collection of The West Wing with them. Game of Thrones is the perfect lowbrow conversation piece- violent enough to appeal to people who consider rugby to be ‘fun’, political enough to replace arguments about the Middle East with ones about the Lannister/Stark conflict, and containing more naked breasts than a holiday with Kate Middleton. If this doesn’t get you through a few awkward freshers’ barbecues then I don’t know what will.

Breaking Bad- I’ve only seen one episode of it, but the pedantic insistence of everyone I know that ‘you really need to watch this’ has assured me that I’d have been much happier if I’d watched it all and been on the side of the pedantic insisters. So, watch this series and then bond with people as you knowingly declare that it’s ‘even better than Mad Men’ and repeatedly inform me that Bryan Cranston is ‘the dad from Malcolm in the Middle’. (WARNING: The side effects of this might include an exceedingly dull friendship group.)

Books

Fifty Shades of Grey- I think we’ve all toyed with ironically reading this book. Because we’re better than it, right? Aren’t we all cleverer than this EL James? Well, her bank balance might beg to differ but this will be sure to spark up some lively conversations about boring things like literature and the publishing industry, as well as interesting things like sex and typesetting. And, who knows, with enough alcohol and duct tape, this might just lead to the most interesting pre-drinking session since the discovery of beer pong.

Beowulf- I’d highly recommend that all non-English students read this so that they can smile knowingly when their English student friends are freaking out about it and then declare how much they enjoyed it and how they ‘didn’t find it too difficult, even in the original Anglo-Saxon’. The second reason for this recommendation is slightly more masochistic and I’m sure that, after a few lines of this epic poem, you’ll understand it. There’s a reason why this doesn’t come with the Richard and Judy stamp of approval that it so desperately deserves.

Movies

The Ring- Make of this American remake of a classic Japanese horror movie what you will, nothing sorts the corn from the chaff like a good scary movie. Be wary of anyone who desperately avoids watching it with you (like my friend who ran out of the cinema during the Breaking Dawn trailer before Paranormal Activity 3) and, if you play your cards right, nothing brings a timid boy and girl closer than getting frightened under the same blanket. That said, nothing spoils the moment faster than the smell of urine.

The Godfather II- You’ll want to seem intelligent and cultured when people inevitably ask you what your favourite movie is. Don’t pick anything too obvious (Citizen Kane, Taxi Driver and The Shawshank Redemption are all no-go areas) so why not go fractionally beyond the obvious with the greatest sequel ever made? It’ll make you look fairly cultured, whilst also not being so off-the-wall that it frightens people. In addition, it allows you to consistently recommend that people watch ‘the first Godfather’ so you can watch your favourite film together. Quickly people will assume that you’re very clever and slightly Italian.

Art

Rosa Barba- I Googled ‘cool contemporary artists’ in order to try and find a good artist for this section. The point of that wasn’t to try and unearth a genuine recommendation (although I’m sure that Barba’s video installations are fantastic) but so that you can see how easy it is to find an area of knowledge that makes you appear interesting. Honestly, if you can be bothered to put in a couple of hours of research, you can make yourself an Oxford-wide expert in modern art. Just make sure that you don’t go overboard and end up spending any significant time at Modern Art Oxford, with their boring murals and incredibly expensive pastries.

Édouard Manet- Real suggestion here. Who doesn’t love the father of impressionism? And, trust me, a reproduction of one of his celebrated scenes of Parisian life is going to look a lot better on your wall than Lucy Pinder (please, for God’s sake, leave that at home) or that bloke from Twilight (I know his name…). It’s not going to be a surefire hit and it might all be a bit too much if you’ve already got Cath Kidson bedding, but, if you’re willing to be a self-confessed connoisseur then this’ll make you look cleverer than a goggle wearing lab technician. 

Medical science facilities to be extended

Gayatri Parthasarathy
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Medical science facilities to be extended

Oxford University plans to acquire the Headington Park Hospital site from the Oxford Health NHS Trust and turn it into a medical science centre. To supplement the John Radcliffe and Churchill Hospital biomedical research facilities, four new labs will be created on the site in Headington which adjoins the Old Road campus.

The development of the hospital complex is expected to take up to 30 years to complete. The main hospital will initially continue to be used by the NHS on a 20 year lease, but will eventually be knocked down.

The site, to include a multi-storey car park, restaurant, shop and gym, is expected to employ 3,000 people.

Professor Rodney Phillips, of the Nuffield Department of Medicine, said “For many years, biomedical research in Oxford has taken place on the John Radcliffe and Churchill Hospital sites, which we have developed. Currently building is taking place for the Kennedy Institute. We have developed our research so that, on some scales, we are the best.”

“This larger and better facility will lead to new ways of treating disease. Spin-off companies are often local, leading to many jobs being created. For the city and the county, the fact that the university is very strong in this area provides jobs and wealth creation.”

He also responded to critics, claiming that “We have put an enormous effort into consultation with residents, the council and the county council and I feel that we have addressed most of their concerns.”

“There is a very regulated environment. We have a travel regulatory plan, which means that Oxford will restrict access to the site, improve public transport, and encourage public transport for its staff, partly by making a contribution to the council.”

Local residents have expressed some concerns regarding proposals contrary to council policy, including building heights, increased parking, and how well the new buildings will blend with their environment.

Harry Edwards, Planning Secretary of the Highfield Residents Association (HRA), said ‘We hope that the Park Development Proposals will be more specific on how it intends to support the local community as its impact increases.”

The University have submitted the planning application to the Oxford City Council. Headington Action and HRA expect the City Council to review the proposal to assess the full impact on traffic, travel plans and gauge the efficiency of the use of the development sites surrounding Headington.

Travel Blog: South Africa

Rachel Hutchings
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Travel Blog: South Africa

Back in October, I decided to do an internship the next summer in Cape Town. With so much going on, I put it to the back of my mind. But the summer came around so quickly and I became tentative and wondered if I shouldn’t have explored the alternatives that were, perhaps, a bit nearer to home. As soon as I arrived however I was thrown into a completely different culture and environment, with a family that embraced me from the beginning, and I began to live the next five weeks as a Capetonian. I would need a whole book of memoirs to do my trip justice, but here I’ll just focus on a few highlights.

The brilliant thing about staying with a family is that they can tell you places to go to that, as a typical tourist, you would never know of or discover in a guidebook. Langebaan for example, a beach north of Cape Town, was not only stunning but safe for children, perfect for my host mum’s adorable grandchildren, and safe from sharks. I will willingly admit that the notion of sharks did tend to scare me, slightly. With the South African coastline hosting ‘shark alley’ at certain times of the year, (where Great Whites come to feast off the abundant seal population), I was tentative about venturing anywhere near the ocean, even just to dip my toes for a Southern Hemisphere mid-Winter paddle. Luckily the surfers are not so scared and False Bay, on the southern seaboard, boasts some of the best waves in the world. Or so we were told by a dude who, at the summit of Table Mountain in a biting wind and chilling mist, was still wearing a T-shirt and flip-flops, sported a tattoo of the WWF panda wearing sunglasses, had three duvets in the back of his car for his surf boards and lived his entire life according to the maxim ‘hike, surf and party.’

Most of our leisure time was spent wandering around and though I felt obliged to go to the Castle of Good Hope and the Company Gardens, afternoons spent hidden in cafes amongst wood carvings and beaded necklaces in Greenmarket Square were much more interesting. The same went for a shopping mall on the way to the Waterfront, where we felt completely at home in the Food Lovers Market or when staring into the ocean at Kalk Bay harbour a group of oversized seals appeared, hovering around for the insides of the day’s catch of snoek. Or Camps Bay where we took a trip on the first mildly warm day to lie on a deserted beach for the afternoon; the locals knew they had plenty of time to enjoy the sun when the summer properly arrived, but we as opportune Brits who head to the beach at the first sign of sun were not going to spend the time inside.

One of the things that struck me most was the wildlife. Even the Cape Peninsula is remarkable. I just couldn’t get used to virtually guaranteed sightings of penguins, seals and often dolphins in the water around Table Bay, and springbok, baboons and ostrich when venturing out further into the veld- I’m lucky to see a wild rabbit at home! On the boat to Robben Island I virtually leapt out of my seat every time a seal poked his head out of the water, to the amusement of my friend from San Francisco who remarked, ‘you don’t get many seals in England, do you?’ We also got to see a few Southern Right Whales in Hermanus, where in gale force winds we clung on to the rocks at Gearing’s Point in the chance that they might leap out of the water as they seem to do all of the time on television- they didn’t. We also managed to squeeze in a sizeable amount of wine tasting. As someone used to the cheapest bottle of bubbly from the Co-op, I put on my best wine tasting face and engaged in some proper wine chat about the ‘herbaceous’ and ‘woody undertone’ quality of the Pinotage grape. It seemed, at the time, a completely sensible idea to have 12 bottles shipped back to England… Though after a while, one wine did tend to taste just as fruity and rich and sweet as another, and I think instead of leaving the winelands with an educated pallet, I managed to just get steadily drunker as the afternoons progressed.

Despite one weekend driving as far into South Africa as the distance from London to Newcastle, I barely managed to scratch the surface of the country in terms of the amount there is to see. But the experience of living and working in Cape Town, coming home to a Cape Malay curry on the Metro or Long Street the night before the South Africa v Argentina rugby game made for the most fun, exciting and busy August, and it was just a bonus that it meant I managed to escape London’s Olympic hysteria!

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