Blog Page 1749

Review: The Vaccines – Come of Age

Olivia Arigho Stiles
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Review: The Vaccines – Come of Age

As someone who is not ashamed to confess to daily gazing with adoration at a poster of a leather clad Justin Young et al, it pains me to say it. It really does. But The Vaccines’ eagerly anticipated follow-up album Come of Age is shit. Admittedly not a purge-it-from-your-Spotify shitness, but suffice to say, it’s not great.

Inevitably it was going to be some feat to live up to the band’s chart-smashing 2011 debut What Did You Expect From The Vaccines? but after Come of Age we’re going to expect a hell of lot less from this west London indie foursome. The riotous vocals and uproariously catchy harmonies in ‘If You Wanna’ and ‘Wreckin’ Bar (Ra-Ra-Ra)’, with their evocation of teenage rebellion and rockabilly tumult are long gone.  Because the Vaccines have grown up you see; They’ve ‘Come of Age’. Yeah deep.

 In ‘Teenage Icon’, Young bemoans ‘I’m no teenage icon…I’m nobody’s hero’. Well, quite. The lowest point though, comes from ‘Weirdo’ with its doleful refrain ‘I don’t want to let it go/ You know I’m not a weirdo’, which after three minutes contrives to make one yearn for the musical equivalent of a restraining order. Always in danger of sounding like a pastiche of a middle-class indie boy band, The Vaccines’ flirtation with parody was a strong component in their meteoric and well deserved rise to official harbingers of cool. In a recent interview with the Guardian, Young declared confidently ‘It scares me how easy I find songwriting’. Yeah? Well this really isn’t a surprise with lyrics such as ‘I’m so self-obsessed/I don’t really care about anyone else when I haven’t got my own life figured out’.

 But that’s not to say glimmers of the band we know and esteem are uniformly absent. The dark, louche crooning in ‘I wish I was a Girl’ sounds gloriously Black Keys-ian while ‘Change of Heart’ has an anthemic, endorphin-pumping velocity reminiscent of ‘Norgaard’. But the gothic-tinged ‘Ghost Town’ with it’s sharp staccato beat and surging hook-lines is the glistening gem in this generally mediocre album.

 Ultimately while Come of Age might signify a volte-face album for The Vaccines, it lacks the coherency and dynamism of their debut. The band’s characteristic chutzpah is still there, albeit underneath the affectation, but the overall effect feels hubristic and static. The Vaccines, Come of Age? Not likely.

 

THREE STARS  

 

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Travel blog: Fringe benefits

Huw Fullerton
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Travel blog: Fringe benefits

In many ways, the Edinburgh Fringe is like life. There’s so much to do that it’s impossible to do it all; the choices you do make are often wrong, and at the end of your time it’s hard not to look back with some regret over opportunities missed. You can never see everything, and sometimes it’s easy to regret what you didn’t see more than enjoy what you did. Equally, everyone’s experience is different; people are interested in different things, and have different ideas of how they should watch things. Hence why this piece, based on my experiences, is biased towards comedy.

Also like life, accepting deals from strangers will lead you to be locked in unfamiliar cellars with dangerous lunatics, albeit those with BAs in Drama.

Amid rumblings of encroaching commercialism, decreased ticket sales and the competition with the Olympics, this year the Fringe didn’t start off on the best foot. However, for me at least, this year was actually a great one for the festival, and one that indicated something of a paradigm shift in live comedy.

On the heels of the strong showing from British women in the Olympics, it was a particularly fertile Fringe for women this year; Nina Conti’s ventriloquist act was in high demand at the box office, and for comics like Susan Calman the high demand for tickets demonstrates a change in the ludicrous but pervasive attitude nurtured by panel shows like Mock the Week that ‘women aren’t funny’. The Funny Women competition at the Assembly also yielded some choice acts, including winner Lara A King, whose show People-Pleaser was inventive, intimate and filthy. A significant milestone this year was the Foster’s Edinburgh Comedy award (formerly the Perrier) shortlist, which featured the highest number of female finalists in its history, in the form of Josie Long and Claudia O’Doherty. Neither won, though, and before we get too self-congratulatory the fact that two women on a list of six is a record highlights how unbalanced the Fringe still is.

The genre of the shows on the shortlist also bears closer inspection, with O’Doherty’s ‘difficult theatre’ piece based around a magic telescope that sees through time standing alongside the frenetic sketches of Pappy’s and the imaginative silent comedy of Doctor Brown. Their presence on the list, as well as Brown’s eventual triumph, seems indicative of a shift away from the dominance that stand-up has enjoyed in comedy for the last few years. In terms of raw numbers, it’s also clear that people’s preferences are changing; some of the most fully-booked shows this year were Conti’s aforementioned puppet show, the junkshop mime of The Boy With Tape on his Face and the riotous music and comedy show The Horne Section. Perhaps people are growing tired of stand-up comedy; perhaps they just see it when it tours to their home town. Who knows? Either way, these changes mean that it’s an exciting time to experience live comedy, and the Fringe did a great job of showcasing that this year.

Aside from this general commentary, certain shows (some already mentioned above) are worthy of extra attention; therefore, may I humbly present my personal picks from this year’s festival.

Best Stand-up

I didn’t actually see a lot of stand-up this year; of what I did see, Rhys Darby (of Flight of the Conchords fame) was particularly funny and, crucially, easy with his audience.

Best Musical show

A cappella was the name of the game this year, although in a post-Glee world the choice was a little more Warblers and a little less Ted’s band from Scrubs; (excluding, of course, Ted’s band from Scrubs, the Blanks, whose show this year unfortunately felt a little dated). For me it’s tied between the huge talent of African fivesome Soweto Entsha and the more fun and accessible Out of the Blue, both using the same medium to hugely different effects (and no, OOTB aren’t just here to fill an ‘Oxford’ quota. Shame on you).

Best spoken word

One of the funniest, most successful things I saw this year was Dirty Great Love Story, essentially a one-hour two person poem weaving a rich, hilarious narrative of a thwarted couple. Unique and unmissable.

Best Drama

Tucked away in a small venue at 11:45am, Female Gothic was nonetheless one of my overall highlights. Simply one performer retelling ghost stories from (largely forgotten) female gothic novelists, it was truly poignant and frightening.

Weirdest show

Alternative comedian Simon Munnery’s Fylm Makker, in which he experiments with the idea of ‘live film’ as opposed to physical presence in stand-up probably takes the prize, although it faces stiff competition; for example, an act I saw which can best be described as a powerpoint presentation on different religious interpretations of the afterlife, punctuated with Simon Cowell jokes and presided over by a man claiming to be Death himself. Odd.

Funniest show

While it’s almost a tie with the foul-mouthed man-and-puppet Australian duo Sammy J and Randy, at the end of the day The Boy with Tape on his Face produced the most honest, least self-conscious laughter at his inventive, immersive and nostalgic mime act.

And finally…

The ‘Spirit of the Fringe’ award

By this I mean the sense of community and discovery that the Fringe, at its best, can deliver to you in a show. This year I finally got to see The Horne Section, and honestly the mix of guest acts, incredible musicians and audience participation makes for a unique experience that would never work as well anywhere else. Unfortunately, on the last night of its run the show was suspended for 45 minutes after a fire alarm went off. However, the performers soon rallied the disgruntled audience as they performed extra songs acoustically outside while the venue was health-and-safety checked. Definitely an experience that stays with you.

 

In summary, bring on next year.

Maybe I’ll even get a press pass…

 

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Review: The Castaways of the Fol Espoir

Marc Pacitti
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Review: The Castaways of the Fol Espoir

Although it may not seem like it to the majority of those thronging the streets of Edinburgh during August, there is a festival outside of the Fringe. The Edinburgh International Festival takes itself a little more seriously than its younger, gurning sibling, which can result in productions of quite ridiculous levels of self-reverential pomposity and pretension. Had you asked me a couple of days ago whether a four hour long play in French by a theatre commune, (on a set that had to be specially created in a warehouse because no theatre’s stage was deep enough) would fit this rather irritating bill, I’d probably have agreed. Nothing could be further from the truth. The Castaways of the Fol Espoir (Sunrises) is exactly such a play, produced and devised by the Théâtre du Soleil. This company are a vaguely anarcho-socialist group who all reside and work in the same disused munitions factory, and all draw the same wage (from director to coffee-boy). They rehearse for months on end, producing shows of unparalleled length and complexity. However, their skill lies in making the complexity rewarding, the length inconsequential, and the near familial nature of the cast their strongest suit.

The Castaways is a play about many things, including commando nuns, Chilean border disputes, and bloodthirsty Cossacks. These elements are all bound up in a narrative relating the experiences of a film crew working in the expansive attic of a restaurant (the eponymous Fol Espoir), attempting to adapt Jules Verne’s posthumously published novel Les naufragés du ‘Jonathan’ in the year 1914. The group are committed socialists one and all, and the silent film which they play out (with much appropriate silent-era mugging) before the audience has all the ideological subtlety of a Soviet broadcast (a genre scathingly described by Christopher Isherwood as typically involving “the usual triangle between a girl with thick legs, a boy, and a tractor.”). However, this is socialism before the souring of the dream, and you could almost believe, as a result of the passion of their performance, that the view of the world which they espouse is a truly positive and beautiful one.

However it is the very souring of the dream that is the point of the play. As the crew attempt to build their socialist vision in the attic, the events of 1914 play out in the outside world. As the world edges closer to war, the film becomes increasingly bleak and pessimistic. Events from the world outside seem to alter the film, and in one scene, the film seems to predict the events that played out in that year, including the assassination of Jean Jaures. This final death provides the crew with the crazed and fanatic energy to finish their film. The message that it ultimately conveys is that of enlightened pessimism. Dreams fail, and will always fail. The world tends to spoil them. However, the true aim of the visionary is not to build a utopia, but to show future fellow-travellers the pitfalls, so that they may avoid them. If this all sounds rather too weighty and bleak, it is only because I have not yet mentioned the fantastic physical comedy that seems to overflow the boundaries of the set. From actors that can barely keep their hands off one another (whether in hilariously passionate embraces or knockabout punch-ups), to a seagull on a stick and a small man in a kilt dancing like an idiot, the cast portray their characters with gusto and energy that often gets lost in such large productions.

I can say, categorically, that Les Naufragés du Fol Espoir (Aurores) is the greatest production I have ever seen. I would urge anyone who has even the slightest interest to try and catch a performance, or if it has finished its run, to see whatever the Théâtre du Soleil does next. They are true theatrical visionaries.

FIVE STARS

Track Review: Muse – Madness

Susan Yu
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Track Review: Muse – Madness

What is it about Muse that forever keeps us fatally hooked? ‘Madness’ is Muse’s latest slinky, electronic, soft rock offering, the first single to be released from their eagerly awaited, upcoming sixth album 2nd law. The band from Devon has certainly had a packed schedule of late, with the busy promotion and performances of the official London 2012 Olympic Games song: ‘Survival’.

With this new EP, Muse have shifted to a more experimental, minimalistic feel. Bellamy sings of a crazy frame of mind, of a “madness that takes control” and not being able to “get rid of these memories.’ Admittedly, this track is a mellow affair and does not carry the usual anthemic signatures that have been employed by the band on previous smash hits like ‘Supermassive Blackhole’ and ‘Hysteria’, but the overall package is compellingly superb and profoundly entrancing whilst lyrically it breaks no boundaries.

The electronic dubsteplike beats are amalgamated with a hypnotic repetitive bass line hook here, coursing through our veins like dopamine and working effortlessly like caffeine, we are instantly addicted. Bellamy’s mellifluous and sensual delivery is an evocation of the alluded symptoms of a dizzying headstrong emotional whirlpool.

We’ve already caught an exhilarating glimpse of what’s to come in October by Muse. With this offbeat intoxicating number, there’s no vulgar ostentatious showing off present, instead, just commanding first class musicianship. ‘Madness’ can sure supply us with chronic pills of pure musical ecstasy. Thank you very much doctor.

Catwalk Trend: Braids

Finola Austin
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Catwalk Trend: Braids

Rhianna, Rapunzel and Katniss Everdeen (of Hunger Games fame) may not appear to have much in common but they are all at least partly responsible for a hair trend which has dominated catwalk and red carpet alike and looks set to continue to do so – the braid.

No longer the preserve of hippies, Heidi and schoolgirls, the braid has gone grown-up, sophisticated and sexy. It’s a trend all hair types can embrace (although some styles work better with greater length) and one which can be practical as well as chic – as evidenced by its popularity amongst female Olympians, as well as bow-wielding tributes. A few months ago I didn’t know Dutch braid from fishtail and would have considered myself far from co-ordinated, but with a little know-how, practice and inspiration my hairstyle horizons have broadened considerably.

It’s important to master the basics before attempting high fashion hair and Youtube is a wonderful resource for learning at your own pace. Techniques vary and the terminology can be a little confusing, so I’d particularly recommend the channel Cute Girls Hairstyles for clarity of explanation and bringing it back to basics on the different types of braid. Also important is working with your hair type – some styles will hold better in wavier hair and you might have to use a texturising putty to achieve the desired effect. The beauty of braiding, however, is that styles are often held in place by the hair itself with minimal construction materials required, so you can throw aside your pins and grips and rely on a few cheap elastics.

Moving into this Autumn/Winter season, keep it on trend by making styles slicker. Messy side braids work on the festival circuit or beach, but this season sees a move towards the intricate braided updo, as seen on the Duchess of Cambridge in Jenny Packman. On the catwalks, Marc Jacobs favoured the braided bun, Gucci and Valentino models’ hair was held back by twisted sections and designers such as Fendi and Emilio Pucci championed halo or headband styles. The common denominator was that braiding should be neater and keep the hair back from the face – think more retro than boho and you’re on the right track.

Fashionable, practical and eminently wearable, braids are one way to kick-start the season in style, without blowing your bank balance. 

Internship Blog: Law in Beijing

Alexia Millett
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Internship Blog: Law in Beijing

They say that if the Shanghai metro gets you knocked up, the Beijing metro will take care of it. A tasteless joke perhaps, but one the locals relish. It doesn’t have quite the same appeal for me asI  find myself at Guomao Station, Beijing’s busiest subway stop. I am trussed up in my school uniform-come-business-suit and have never felt less ready for my first day at work. Before me is a uniform sea of black haired heads, most of whom are openly staring at me, not because of my Renaissance beauty or supermodel legs, but because in a city of 14 million I am patently Western (and now patent with sweat.)

I set myself up for an August of experiment. After a laborious phone interview I landed myself a place on the internship programme CRCC Asia, who have wrangled me a month’s internship with a local Beijing law firm, King & Bond. I neither study law nor speak a word of Mandarin. I can, at least, use chopsticks, and am therefore marginally better equipped than the other CRCC intern. She is from New Jersey and mainly plays Angry Birds at her desk.

The first thing to know about the Chinese working world is the importance of guanxi, the Chinese word for the friendly business relationship between partners. It normally involves a large meal, washed down with Baijiu, a sort of Chinese vodka that I’d happily use as nail polish remover. Luckily I was forewarned, but people’s attitudes towards each other in the office were almost overly friendly. The Chinese intern, who had been there for nearly a month already, clasped me around the waist the minute I arrived and frogmarched me round the office hand in hand with me. My supervisor looked mortally offended when I tentatively suggested we eat somewhere other than McDonald’s for lunch. Saving and giving face is a big deal in China and it must be adhered to, even if it means suffering a few chicken feet and chips.

While I was familiar enough with guanxi, there are many preconceptions that I had about Chinese business culture that didn’t always ring true. A country that is fast becoming a world superpower must be the apotheosis of intellect and ruthless efficiency when it comes to business.

The clerks’ room of King & Bond was a different matter, however: six out of ten clerks were fast asleep. Some had even brought pillows. Upon further enquiry I find that apparently this is totally normal. I was left meanwhile to copy and paste the entire Chinese website into Google translate. Another woeful misconception: the Chinese are clean and business-like. Yes, they wear hygiene masks in the office. So far, so good, according to my stereotype checklist. A spot of procrastinating in the office toilet revealed the grim truth. One woman, who I later recognised as one of the partners, spent a good ten minutes in her cubicle hawking and spitting, before lighting a fag. She then took a business call in broken English from the same cubicle. They say time is money.

The actual job was vaguely interesting. Aside from the inevitable endless photocopying and faxing, I was taken to a few embassies as a sort of promotion gig. They mostly went well, barring an incident where my supervisor rather pompously assured the Ethiopian ambassador that Bolivia and Venezuela were indeed African countries. The general level of office English proved to be no better that its geography, and I had to insist upon proofreading most of the documents before they went off. One does not write ‘looking forward to meeting you!!!’ in an email to the head of HSBC.

Other than the language barrier, there were aspects of Beijing that were infinitely frustrating, but also moments of real wonder: trying to find a cab that will take you even though you aren’t Chinese? Impossible. Eating well for under £1? Every day. Forget your Pret salad and your Starbuck’s skinny mocha when a working lunch consisted of at least four dishes for under a pound per person. Wanfujing market sold less recognisable fare for a similar price: deep-fried scorpion, cockroach, silkworm or snake were too brave an after-work snack for my tame Western palate.

One of the best and strangest things about Beijing is its own cultural clash. From the austere Tian’anmen square to the breath-taking Ming era architecture of the Temple of Heaven, it is almost bizarre that you can spend a whole day faxing in a window-less office and a whole evening haggling in the Silk Market. China may be a superpower and a strict communist regime, but the vibrancy of the city is not easily quashed, perhaps because of the inward-looking nature of the state. From China’s Great Wall to its Great Firewall, this is a country of and for the Chinese people, and it is bristling with life and energy, when its employers aren’t asleep.

Ned Beauman and the Booker

Viccy Ibbett
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Ned Beauman and the Booker

When you’ve written a Man Booker longlisted novel which combines Nazis, sexual frustration, teleportation machines and H P Lovecraft’s science fiction stories, and composed an opening sentence as mind-bogglingly long yet undeniably engaging as this one itself, and all by the age of twenty seven, then you can be sure that somewhere along the way you picked up the literary equivalent of the golden ticket. I caught up with Ned Beauman last Friday, just as he was entering the figurative chocolate factory of global recognition, bumper sales and literary awards, to talk to him about his time at Cambridge, his early writing and how he likes the limelight.

 

 Not too many years ago, you were studying Philosophy at Cambridge and, if you’ll forgive me for saying so, philosophy courses aren’t known for producing authors of your wit or comic capacity. How did you enjoy Cambridge and how did you get into writing?

Well I had a pretty good time there. Cambridge doesn’t offer any creative writing courses so it doesn’t have a bloc of people writing fiction, although there was playwriting – which everyone was doing. But there was this anthology which Oxford shared called the Mays and the occasional magazine which published fiction, so there was a little bit going on. And I wrote a novel while I was at Cambridge which I tried to get an agent for but I couldn’t find anyone who was interested. But that was good practice.

 

What was your first, unpublished novel about?

It was about an evil theatre company.

 

And what happened to it?

I finished it and was talking to an agent about it but they didn’t take it on. As the months passed I began to realize that it wasn’t actually a very successful novel anyway so I just put it away and now I would never want anyone to read it.

 

Could you tell us a little about your first published novel, Boxer, Beetle?

I started that after I graduated and it took me about two and a half years while I was working. It started while I was doing an MA at Sussex and then I was writing while I was working, on Wednesdays and Sundays. The first one is always going to be pretty special to me because it was the first time that I’d written a novel that worked in some sort of way on the level on which I ‘d hoped for. And I think I developed my style, whilst my style didn’t really exist in the one I wrote while I was at Cambridge. I haven’t been back to look at it [Boxer, Beetle] for a while. When I read from it I usually read the opening two pages so I must have read those dozens and dozens and dozens of times, but I don’t know how the rest of it would hold up. But people are still buying it and enjoying it I think.

 

Your second and most recent novel, The Teleportation Accident, also involves the Weimar Republic and the rise of the Nazis. Is there something that you find particularly engaging about that period of history?

Well, there was a lot of interesting stuff going on in Germany in the 1930s. I don’t have any particular preoccupation with the Nazis except in terms of their over-the-top status as the most evil thing in the world as there’s quite a lot of ways to create character by counter poising them to that. So you have a character who doesn’t care about the Nazis and then you ask: can you still like this character; can this character still be funny? And so on. It was also a good job that I wrote another novel on that period because while I was researching the first one I happened to come across City of Quartz by Mike Davis which was a really wonderful picture of LA at about the time of Weimar and I wanted to write about that. But also, in a way, being a bit bored of the 1930s is probably why the novel is so fragmentary.

 

You are not new to literary awards, your first novel won the Goldberg Award for Outstanding Debut Fiction and the UK Writer’s Guild Award, but how does it feel to have been long listed for the Man Booker, a prize which has been won by authors as well regarded as John Banville and Ian McEwan?

Well obviously it’s terrific. I didn’t expect it to happen so early in my career. Those other prizes are great but the Man Booker is on another level. The impact on sales has been really extraordinary just in the few weeks since the longlist was announced. The novel is already onto it’s third printing which I’m told is quite impressive a month after publication. There has also been so much more attention world-wide. I’m doing a festival in Toronto in October, so I’m going to go up and see Niagara Falls, and that came directly out of the Booker longlist. It’s great, but you’ve got to remember that it is five people that decide, it’s not like the god’s of literature have made any objective declaration about it me: it’s the taste of these five people. Although I’m sure they choose the panel very well and they read the books very carefully so it means a lot to get their commendation nonetheless.

 

You’ve written for magazines such as Dazed & Conflused, The Guardian and The Literary Review. Do you have further ambitions for your career in journalism?

Well I enjoy journalism although I really don’t do very much of it. I probably only do a few pieces a year. But the type of journalism that I’m interested in now tends to be the type that I’m not very well qualified for. I’d really like to do some more writing about art, but the problem is that I don’t really know anything about art. I’d like to do some more long-form writing, perhaps for some American magazine like Harper’s, but I don’t really have any of the journalistic skills that you need to pitch, let alone write for a magazine like that. In journalism my ambitions tend to outstrip my prospects a little bit. But I do enjoy it.

 

Can I ask about your future writing? Is there a third novel in the works?

I’m well under way with my third book which I’ve already sold so it will definitely be published, perhaps in 2012. I’ve not told anyone about the plot, but it will be very different in setting to my first two books. It is set in South London in May 2012 over a few weeks. It’s definitely less ambitious and less wide ranging than my first two books but it’s been incredibly enjoyable to write.

 

And finally, the inevitable question: do you have any advice for aspiring writers?

I’ve actually never been asked that question before. I suppose, read a lot. For instance, when I was at Cambridge I made it a project to read through the Modern Libraries collection of the hundred greatest books of the twentieth century. I haven’t nearly read the whole thing but that was brilliant and if you set yourself tasks like that then you end up doing at least almost as much reading as you need to be doing. I would also say that you can be quite optimistic about it because getting an agent and getting publishers is not just about having connections. They are businesses and they are looking for books that they think will sell. It’s not like they are grudgingly taking on books; they love to find books that they think will do well. People at Oxford and Cambridge in many ways have the right connections already, but if you don’t then you really don’t need to worry. You only need to worry about writing a good book.

 

 

5 reasons why England are no longer number one

James Gheerbrant
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5 reasons why England are no longer number one

Two weeks ago, Lord’s was the scene of England’s fall from the number one ranking in Test cricket. They lost that title to South Africa. Here’s why:

 

1. Desert snowball

England got to Number 1 by whitewashing an India team whose biggest problem was their inability to arrest the unstoppable momentum of defeat established in the 1st Test. But the snowball effect works both ways, and England were about to get a faceful of slush. In Dubai they convincingly lost the 1st Test against Pakistan by ten wickets. They should have won the next two: in Abu Dhabi, England led by 70 on the first innings and had Pakistan 54-4 in the second; in Dubai again, they reduced Pakistan to 44-7 on the first morning. But getting over the line is a lot easier with momentum on your side – England lost 3-0, and soon added Galle to their downhill itinerary. Yes, there was a series win against West Indies, but in hindsight the predictions that England would slip serenely back into the familiar pattern of home-turf excellence against South Africa were optimistic. They had just months ago played 15 consecutive days of cricket in a losing cause; a demoralising sequence of humiliation whose effects were unlikely to be effaced simply by the comforting sight of a home changing-room.

2. Conservative selection

Some of the barbs aimed at England’s conservatism are ill-judged; the pundits’ chorus of “Get another slip in!” is the worst sort of antiquated armchair-wisdom. Not all criticisms, though, are so easily deflected. For a while England have been well served by Flower’s default instinct to resist change and keep the faith. But England’s lack of progress over the last twelve months begs the question whether that steadiness has become inertia. When Steven Finn and Johnny Bairstow were belatedly introduced in this series, they showed the value of change: they offered fresh and invigorating impetus with bat and ball, and South Africa’s players didn’t look so assured when confronted with unfamiliar problems to solve. At times in the final Test England were reliant on their vibrancy, yet too often Flower has turned away from such proactive calls. By all means disdain the revolving door, but not at the expense of an evolving core.

3. Bad habits

England’s batting line-up, so accomplished during the 2010-11 Ashes and the 2011 India series, has appeared bedevilled by technical weaknesses. Alistair Cook’s tendency to fall over to the off-side and play around his front pad has reemerged. Ian Bell’s flat-footed flirts with leavable deliveries suggest a batsman unsure of his off-stump. Even the reliable Jonathan Trott has been too easily suckered into loose drives. Failure to master the unchartered challenge of subcontinental spin was disappointing, but regression to bad habits against pace in English conditions suggests a more fundamental malaise. Only Kevin Pietersen is averaging in the 40s this year – that problem goes deeper than dustbowls and doosras.

4. Blunt weapons

Not for many a series have England’s bowlers toiled as they did against South Africa. Rampant in Australia, indomitable against India, beyond reproach even in the UAE disaster. But if there is to be a thorough examination of England’s travails in this series, it cannot ignore the attack. The luckless James Anderson was not unimpeachable, but two men especially concern. Stuart Broad looked well down on maximum pace and hostility and could not find the late swing that has underpinned his finest performances. Graeme Swann, clearly troubled by his elbow, bowled too fast and flat and has lost drift and dip from his arsenal. They look jaded – and no wonder. Why, when so much is made of the depth of England’s bowling, are these two virtual ever-presents in all three forms of the game?

5. Justice done?

Quite simply, England are not the best cricket team in the world at the moment. For a while, they, India and South Africa have duked it out at the top of the rankings, but watching this series, one had the impression that the Proteas were merely asserting the rightful order of things. Their bowling unit is comfortably the world’s best, a remorselessly varied attack that possessess pace, swing, bounce, seam and mystery, not to mention the outstanding individual talent of the modern game. Their batting unit, with four of the world’s top-ranked seven, is an imposing edifice of technical solidity and mental steel. The whole is a team that looks better equipped than England to prosper in all conditions – they are worthy of the mace.

Festival Kit

Hugh Jeffery
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Festival Kit

It’s summer. England is now marginally less damp and therefore the idea of thousands of drunkards communally slumming it out in the so-called ‘Great Outdoors’ doesn’t seem quite as stupid as it would have done a few months ago. Robert Baden-Powell sternly reminded his boy scouts to “be prepared”, and festival goers sitting around their tents are in many ways much like boy scouts, except with less skill with knots and more cheap vodka. We therefore present you with this short checklist of items so that you can be fully prepared for the festival season.

A Torch

Sounds obvious but is the one thing that is almost always left at home. Try and get hold of a dynamo-operated one as batteries tend to overcomplicate things.

Fluids

Alcohol obviously comes under this category and is an essential component of the festival experience. Being sober at all but the tamest of festivals is a sure-fire way to reduce enjoyment, and besides you probably won’t be able to sleep unless you’re slightly pissed. Just remember that glass is out of the question- decant your spirits into plastic bottles and try and get hold of big boxes of wine. The importance of water should also not be underestimated. It may sound like the heaviest and most boring thing to possibly bring along but there will almost certainly come a point at which you become so dehydrated that you attempt to drink the sweat running off your face. At this particular juncture a little water will not seem like such a lame idea after all.

Deodorant and Baby-Wipes

Festival showers are grim. This is a known fact. Don’t go near them. An acceptable (given the circumstances) level of cleanliness can be achieved through the simple combination of a decent antiperspirant and Johnson’s No More Tears. Just because you’re living in a field for a few days does not give you an excuse to smell like a Neanderthal.

Sunglasses and Lighters

Plural. Sunglasses break. If you’re set on wearing them just bring along several dirt cheap pairs and then it won’t matter when they do. It is inexplicably socially acceptable to borrow lighters with no intention of ever returning them. If you want to avoid finding yourself lightless by three pm on the second day you will need many.

Duct Tape

Cheap, versatile and strong. Things break at festivals. Tent flaps are ripped, soles come off shoes and back panels get detached from phones. Thankfully all of these can be fixed with a little Duct Tape. Large quantities of Duct Tape can also be used to craft emergency willies by covering the leg below the knee with a thick layer. You may look like an extra in a low budget seventies sci-fi but at least you won’t get those nice new jeans covered in festival mud.

Bin Bags

Cheap, versatile and slightly less strong. Can be used to create a barrier between you and the mud, to hide things, keep things dry, keep things wet, as capes, as last-resort clothing, to repair tents ( in combination with our good friend Duct Tape), to conceal identity or placed on the end of a stick to carry your possessions like a hobo Dick Wittington. In short, they can be used for anything and everything.

Plasters

Unless your group of friends is incredibly fortunate ,somebody at some point is going to bleed. This can be your chance to be the hero with the plasters. Wounds are one of the few things Duct Tape cannot fix.

Wet Weather Gear

It’s probably going to rain at some point. Wellies and a mac should probably be adequate to get you through this. Umbrellas can be great but also have their drawbacks- their mechanisms tend to break in any kind of a breeze and in a crowd they can become targets for the jerks who throw cups of liquid-that-might-be-cider-but-probably-isn’t. Your own mac is also pretty essential as otherwise you might be forced to buy one of those “rain poncho” things that make you look like you’re wearing a condom costume.

If all else fails, a large dose of mindless optimism and grim determination to have fun should be enough to survive the majority of festival crises.

Your guide to the Premier League

Arthur Knaggs
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Your guide to the Premier League

Arsenal – New Season, new kit, new strike force but same old Arsenal. At least that’s what their 0-0 result against Sunderland at the Emirates seems to suggest. Especially now that they have sold their talisman and main source of goals to (dare I say previously?) bitter rivals United.

This however is not the whole story. Arsenal dominated the game and had some real opportunities to put it to bed – Oliver Giroud, on his Premier League debut, being the most obviously guilty party – and probably would have had at least two on another day. Santi Carzola looks like a real find and the new signings seemed to all be on the same wavelength; looking for all the world like they had played together for years. While they might not be challenging for the title of champions they are a pretty solid bet for a top four finish.  

 

Aston Villa – “Villa will be fine.” “Darren Bent’s goals will keep them out of trouble.” Too good to go down? Not on this performance. Without service, no matter how good a finisher he might be, Darren Bent will not score the goals to keep Villa in the Premier League. Having been outclassed by recently promoted West Ham the service doesn’t look like it is going to arrive any time soon and Villa look likely candidates to be involved in the rough and tumble of the annual ‘relegation scrap.’ Bottom at Christmas? Never say never.

 

Chelsea – Boring, boring Chelsea. Score two early goals and then sit back for the rest of the game. Job done. Sounds like, five years and seven managers later, Chelsea have still to find a way of winning that doesn’t highlight the influence that Mourinho has had on the club. Even the names on the scoresheet – despite a £64 million pound spending spree – look depressingly familiar (Ivanovic and Lampard.) That being said this Chelsea team don’t look comfortable enough at the back to be a Mourinho outfit and in Hazard, Oscar, Mata and Torres they have a front four who will excite fans and terrorize defences; pulling them apart so fast it’s enough to make you dizzy. In the crystal ball of pure conjecture I see a top four finish, a cup final and a totally unwarranted managerial sacking.

 

Everton  David Moyes – the deserving manager of the year for most of the millennium appears to have done it again. On a shoestring budget he has forged an organized, motivated and skilful team that can cause anyone in the league problems. Even more impressive is that for the first time in years they have turned up on time to the league party and might now pose a genuine threat to the traditional Champions League chasers. Jelavic and Mirallas will finally bring regular goals, while Fellaini is a class act who will trouble every team he plays against. Beating United is no mean feat and if this sort of form continues Everton fans can have high hopes for the coming season.

 

Fulham – It’s official: the 2012/13 season is going to be closer and more exciting than any we have ever seen before. What’s more Fulham are going to win and it’s going to come down not to goal difference but will be decided on the technicality of alphabetical default. In the process they are going to score 190 goals, new signing Petric chipping in with a measly 76 (both new Premier League records.) All this however, is dependent on – excluding two 5-5 draws with Swansea who will also win all their remaining games 5-0 –  the Cottagers repeating the result they achieved against an (admittedly uninspired  and uninspiring) Norwich team who finished the 2011/12 campaign in the safety of mid-table obscurity.

Nevertheless, given Fulham’s total dominance, well-drilled defence and impressive looking strike force seem to have put them in a good place for the start of the 2012/13 season.  They will cause some upsets this year, maybe go on a cup run or two and while they might not quite be able to reproduce the same result every week they look a very respectable top ten team.

 

Liverpool – And there was great wailing and gnashing of teeth, because once again Liverpool underperformed, missed a glut of chances and played like the mid-table outfit that everybody is starting to think that they might become…that is, if they’re lucky! At the rate they’re going they won’t even win a gamem but at least things can only get better? Or not. In fact, they definitely won’t because next week, lucky them, they have City. Another 3-0 defeat wouldn’t be any great shakes. Nationwide, not one lager would be spluttered in disbelief if they lost. In fact the only real surprise would be if they scored a bona fide goal let alone snaffled (there is no way they are going to deserve it) a win.

 

Manchester City – United’s ‘noisy neighbors’ bit back last year, snatching the Premier League crown from Fergie’s unusually lax grasp and don’t look like giving it up any time soon. Bar some wasteful finishing – they had 15 shots on target – they steamrolled an organized and hard-working Saints team and could easily have done a Swansea and come away with 5 well deserved goals. The squad is settled, Tevez is back some two stone lighter and the team are all singing from the same song sheet. Add to this the strongest squad in the league studded with an array of stellar talents and perhaps now it is United who should be talked about as the ‘noisy neighbours.’  City certainly look like the team to beat.

 

Man Utd – Fantasy Football Managers across the country faced the agonizing dilemma of choosing between Robin and Wayne for their carefully selected squads only to be cruelly let down. The only part of the United team that brought back memories of great United teams of the 90’s was the kit. RVP was anonymous and the defence read, for the most part, like a half decent midfield as the red Devils slumped to a 1-0 defeat. Oh dear. Already three points behind in the league race and United are already being written off by some as real title contenders. Troubled by the high ball and lacking any real cutting edge up front, this wasn’t the start that United fans had hoped for.  However, all is not ill on the red side of Manchester. David de Gea is exceptional, Kagawa doesn’t look half bad and with Rooney and RVP on the same side, goals will come. It doesn’t take much to suggest that United will improve as the season continues, but if this game is anything to go by, it looks like they will ultimately leave their resurgence far too late to make any real difference.

 

Newcastle United – Can Newcastle really still be a “surprise package” this season? They have kept the same squad – and strike force – that got them 5th place in the league and a total of 56 top flight goals. By all accounts then, and their 2-1 win over a decent Spurs side suggests nothing to the contrary, we can expect similar antics and hopefully more managerial fun and frolics. Despite Demba Ba looking surprised every time he finds the back of the net – although in his defence some of his finishes are  absolutely outrageous – I see a twenty goal season for him and another top six finish for the club. The Toon look like they are enjoying life back in the big time and here to stay.

 

Norwich – Norwich’s approach to their game against Fulham was not unlike that of a teddy finding itself dragged along the ground behind a particularly ungrateful child: “Maybe if I just lie here and do nothing the pain will go away.” Whatever the case, Chris Hughton is going to have to do a hell of a lot of patching to fix the mess that Fulham made of his side. Norwich were ripped to shreds. There is nothing good to say about anything that they did. The real tragedy is that I can’t even comment on a nice new kit as once again they have gone for the horrific combination of garish yellow and green. I see bad things and bad things only. If nothing changes soon, Hughton looks like he is going to be given the chance once again to show that he is a top class Championship manager.

 

Q.P.R –  Queen’s Park Rangers were also on the end of a 5-0 drubbing and on the basis of this game and the struggle that they faced to survive last season, look certainties to go down. However, in their summer spending there are definitely some real positives to be found. Zamora, Hoilett, Park Ji Sung and Jose Bosingwa are all players with proven Premier League pedigree.  While it might take a while for the players to gel – in the process they might get beaten by a few rugby scores – they will be fine and as the season gets older, they will improve. Mark Hughes is a canny operator, he knows what he’s doing and has done it before. They will be fine.

 

Reading –  Reading’s kit looks lovely as does, incidentally, their Madjeski stadium. Their home game against Stoke, who are not by any stretch the league’s best travellers, on the first day of the season was never going to tell us much else… However their stoppage time goal is a good sign. It shows a side with spirit and desire to do well for their manager. Even this though doesn’t tell us everything as who knows if it will last through an extended losing streak. They need to make the most of home games like this if they are going to stay in the league.

 

Southampton – Saints’ meteoric rise through the league ranks is looking less and less anomalous the more we see of them. They did well to come away against a technically superior City team thinking that they could have had more. The two goals will have  given them a world of confidence, especially as Rickie Lambert is looking like he could just be a striker with genuine Premier League class. Nigel Adkins has them playing great football, they look organized at the back and play neat football coming forward. Most impressive however was the break for their second goal, in which no less than 5 players went from defending a corner to pressurize the backpedalling City defence. They look like being the league’s surprise package.

 

Stoke – There is something reassuring about watching Tony Pulis’ Stoke team in the Premier League.  They are the football equivalent of the Shepherd’s Pie. A no nonsense team who really come to the fore on wet and miserable winter afternoons at home where the lightweight (but nonetheless impressive) Mille-Feuilles pastry of Arsenal just won’t cut it. A shame then that this team of giants had to play not only in the sunshine but also away. This Stoke team looks refreshingly similar to that of seasons before and we can expect much of the same. More fireworks from Crouch wouldn’t do anybody any harm either.  


Sunderland – Martin O’Neill seems to have been astute rather than prolific during the off-season, bringing in only Louis Saha and Carlos Cuellar, both of whom have excelled at Premier League level in season’s past. A settled team, dangerous looking strike force and inspirational manager all bode well for the Black Cats this year and their draw against Arsenal away from home only confirms suspicions that they will be pushing for a top ten finish. Frazer Campbell has always looked in danger of developing into a 15-20 goal a season striker and this season could be the one where he finally does just that!

 

Swansea – The Swans weren’t told that the international flavour of summer sport had finished and turned up  for their first game in the Welsh kit. Despite this blunder they romped to a glorious 5-0 win against a very ‘new-look’ Q.P.R team. Apparently they don’t have second season syndrome in Wales or Denmark and Laudrup looks like he is only going to build on Brendan Roger’s foundations as the Swans march on, irrepressibly, to another year of mid-table respectability. Scott Sinclair looks increasingly likely to leave but that shouldn’t ruffle any of the Swans’ feathers as new signing Michu looks to have goals in him. They will once again – with Arsenal – show that there is a place for beautiful football in the English game.

 

Spurs – Is this the season that Spurs are finally going to turn all of their potential into silverware and a Champions League place? Possibly not. Once again they look like they are going to be the nearly-men and will have to fight it out with Newcastle, Everton and Liverpool (included out of politeness not from any real belief) for fifth. While their first choice 11 certainly doesn’t lack quality, a few injuries could brutally expose a lack of depth up front. That being said, this is a team with real talent who on their day will beat anyone. Expect excitement and thrills but ultimately agonizing failure. We might even get the traditional Adebayor ‘sulk’ now that he’s signed for a cheeky 5 million. AVB looks like he is going to be sitting pretty in the hot seat for a few seasons yet, which – given the otherwise lack of petulant Portuguese managers – can only be a good thing? Just ask Chelsea.

 

West Ham – Currently on track to qualify for Europe, though this is not something that I expect will be sustained. In fact over the coming weeks I see only a dramatic drop in fortunes, which, coming at any other point in the season, would have many in the boardroom reaching for big red buttons labelled “panic.” That being said, this West Ham team look too good to go down and in Big Sam Allardyce they have a manager who knows what it takes for a team to survive the drop. Expect a relegation dogfight but also that the Hammers will emerge unscathed.

 

West Brom – Arguably the form team in the league. If United or City had beaten Liverpool 3-0 then pundits across the land would have been marking them down in pen as this season’s Champions. Ignore the fact that Liverpool went down to 10 men, conceded two penalties and spurned a host of presentable chances and you too could be forgiven for hyping up West Brom chances this year. Just like last season they are going to be hard to break down and looking to counter, while Lukaku will give defenders nothing short of the collywobbles. Having said that, West Brom won’t finish anything higher than 10th and with the best will in the world, ‘not in any real danger’ is about as high as my prediction for them is going to get.

 

Wigan – A seemingly routine 2-0 loss against Chelsea makes all too familiar reading for Latics fans, although as with most of this Season’s opening games, the result doesn’t tell the real story. They created no end of chances, Victor Moses looking particularly dangerous, and with some better finishing could have caused Chelsea real problems. Their 3-4-3 formation, which was so effective at the back end of last season, appears to have survived the off season no worse for wear and Wigan fans might finally be in for an un-stressful year.  Or not. This is Wigan, so they will probably make it much more difficult than it might otherwise be.

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