The prerequisite of Valentine’s day is that all important gift. Will it be flowers, chocolates, a teddy bear with a heart that says ‘I luv you’? Or, maybe, a light bondage kit, a couple’s buzz set, a cock ring? Call it whatever you want: bumping uglies, nookie, doing the dirty, rolling in the hay, buttering the muffin, bonking, shagging, even ‘riding the beef bus to tuna town’, sex is Oxford’s favourite recreation, so Cherwell decided to do a little sleuthing just for your pleasure into Oxford’s sex life.
Our recent survey told us that 71.4% of students have visited a sex shop, and but for the majority this had only been once or twice and only 12% had done so in Oxford. Of those who had gone to a sex shop, the main reasons were ‘for a joke’, ‘to buy a present’, or ‘a friend made me’.

For those who hadn’t ever visited a sex-shop, ‘seediness’ was given as the most common explanation for their avoidance, along with the free and unlimited availability of porn on the internet. ‘The Private Shop’ on Cowley road is part of the biggest chain of sex shops in the UK and one of three adult stores that line the street. Cherwell took a trip and talked to one of the staff to dispel any myths and misgivings.

With darkened windows and ‘PRIVATE SHOP’ plastered over the top, it’s easy to see why one of these shops can seem like a far cry from the lace and lingerie of an Ann Summers. Inside it’s like Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory, but instead of a chocolate bar, it’s a dildo, and instead of an Oompa-Loompa, it’s their male best-seller, the ‘love box’ – a ‘realistic, vibrating pussy and ass’. Despite the obvious hesitation as you duck into a sex shop alone, the Private Shop prides itself on offering nothing but the best products you can buy and none of the seaminess that stop a lot of people from uncovering the goodies within. There isn’t a typical customer that stops at these shops: ‘We get police officers, doctors, lawyers, the lot, but not enough students. Women feel more comfortable in places like Ann Summers where there are just female staff, so we do get more men coming in. Although the most outrageous thing I’ve heard since working here was when a girl came in and asked for my advice on how her girlfriend could stretch her anus, but that’s nothing compared to the offers I get – single people, threesomes, sex parties…’ Without all that lace and lingerie, these sex shops tend to be a lot cheaper than you find on your average high street. The favourite buys for women are ‘definitely the Rampant Rabbit or Bullet, and you can find them about 15-25% cheaper in a sex shop like ours than at Ann Summers and other high street shops’. But Oxford is clearly willing to experiment, with solo sex toys, couples’ sets and lingerie all popular at the Union’s Ann Summers’ party and the Safe Sex party last term.

Cherwell got some tips on where curious singles and couples can begin: ‘Porn DVDs are great for couples to enjoy together, and here you can return a DVD for store credit so it’s almost like a porn library! Small vibrators are great for beginners and for the more adventurous we have ‘Contact’ magazine where people advertise sex events and look for people to join in. Some people have misconceptions about sex shops and porn because we’ve got these massive dildos and there are some big penises in porn, but the reality for penis size is between 5″ and 7″, and there really is something here for every appetite’.
After all this research into the sexual shenanigans of Oxford, Cherwell decided it was time to get hands on. We sent (without much persuasion, after a hard night on the Kukui punch) one of our best men to the front line to experience Oxford’s hotly-debated stripping and lap dancing club, Thirst Lodge, to report back. For the sake of his rep, he’s requested we keep him anonymous. He said, ‘I was a young and naive fresher, corrupted by my college father. When, after another cracking night in Kukui, he said “let’s go to the lodge”, I thought he was referring to the porter’s lodge and so I agreed (it was 2am and well past my bedtime). I did not realise that he was in fact talking about the seedy dungeon of clunge that is the Thirst Lodge… As I joined the queue of fellow sad and lonely sex-pests, I felt an overwhelming sense of shame- what on earth would my mother say!? – but this was all soon forgotten as I walked inside and was confronted by what can only be described as heaven on earth. Bikini-clad women span and slid upside-down on a pole using no hands- if I hadn’t been busy trying to find a seat to hide my erection I might have taken a moment to appreciate the sheer athleticism involved. The place essentially strips away all standard social practices and lets nature take its course. Men like women, and women like men, especially fat, sweaty, balding loners who are happy to pay £20 to sit on their hands and watch the no pants dance. My dancer looked like Beyonce, but spoke like Plan B. She had three kids and apparently worked as a child-minder during the day (no lie). After three minutes of staring at her boobs and admiring how neat and tidy everything was ‘down there’, she asked if I wanted to “come into the V.I.P area”; I couldn’t work out whether this was an innuendo or not, nevertheless I declined after she called me “a very naughty boy”. I have not been back since. Apart from once. But that is another story for another time…’

When Cherwell contacted Thirst Lodge, we were told that students aren’t their typical clientele. So with the lack of students in sex shops and strip clubs, the question remains, where is it that Oxford students are getting their rocks off? Cherwell looked once again to our survey to find out exactly where we were indulging our naughty side. The most adventurous

places people had had sex ranged from cars to cliffs, from the parents’ bed to the back of the top deck of the Oxford Tube (oo-er). Only one of our students questioned had joined the mile high club, but over a third had indulged in a little outdoor action. The library was a firm favourite for extra-bedroom relations, and even University parks had a few fans. The subject that students thought got the most sex were history or geography students (it obviously helps to have a ‘flexible’ schedule), while English and PPE students were most likely to be in a relationship. 19% of students in Oxford weren’t having sex, while 24% were only getting laid once a week. The majority of those surveyed were having sex two to three times a week, and one lascivious student claimed to be doing the dirty 15 times. There was a varied attitude towards one-night-stands; 19% said they had none, 38% said they had between 1 and 2, 29% had 3-5, and 14% had over 5 one-night-stands a term. Nine was the highest number of one-night-stands had in a term. 10% of students had revelled in anal and rimming. Some of our answers were a little disturbing: one voyeurism-fan got a kick out of watching someone get fingered during a ‘Junior Apprentice’ episode.

This Valentine’s day, whether it’s dinner for two or tissues for one, head down to one of Cowley’s sex shops. Maybe you just haven’t yet discovered your love for a bit of whi

p and tickle, but if you need any extra incentive, it’s 20% off for students…

It\’s the beard. And the mouth. Small and very oddly pinkish round the edge, it makes for every word a sort of urgent tragedy. Schiff is an actor, and plays Toby Ziegler in The West Wing. It would appear that the mannerisms of Ziegler are transmogrified clichés of the mannerisms of Schiff. This is very weird. It feels like we\’re watching Toby, seeing him right there in front of us. And he\’s wearing a hat. He\’s got himself a hat.

We two are right little West Wingers – skipping into the plush Randolph lobby clutching polystyrene coffee and Big Issues. Both of us are devout fans of the show, a giant of television drama and probably the second best TV show about politics ever made. The acting and script are particularly brilliant; Schiff, who has a central role, rolls off the candied, witty lines with incredible presence and poignancy. However, he\’s not so keen on the latest TV. Although ‘I haven\’t seen enough to make a judgement\’ in terms of quality, when it comes to TV generally he thinks the medium is dying. ‘I think you\’re seeing the fall of an empire that\’s mirroring the fall of its country\’s empire. I think it\’s lost itself in the panic to beat the internet, or to monetise the internet. Viewership has been in decline, we have 800 channels now. When I was a kid there were three networks, there were six channels on your TV. That was it. So we had all of these viewers around the country split three ways. Now they\’re split 800 ways. Everything is specialised, you have computers that can download content whenever they want.\’

But despite his apparent disdain for the values of American capitalism, he thinks the solution is to charge more. Should something like The West Wing be given away free on the internet? ‘I think they should quadruple the price and give me a piece of it. There is an argument to be made. It\’s killed the music industry. Now you can hear a song, and drop a buck on the internet, and you get a song. You don\’t have to buy twelve songs and listen to it consecutively, and then lift up the needle and make sure you don\’t scratch it. What I miss is the depth of the sound- which is including the squeak on the strings as the fingers move on the guitar. It\’s too perfect [nowadays] and human performance is beautiful by its very nature because it\’s imperfect. The more perfect you make it the more detached you get from the actual experience. That was really well said, you\’d better write that down.\’

The West Wing ran seven seasons and maintains its iron hand of interest over the British and American political classes. What\’s intriguing is that Schiff is quite regularly scathing about it. Although he agrees that ‘it captured a lot more of the reality than people realised\’, it is filled with fantasy- in particular ‘the real fantasy\’ of how people look. ‘I like it when everyone\’s not a doppelganger for Brad Pitt. I like British television because you see real faces on the screen, I actually prefer to see humans. The West Wing cast, some of the good-looking people were also human. But as they say in Hollywood, give me a good story, give me some beautiful people and I\’ll make a buck for ya. And that\’s what The West Wing did.\’ But important as this is, the blur between truth and fiction has a deeper political significance. ‘The fantasy was that everyone in the room, in an Oval Office meeting with our staff was a good person. There\’s always a Rasputin in there, always somebody who\’s trying to manipulate things. Eight years of that we had recently, the President\’s own agenda irrelevant of what the American people wanted.\’

This brings us to the issue of the issues. ‘If you look at our record, it\’s realistically unimpressive, the Bartlet Administration.\’ McGhee pointed this out, and practically died of pleasure at the actor\’s reply. ‘You\’re the first person who\’s actually noticed that. People need to open their eyes a bit and look at our accomplishments. We\’ve put an Hispanic on the Supreme Court… can you name me a second thing that we\’ve accomplished? The peace in the Middle East, a summit like any other summit if you ask me. And then Toby solves social security, but we don\’t know what the solution is and I didn\’t know what the solution was when we were shooting it. Then I got a letter after it aired delivered to my trailer, saying \”thank you so much for tackling this very difficult issue, but here are ten points delineating why your plan won\’t work\”. Ten points. And signed at the bottom, \”Senator for New York Hilary Rodham Clinton\”! Insane. And she\’s writing me saying \”this is what you\’ve gotta fix\”. No that\’s what you\’ve gotta fix!\’
This shows just how far apart are the act and the reality.

Deavall admits how complicated it is, how it can so easily go over the viewer\’s head. Schiff agrees, and says he tried to get round this problem by working really hard on the policy. ‘I\’ve really made an effort to understand every level and layer of the issues\’. But sometimes it\’s just too difficult. ‘[With one episode] I decided I\’m going to do this episode as if it\’s in Greek, I\’m going to do it phonetically.\’ This is what many of the actors do, apparently- you simply decide that something\’s good or bad for your character, and respond appropriately. Even Martin Sheen, the best actor in the series and a political activist, doesn\’t try to do things the way he personally wants, as Schiff is only too keen to point out. ‘With Martin, he says, \”I\’m an actor, saying someone else\’s words and ideas, I\’m not going to play President Bartlet the way Martin Sheen wants it, I\’m going to play him the way Aaron Sorkin wants it.\” He\’s fulfilling a creative vision like no-one else could. But he\’s an actor first and that\’s what he would say.\’ The wider political issues are not considered at all. It\’s sad for a man like Schiff, a man of immense personal morality and warmth. It\’s easy to almost feel sorry for him – but as he would no doubt say, he\’s an actor. It was never meant to be otherwise.

Richard Schiff was speaking at the Lessons in Government Seminars at Brasenose College. To find out more about the Lessons in Government speakers, please search for ‘Lessons in Government\’ in Facebook.

 

Bolivia can be a daunting prospect: one of the poorest countries in Latin America and a formidable producer of cocaine, subject to perpetual political protest and the ensuing roadblocks. The jagged peaks of the high Andean capital, La Paz, might seem as inhospitable as the scant supply of oxygen. Arrival in La Paz does little to quell this impression: mini-buses barge their way through sprawling markets of contraband and stolen goods, and little children in black masks materialise from t he pavements. On festival day, leering devils dance through the streets. Only the women in bowler hats know what’s going on.

It sounds like a mafia movie. But Bolivia’s disorder is not nearly this sinister, and, as I learnt this year, it can be transformed into the fuel for your aspirations, particularly if they are entrepreneurial. A year ago I was wandering around Bolivia on my modern languages year abroad. In England I had vainly snuffled around employer’s doorsteps, grubby CVs in hand, dreaming of exciting internships and quick success, all of which seemed now like unattainable pies in the sky. But in Bolivia, I found some talented friends and we soon started scheming. It all started out as a game. One of those ‘wouldn’t it be amazing if…(insert vision)…’. We were just a bunch of friends with an idea, but before I knew it I had become one of the four founders of Bolivia’s leading English language magazine: Bolivian Express. Our sole financial investment was 20 dollars. One year on, we now have a fully-fledged website and have brought out our sixth monthly issue, distributed in print in Bolivia and online internationally. How did this happen? Aside from my obvious fortune in meeting some wonderful, dedicated co-directors, the speed with which we could achieve this was largely down to an explosive fusion of meticulous planning with free-ridden chaos.

Our idea was simple, but in England would have been faced with great obstacles. Costs, administration and compliance with regulation are all necessary to our ordered civilisation, but when you’re a start-up all they do is slow you down, and, probably, eat you for breakfast. In Bolivia there may be some regulation, but no one cares. There is a lot of administration, but you can get away with ignoring it, and coming in with European money, cost need not be an issue.

But where did the money come from? I have neglected the model of our organisation. Beginning with our market: Anglophones want to experience Bolivian culture and Bolivians want to meet Anglophones. The obstacle here is that Bolivian bedlam makes it is a risky business for Anglophones to arrive alone and uninformed. So, we would step in by organising journalism internships for our magazine, where we provide accommodation, Spanish lessons and country inductions, charging a fee. From this fee we print the magazine, produced from a collaboration of culture-vulture Bolivians and visiting English speakers. As easy as that. Well, of course it wasn’t quite that easy. In the setting-up months all of our eyes turned distinctly squarer, as we charged all our energy into the virtual world, the springboard for our operation.

The team had different talents to offer: our budding internet expert designed our webpage and got us online publicity, and since we were operating from across the globe (Ireland, England, Bolivia), our business had to be entirely cloud-based. Our Bolivian journalist taught us the tricks of the trade and our Anglo-Bolivian mastermind co-ordinated the efforts and was key in providing the cultural awareness and Bolivian contacts we needed. He could also channel and translate our journalist’s trade-wise advice. Where did I fit in? Amongst skilled individuals it can be difficult to see where students like us can make a difference, but exercises like setting up this organisation show our intellectual capital to be context sensitive. In England, my capacity credibly to email and recruit student journalists from an English university would not have been a special skill – so could the next student. In Bolivia it was the asset I could bring to our organisation.

And as we bombarded our project with hours of structured labour, so the chaos of Bolivia welcomed us in, and once the journalists arrived it only got spicier. Through online application and phone interviews we had recruited ten participants for July and August each, and smaller numbers for the rest of the year. The teams were great, the coordination a handful. It may have been an easy task to contract a teacher, but would he turn up to give the lesson? We may have rented a house with meals included, but would the owner suddenly decide she no longer wanted to provide? Oh they would. Then we would nearly lose the first issue of the magazine, saved precariously on a sole USB stick and a journalist would break his wrist in a bike-fall.

Yes, there were certainly times when Bolivia’s chaos threatened to submerge and swallow us up. Then there were the crazy times: our launch party, where we were interviewed for Bolivian Television by a famous transvestite, press passes into clubs, football stadiums and free cinema tickets. Our publication, which in England, indeed Oxford, might have been one among many, in Bolivia could be outstanding. Chaos was king, and our order was its knight; we established a relationship with a shoe-shine-boy initiative (the masked children), interviewed traditional Cholitas (the women in bowler hats), plunged into the teeming labyrinthine markets and revelled in the extravagant festivals.

So, where has this left us? Unfortunately, not any richer. However, going abroad and setting something up yourself has been infinitely more rewarding than facing cutthroat internship competition in Britain, although the work involved is not to be underestimated. Worst moment: spending nine hours copying and pasting. Best moment: being able to call myself a co-director. The most powerful impression that the experience has left with me is that you can start from nothing more than a spark of audacity. And all that pandemonium which to me had seemed the most daunting thing has become our finest subject, our greatest ally, and our dearest passion.

Bolivian Express is a cultural organisation that seeks to encourage ties between Bolivia and the English-speaking world. It is currently seeking charity status. To find out more visit www.bolivianexpress.org. The managers are Amaru Villanueva Rance, Ivan Rodriguez-Petcovic, Jack Kinsella, Sharoll Moore and Xenia Elsaesser, and can be contacted by emailing [email protected].

Dr. Sandra Scott’s CV reads like my Sky Plus planner. She’s been on almost everything: Big Brother (celebrity and plebeian), Hell’s Kitchen, I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here and, of course, Tool Academy. She is reason when all descends into madness, as an on screen Psychiatrist she’s there to ensure the contestants are kept mentally stable and offers psychological support. You would think, with all that under her belt, she’d be an avid reality TV watcher. But no, ‘

Watching reality shows is usually work – I associate it with working’. A pretty poor excuse, in my opinion, and, almost as an afterthought, she claims she watches The Apprentice. A top quality production without doubt, but if it doesn’t have racial slurs, on-screen masturbation or kangaroo testicles it’s just not my kind of ‘reality’. As she has such intimate knowledge of the ins and outs of the production of reality television, I ask if she’d ever go on as a contestant: ‘I think I’d like to see how I’d cope. With all this experience you think you should know exactly how to play the game and how to come across well.’ It’s quite clear, to anyone with any concern for his or her pride and dignity, that reality television is the worst thing to do ever. No matter how great the prize, how hungry you are for fame, you will end up knickers-out on page four of OK!. With her insight into the workings of reality TV shows, you would think her aversion would become more acute; would she actually subject herself to one? ‘No, no I wouldn’t’. Sensible woman.

Her career progression has been a series of serendipitous events. Educated at the University of the West Indies, she was drawn to psychiatry simply because she thought it would be less physically demanding than other fields of medicine; evidently the right move, and a decision process dear to my own heart. The start of her television career was slightly more dramatic. In a casual meeting with David Wolstencroft, the writer of Psychos, she managed to get pretty ‘huff cuff’ (an excellent term I will definitely be incorporating into my vocabulary). ‘I was talking to him, and mid-sentence, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a person collapse. I went over and sorted them out, and then came straight back. I just sort of went into auto-pilot because I was quite drunk.’ Dr. Sandra Scott is evidently a woman who can work under pressure. Wolstencroft was equally impressed and his production company Kudos hired her to work on Psychos, an ‘uncompromising portrait’ of a psychiatric hospital in Glasgow. One of the characters was not very loosely based on Dr. Scott and she was consulted to provide realistic details and themes. Eventually they offered her a place on screen and the rest, as they say, is history.

Dr. Scott is a psychiatrist first and foremost. She works for and is a trustee of children’s charity ChildHope and her professional work has primarily been with children and teenagers. The context in which she works on television is rarely sensitive or serious, and I ask if her role on screen differs from the one she plays elsewhere. ‘On television, I’m not doing psychiatry. They’re not patients. I’m not monitoring their mental states in the same sort of way. I’m doing psychology.’ She is careful to make this distinction. There is some suggestion that the psychological help provided on reality television is little more than pseudo-science, for want of a better term. Dr. Scott is obviously aware of this suggestion and was wary about even being interviewed, a wariness born out of her extensive experience of journalists and journalism – ‘the press is quite hostile, you quickly learn savviness, through necessity.’ However, she seems to embody the counter-argument. Rarely in the interview does she deviate from talking about the seriousness, both of her work and of her approach to it. She claims to care about the people who subject themselves to the public humiliation that we call reality TV. ‘You are dealing with people’s emotions, and they are real people. And they have issues. It is just not useful as the professional there to help them to be poking fun and being unpleasant.’

She also claims to have lovely things to say about each and every contestant on Tool Academy. That can’t be true. We must be talking about two completely different sets of people, has she not been watching the program? I mean, come on, it’s a group of twelve men, who all considered themselves fit for a program searching for the ‘ultimate lad’. Anyone who self-identifies as such must either be delusional (I don’t think some of the contestants would have lasted long had that actually been the title) or slightly repellent. Her personal favourite is Harry. ‘I will always have a special place for Harry, he made me cry. I don’t think I’ve done that before.’ My personal favourite is Harry too, but for slightly different reasons. Hers are more professional, she feels he made real progress, ‘because he found it so particularly difficult to express himself emotionally, and then he did it so beautifully.’ Apparently it was ‘exceptionally moving’. I suppose you need to be less of a cynic and more romantic to be in this line of work.

I can see the appeal in working on reality TV. Not only do you get to see the hilarity first hand, you also get to work with the dishy men that present the shows. Just being in the same building as Dermot O’Leary would make me cry out with desire. Dr. Scott has even been in the same bed as Rick Edwards; what wouldn’t I do to trade places with her?! Unfortunately I am unable to uncover much dirt. ‘He’s very professional. He’s a good person to work with because he brings the humour so I don’t have to get involved with that.’ This works well with Dr. Scott’s sense of integrity. Working in a position of support, she’s careful to provide a sincere alternative to the wise-cracking presenters. ‘People trust me, and I would never want to betray that trust for some cheap gag.’

What about her relationship advice? ‘Communication, equality and respect’ are crucial to a stable and happy relationship. She takes care to stress that ‘equality’ is not about being the same. ‘You’ve both got to be contributing. Once you get out of the romantic phase, people end up feeling used or a burden. A degree of equality is important.’ It is interesting that equality features so much in her relationship ethos. After all, Tool Academy is styled on the idea that the man is to blame. The bloke is supposed to be in need of reform, when in reality the women on the programme are no less reprehensible. ‘It’s a reality show, it’s entertaining, the focus is the blokes. But within that, it always takes two to tango’. Dr. Scott does not take her role lightly, and she seems to be a model of sincerity in a very unreal reality world.

“Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons is the fulfilment of a personal vision, a dream that one day I would create a hotel and restaurant in harmony, where my guests would find perfection in food, comfort, service and welcome.”
Raymond Blanc O.B.E

Intelligent. Daring. Adventurous. All have been used to describe the cuisine at Le Manoir – and in my opinion, quite rightly so. The modern French menu has been described as “a twist of imaginative genius” and features Confit de Cabillaud, Suprême de Canard and Soufflé à la pistache. If the sound of these doesn’t tantalise your taste buds, I don’t know what will!

There are few people who have never heard of Raymond Blanc OBE – the world-renowned owner (Chairman and Chef Patron) of Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons and one of the country’s most respected chefs. RB (as he is known by his staff) created Le Manoir to fulfil “a personal vision” and has been delighting his guests there since 1984. Awarded two Michelin stars a year after opening, these have now been retained for an incredible 27 years (the only hotel ever to have done so).

It was with great anticipation that I left the dreaming spires of Oxford behind me and set off for Le Manoir. Despite the grey, gloomy English weather, nothing could dampen my spirits as I drove (somewhat bleary-eyed) down country lanes towards my destination, listening to Radio One’s very own ‘Moylesy’ (naturally). Nestled in the picturesque village of Great Milton, there isn’t a more perfect setting for one of Britain’s finest gastronomic experiences. Idyllically situated in 30 acres of land and surrounded by immaculate, manicured lawns there’s an orchard, lake and a two-acre vegetable and herb garden.

“Would you like your car valet parked, Madam?”, a smart gentleman in a waistcoat asked me on my arrival. “Hmm, probably not a good idea”, I thought to myself. Compared to the Mercs, Bents and Jags he was clearly used to driving, my car (VW Golf, Racing Green, Reg.’02) would have been a bit of a let down. Needless to say, I declined his kind offer. Being early, for once, I was presented with tea and biscuits (scrumptious!) in the drawing room. Roaring fire. Heavenly sofas. Pure luxury. I could have stayed there all day reading about English Country Homes & Gardens, fantasising that I was Lady of the Manor. However, reality came with a jolt when I was collected ten minutes later and ushered towards the kitchens… my day at Le Manoir had begun!
Kitted out from head-to-toe in chef’s cap, whites and ‘safety shoes’ (clodhoppers), I certainly looked the part. But did I feel it? Questionable. Recent experience working in a ‘Fawlty Towers’ hotel had given me some inkling of what to expect in a commercial kitchen, but now I was well out of my comfort zone. A tour of the kitchens followed with Executive Head Chef, Gary Jones. Then, I was put to work sorting salad leaves with Chef Chris. This proved to be slow work (for me). A tiny dot, mark or tear (or lack thereof) would determine the leaf’s fate: compost or plate. So there I was, contemplating what exactly constituted the “perfect” leaf, whilst Chris whizzed through his pile like Jenson Button on the Bugatti Circuit.

Next, the canapé section with Chef Warren. Polishing 40 slates with sunflower oil was my second task of the day. Pointless? That’s what I thought at first. However, the resulting shiny-black-sheen persuaded me otherwise. Thus, the perfect backdrop had been created for the culinary show that was to ensue. Savoury profiteroles – light, yet crispy – had been piped full with chicken liver parfait-mousse and mango pureé. Little drops of heaven. Incredible! You’d have to try one to believe it, but these were something else. Next came quenelles of goat’s cheese. Perfectly shaped ovals complete with a stripe of honey, and toasted oats and fine black truffle powder atop. These rested on a delicate piece of toasted bread barely a millimetre thick. Another three canapés completed the masterpiece and we were nearly ready for service. At 11.45am, dishes were placed on the front kitchen counter for the head chef to taste and approve. Advice and criticism were duly offered. Despite the change of gear following first orders fifteen minutes later, operations remained smooth. Too used to watching a certain ‘celeb’ chef on the TV, I was expecting profanities to be uttered left, right and centre. But, no. For the next three hours the show continued in an orderly fashion.

I was next made responsible for arranging the previously sorted salad leaves on plates. Easy? Not quite. There is a certain technique to doing this, which I’d like to think I mastered by the end. Speed was also required -very testing for the perfectionist! Lunch service sped by and soon it was time to wipe down the surfaces and have a break. Here, I was able to talk to Kate, one of the only female chefs in this testosterone-fuelled kitchen team. Having studied Food Science at Dublin, she had gone on to work at the city’s Michelin-starred Chapter One before coming to Le Manoir. I was bowled over by her dedication; despite only having an hour off each day (with shifts from 8am til 11.30pm) she used most of her break to write her kitchen section’s shopping list.
Back from the break, my final task was making popcorn, a bar snack. Even this had a fancy twist to it and was tossed in vanilla salt. However, before it was deemed ready, I had to sift through the whole lot, removing any remaining un-popped kernels. Apparently, this had become a routine activity following an incident where a guest had chipped her tooth. This was a costly mistake for Le Manoir, which they clearly did not wish to repeat.

The Guide Michelin describes a two-star restaurant as “table excellente, mérite un detour”. If your GCSE French doesn’t stretch this far (mine did not, so thanks freetranslation.com): “excellent cooking, worth a detour”. I can safely (and humbly) say that from what I saw, no one would, or could, walk away disappointed having eaten here. However, on a student budget this kind of luxury may have to be put on hold for now. Thankfully, Brasserie Blanc in Jericho (Walton Street) offers simple, high quality nosh at affordable prices. I would recommend going for the ‘Roast Sirloin Sundays’- £14.50 inc. a large glass of wine- delicious and a welcome change from eating in Hall.

Driving back to Oxford following my day at Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons I realised how much I had learnt and how little I actually knew about cooking. The techniques used in professional kitchens of this calibre are so high-tech and the pace of activity so quick that even I, a reasonable home cook found it hard to follow. Sadly, Monsieur Raymond Blanc OBE, the great man himself, was not around when I visited. Perhaps I will have to accept the invitation to return and make sure I go when he is!

C**t has outbid you! Would you like to bid again?

Yes, I bloody would. I really want this White Leather Sexy Must-Have Rhinestone 70s Catsuit. Actually no, I really need it. I can already feel it, this is going to become one of my most-worn, most-loved, staple closet items. It is going to be the flagship piece, the jewel in the crown, of my new capsule wardrobe. In fact, I think I’ll wear it to Park End this Wednesday, and then to my Old English tutorial the day after, and then to go as Gary Glitter to the Bad Taste bop, or, failing all that, I’ll just wear it in bed. In fact, maybe I won’t even wear it in bed. Maybe I’ll just hang it up on my wall and stroke it. I don’t care what the Fire Warden might say; if it’s a fire hazard, it’s my fire hazard. I’m going to tell everyone who sees it the story of how, in the last nail biting seconds, C**t bit the dust and I triumphed as The Highest Bidder. She came, she saw, and she took that bitch doooooown.

C**t has placed a bid of £178. Would you like to bid again?

My fingers stroke the keyboard. 48 seconds left. The red ticking time bomb in the centre of the screen makes me start to panic. I mean, when you actually think about it, numbers are just, like, squiggles, aren’t they? Like, what do they actually mean? At that moment, I have a brief out of body experience. I look down at myself. It’s 4.08am, and the milkman is delivering. I’m hunched over my laptop in Mr Men pyjamas, my leg is jigging up and down like a need a wee (I do, I’ve been glued to this auction for the last 53 minutes), and I’m talking to myself about Gary Glitter. Can you really do this to yourself, Rebecca? What would your mother say? What would the domestic bursar say? What would NatWest say? I sigh, click ‘cross’, and buy a consolatory pair of pineapple shaped earrings for 99p. Welcome to eBay.

The phenomenon of eBay is changing the way we shop. Since its start in 1995, there is no longer any need to leave the house. Who needs daylight anyway, when you can just as easily buy a 2001 Mega Sun Used Sunbed from cosmo2tan in India? EBay is a nowhere world, that is, paradoxically, fast-paced and frenzied, but also lonely and silent. It is an auction room of a billion, and just one. Bidding on eBay is like fighting in a retail war-zone, where you never see the faces of the people you shoot down. This cyberspace of cut-throat haggling and anonymous bitchiness is a place where speechless negotiation, soundless transaction and the electronic shaking of hands occur across the world by the second.

I find it highly distressing that I cannot see the person who has just outbid me. I’d appreciate a personal profile: you know, Favourite Colour, Favourite Food, Reason Why I’m Such a Dick etc. EBay cunningly obscures bidders’ usernames with the asterisk, presumably so you can’t hunt them down and kill them, not that the thought had ever crossed my mind. EBay does, however, permit you to take a look at their recent Bid History. This provides endless hours of fun, as the further you delve into someone’s bid history, the sharper the psychological portrait that materialises in the minds-eye. Take, for instance, bidder f******r, who has just, at the very last possible second, outbid me on a 1980s Oversized Lady’s Missoni Cardigan. A few clicks reveal their life and being. This is what I find:

Crafts > Glass Art & Mosaic Supplies

Home & Garden > Major Appliances

Collectibles > Collector Plates

Dolls & Bears > By Brand, Company, Character

I make up my mind that bidder f*****r doesn’t get out much. She (or he?) probably isn’t even going to wear my Missoni cardigan. She’ll probably use it to polish the collectible Lady Di memorial plates I decide she hangs in the downstairs toilet. That is, when she isn’t making hideous things out of Hobbycraft-style mosaics and then passing them off as Christmas presents, or operating heavy machinery in the Home and Garden. A real personal vendetta can develop. I contemplate trawling though each of her 31 bids, and outbidding her at the last second every time, just to really piss her off. I see she’s been looking at Kitchenware too. Now, hang on, that’s what I reeeally need, a spice rack, or, oooh, a hostess trolley, yeah? Then I forget about it all and move on to something else.

A closer look at the Seller can also divulge an alarming sense of character. I have decided to buy a Vintage Ralph Lauren Navajo Jacket from borntoride22 for a price that I cannot afford. Paypal and I both know that this isn’t in my account, but borntoride22 doesn’t, yet. Just before hitting ‘Buy It Now’ in a moment of fuckitall recklessness, I pause, my mouse drifts, and I click See Seller’s Other Items, just out of curiosity. I see they are also selling a set of steak knives, a ‘designer’ 3 pack of Primark trainer socks, a novelty pvc apron, an M&S cardigan, and a Clearasil face wash, marked ‘used’. In the Details section, there is written simply, ‘no haters please.’ My confidence falters.
Money ceases to be money on eBay. Student loan? What student loan, this is eBay, the UK’s biggest online marketplace, the land of flowing milk and honey, the Promised Land. No notes, no coins, just clicks, simple, harmless clicks. The dizzying expansion of British eBay to an international scale only compounds the problem. Everything is dealt with in dollars. What even is a $? A dollar to me will only ever be the symbol on the end of Snoop Dogg’s chain. I find myself staring blankly at the screen, coming to the mental conclusion that, basically, you just, like, take whatever number it is in dollars and divide it by, like, half yeah? No. Suddenly everything becomes doubly unreal; different currencies float around my brain and electronic money flits through cyber space like bats out of hell. A further critical sign of an unhealthy relationship with eBay is when you start to treat it like a person. It is taunting me. It is deliberately making me feel stupid. No, it is not. It is not a human, it is not real. But the infuriating messages it sends often seem to suggest otherwise. Having been thankfully outbid on a penis shaped tin opener (a drunken eBay rape, the new Facebook rape, don’t you know), I received the patronising, consolatory message “Don’t worry, this one got away but there’s plenty more fish in the sea!”. It is as if eBay is trying to give me a cheer-up-sonny pat on the head after an embarrassing dating failure. My hung-over self did not appreciate. Equally, the message “congratulations rebeccaholdsworth1! You have won!” has a nasty, mocking undertone which I do not care for. Have I won? Really? I’m starting to think that this cellotaped Annie Hall poster I bought, complete with biro-d on third nipple, means I’ve lost. Or that I’m a loser. Take your pick. When you finally bring yourself to log out of eBay hell, the departing message is the salt in the wound:

You’ve signed out. See you again soon.The bastards, they know they’ll see me again soon. It’s like crack, but with the added faff of Paypal.

So what’s stopping you? Sign up today! Hello Cherwellreader675! Welcome to eBay! One of the UK’s strangest shopping destinations. Waste time and money! Huge selections of rubbish on eBay. Don’t Shop Now!