Dedham aims to be a cliché of the English rural picturesque. It made its money from the wool trade, to which the huge knapped flint church and large mediaeval merchants’ houses, now re-fronted with elegant Georgian facades, stand testament.
But it was John Constable who made the lowland pastures, rivers and mills of the Stour valley famous: the so-called ‘Dedham Vale Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty’ basically occupies an entire room of the National Gallery because of him.

Gainsborough, Munnings and Cedric Morris were also locals. Now hoards of tourists crawl from Flatford (The Haywain) amidst the cows and alder trees to the ice creams of Dedham. The slightly more adventurous demonstrate their suburban origins while ostentatiously failing to row kitsch clinker boats.

When I was little, Dedham was dominated by culture-elite types and World War Two generals (Do you know Venice? Well, I took it), but now post-big-bang bankers have brought their brand of tastelessness. The feuding network of old Dedham has now had to end its exclusivity and let former Fulhamites join in. But they continue to win the battle against streetlights and skate parks, although the antique shops and a stuffy clothes shop have slowly been replaced by delicatessens, a farmers’ market, a beauty parlour and a manicure parlour.

For big towns, there’s Colchester, a Ghurkha garrison town which reminds visitors that Dedham, despite its smarter Suffolk pretensions, is actually in Essex, and Ipswich, the ugly commercial county town of Suffolk, which is improving rapidly with a vast redevelopment of the docks, including a new University, the hyper-cool University Campus Suffolk. Both towns provide the usual array of high street stores and dismal clubs. These occasionally have pretended to the glamorous by hosting half-hearted shootings. But Colchester, despite the best efforts of sixties town planners, still wins due to its Norman castle and its maltreated Roman walls, all testament to the glory days when it was actually worth Boudica’s time to burn it down. It also boasts Rafael Viñoly’s unwanted art gallery, which has sat uncompleted for years.

But the glories of the Essex-Suffolk frontier are not urban: here we come to celebrate Cicero’s otium cum dignitate, not Catullus’ urbanitas. The best places are the small villages and the coastal waters, the country house parties and The Sun Inn, the hub of local relaxation. Also, of value is the Siberian Manningtree station, only 59 minutes from the centre of the City of London.

Smartphones are sound:

I have been asked to compare the ‘smartphone’ i.e. the Blackberry or the iPhone with a ‘normal’ phone. The comparison has become impossible; the ‘smartphone’ is now the ‘normal’ phone. This wasn’t always the case. Last year the Blackberry was a sign of wealth or business, a slightly embarrassing, totally non-student-budget-compatible gadget to pull of out the pocket, the 21st century version of a filofax. Bringing out a Blackberry was equivalent to whipping out a Buller tie. A socialist school-friend rang me recently to shamefacedly admit that he was ringing off something that he thought ‘might be a Blackberry’ – something he had obviously obtained by accident, perhaps forced upon him in order to better coordinate with his comrades in order to beat the bankers. Despite this deeply respectable motivation, he was worried that people might judge him, which, sure enough, they did. Many of my friends made comments that he had ‘changed’ or ‘sold out’; the irony is that these scornful comments, were, of course, made via Blackberry Messenger.

Things have changed; the Nokia 3310 is now a statement, the Blackberry is standard. The only real debate then is Blackberry or iPhone. The iPhone seems an obvious choice. Surely you would opt for the better phone with better features, the wonderful world of apps, a larger memory. What’s more, it actually works. It is totally unrealistic that in the (otherwise totally realistic) Sex and the City 2 Charlotte waves her iPhone desperately in the air, unable to get signal while Carrie happily BBMs away. A gadget that has an app that apparently transmits sleep into one’s brain has to be an unbeatable miracle of technology.

The iPhone may rival Dr. Who’s Sonic Screwdriver, but it is a social outcast. It is excluded from the elitist club of BBM. However sophisticated a sleep-enhancing app you may download, there is just nothing more comforting than the buzz of the received BBM as one nods off, or the flashing red light reflected on the ceiling as you wake up. BBM, to fill in the few unconverted individuals, stands for Blackberry Messenger and is a free instant messaging application, which has changed the nature of our generation’s communications. BBM is a skill. It requires a certain mode of delivery, which has now been adopted into every day speech. It has created the need for a new mode of flirtation. How can one leave the adequate wait for a reply if the message is received? And what to do if you are the last to send a message and faced with that cruel ‘R’, standing officially for ‘read’ but emotionally screaming ‘rejected’? It is dangerous. It becomes a horrific reminder of the night before, tracing one’s descent through spelling mistakes. ‘Hjh oare scowe jfru’ provokes fewer ‘lols’ when control over ones digits returns.

It is, or was, essentially exclusive. There is nothing more wonderful than sitting at a pub table and BBMing your neighbour about how much you hate everyone else there. BBM is not a text. In an inexplicable way. And it is this club, which the owner of the iPhone cannot be included in and know they cannot. They must sit with the proud BBMer, as both ignore the flashing red light. However, things are all changing. With the introduction of WhatsApp, the iPhone and the Blackberry may now communicate. Add ping to the mix and the Blackberry is redundant. While the iPhone is the likeable smartphone, the Blackberry is the loud obnoxious one. We can only wait and see if it will become totally extinct.

Blackberrys are bad:

How do I hate thee, BlackBerry? Let me count the ways. Being with a BlackBerry owner isn’t like being with a real human being. You never have their full attention, because Blackberry Messenger never sleeps.

They don’t even realise they’re doing it, but do it they do; casually slipping out their black monstrosity, more often than not swathed in a protective rubber layer like some newborn S&M baby, just ‘one second’ to reply to an inane message. It doesn’t feel as rude to them as answering a text, email or call because – as one BlackBerry owning friend so succinctly put it – the BBM occupies the until now vacant space between ‘texting’ and ‘speaking’. And what a gap that was.

Walking with a good friend the other day, whom I hadn’t seen properly in a week, I noticed she sounded distracted. I looked to my side, and sure enough, there was the ‘Berry, attached to her hand as ever. I didn’t point out how offensive I found it because, hey, I’m a pretty relaxed and cool kindofa guy, and if people want to conduct two conversations at once, concentrating fully on neither and ultimately allowing life to pass them by, then that’s one of the great things about our liberal democracy. Then we turned the corner into my college and bumped into her BBM interlocutor. Ha. How funny. We were both on BBM and now we’re speaking, like, in real life. Gr8. Why not just speak in the first place? Why chain yourself to what is, essentially, a glorified, portable version of MSN messenger, which any self-respecting member of our generation left behind along with the emo fringe?

There are two types of BlackBerry users. The BBM-me brigade, as described above, and the power play posse, far too important to be so detached from their emails as to have to log on to a computer (which isn’t to say there’s not some occasional overlap in the Venn diagram of mental incontinence between the two). The latter puts their smartphone down on the table even during a date – face down? Why insult my intelligence by putting it face down? It’s still a blatant symbol of your own sense of self-importance – because to be out of contact for a single second would be to suffer an existential death.

The constant availability of calls, texts, BBM and email – aside from the presumably desired effect of making the user look popular (ask yourself: does it really? Or does it just make you look like an overgrown child, dependent on the technological equivalent of a safety blanket?) – has a knock-on impact on those clinging to their retro non-smartphone. Emails are sent at the very last second, plans are changed, because, everyone can access their emails anywhere, yah? No, some of us have plenty enough time staring at a laptop screen without having to carry a mini-one around in our pocket.

And the worst of it? As my respected opponent points out above, the rise of the Blackberry has only just begun. When my Sony Ericsson K510i (Adidas themed, bought at a shop which doubles up as a laundry. Edgy) kicks the bucket, I can’t say for certain whether I’ll be able to resist the pull of the smartphone. They’re becoming the norm, no longer the preserve of rah girls in trench coats.

No, that’s not true; the BlackBerry has stayed exactly how it ever was, and we’re all mentally turning into rah girls in trench coats. Resist it for as long as you can.

Beauty is only skin deep, or so the saying goes, yet most of us plaster our skin daily with a not inconsiderable layer of reconstituted pig fat, or whatever makeup is made of, to ensure we reach maximum depth. On average, we’ll spend up to £9000 and roughly 240 days on it. Dolly Parton had it right when she remarked how much it really cost ‘to look this cheap’. Far from a modern invention, make-up, like prostitution, has been around forever. From ancient Egyptian kohled eyes to Elizabethan leaden faces, women have never really embraced ‘au naturel’ in the way they perhaps should, and though we laud ‘fresh-faced’ girls, these fresh faces are rarely entirely fresh. Indeed, Calvin Klein once said that ‘the best thing is to look natural’ only to add plaintively that ‘it takes make-up to look natural’. One can’t help but wonder, moreover, why make-up is a purely feminine phenomenon; why can’t you find foundation in the already embarrassingly metrosexual men’s aisle in Boots? Should we take up the feminist face-wipe and cleanse ourselves of this social blight?
There are several reasons why I decided to take up the challenge of a week without make-up. Facing finals and an addiction to the Bridge, I thought it would be one way to encourage hibernation whilst simultaneously rediscovering my inner beauty. But perhaps I did it to prove Schopenhauer wrong, to show the world that it is not inherent in women ‘to regard everything simply as a means of capturing a man’. Perhaps I even thought the project would be enlightening: it’s not that I actually cake my face in foundation – in fact I pride myself on caging the inner WAG – but I rarely, if ever, leave the house with none on whatsoever. It was therefore not without trepidation that I entered into this task.

The bustling social scene that is the Oxford library network suddenly became a somewhat terrifying prospect. Could I be seen in the Rad Cam without facial embellishment? What if that mysterious and brooding 4th year philosopher from Magdalen were there? Swoon. Sure, we’d exchanged a few lingering glances at the library checkout desk, but he certainly wouldn’t feel the same visceral reaction if my fluttering eyelashes weren’t caked in mascara, would he?

Having moisturized my skin to within an inch of its own suffocation, polished my nails to perfection and blow dried my hair for the first time in about 2 years, I set off bright and early last Tuesday morning. With all my good intentions of a productive day in the Bod, once I actually neared the cobbles of Catte Street, I quickened my step and ended up facing the glass doors of the RSL. I knew that here I was safe, for in the eyes of my fellow mathematicians, my obvious natural beauty could never parallel that of Euclid’s proof of the infinitude of the primes, with or without makeup.
Aside from being forced to confront myself in the toilet mirrors, encounters which I kept as brief as possible, by the end of the day I had completely forgotten about my nakedness, but this lasted only as long as my social seclusion. On Tuesday night, in contrast to my day, I did brave the more humanities inclined student body at the finale of Antigone. Thank god for experimental student drama and its requisite low light levels. That said, my confidence in the dark faltered at the after party, and I lasted a mere 20 minutes before fleeing to the backstreets of Cowley and the anonymity of being among the Brookes crowd (around whom it’s normal to feel make-up deficient).

Wednesdays usually require a touch more lipstick than average, as at precisely 5 minutes past 2, my silver fox of a lecturer begins, in his husky Dutch tones, to educate me in the continuing presence of Kantian themes in subsequent continental philosophy. Swoon. (I am constantly swooning, which is sometimes problematic). Today, however, I didn’t sit in the front row, nor did I venture to ask a question. Even in spite of my conscious show of cleavage I retreated to the very back of the lecture hall, conveniently placing myself next to the fire escape lest an unsuspecting fellow philosopher should turn around to pass me a handout.

By Thursday, I had no choice but to put most of my fears to one side, and boldly decided to go where many have gone before: the Bodleain Lower Reading Room. Given my designs for a post-grad boyfriend, with requisite facial hair, that hark back to my days as a fresher, this was a more daunting prospect then it may at first seem. One unexpected effect was that in ensuring my face was kept hidden from public view, most easily done by keeping my head in my books, I soon actually found this purely narcissistic activity translating into genuine concentration and much more time efficient working. Apparently the time usurped by cosmetics is more far-reaching then one could ever imagine.

Thursday night and another outing, this time for my DJ-ing debut at Supermarket. After my crowd pleasing set – the 10pm slot meant I was truly grateful to my three supportive friends loyally busting their moves in the almost entirely empty downstairs of Babylove – I went to socialize with the steadily growing mass above. Ignoring my internal insecurities, I soon realized that actually, no one cared or even noticed. Well, that lasted until an unnamed Cherwell type shouted across the crowd, ‘she’s not wearing any make up!’,and those around me promptly began to console me with lots of ‘you really don’t look any different’, and ‘no, I don’t believe it’. It seems that for all our apparent intelligence, no-one really gets lying. Either that or I too am totally self-involved, and cannot fathom how people wouldn’t see, even on being explicitly told, that I looked entirely different to usual.

Friday, and I felt already well-versed in presenting myself in a natural light – it’s all about the floral patterns and bright colours. Time to enter the intimidation and imminent insecurity of the Rad Cam. Already excited at the prospect of not having to worry about my far too visible vaso-dialation – rosy cheeks aren’t quite as endearing when you can’t control the rosyness levels. However, after three days of obvious vulnerability, it seems my pinnacle of makeupless insecurity was less a culmination of self-esteem and personal acceptance and more a realization that quite honestly, no one gives a shit.

So, by the end of my week, had I shed my image-conscious outer layer to discover the magnificence within, or had ‘the natural look’ exponentially increased the time I took choosing what to wear? Shamefully, the latter is closer to the truth. However, I did learn that confidence cannot be applied to the face, however deftly it may be done, but equally, feeling attractive certainly does help. The day after I got back on the makeup bandwagon, my renewed sense of self-worth prompted a few friends to mention how nice I looked (I’d rather choose my self-assurance then my tinted moisturizer as the reason). And my Tuesday library outing to the Taylorian, may or may not have resulted in a propositioning from Philip the devilishly attractive cleaner.
Is Schopenhauer right then? Does our love of make-up stem from our need to reproduce and our inability to do so naturally? Or as the man who believes that ‘only a male intellect clouded by the sexual drive could call the stunted, narrow-shouldered, broad-hipped and short legged sex the fair sex’ shall we take his view with a pinch of salt and claim make-up is worn because we’re worth it? No, I’m sorry, but it was not the lonely nights, watching iplayer in bed, that made going cold turkey so hard. We wear make-up to be attractive, to be able to compete – it’s ‘the other woman’ who propels us to further our chance for survival.

But does that mean, as the feminists would have it, we are crippled by our need for make up, and that men condition us to feel inadequate and exposed without it? No. We all want perfection and shall continue to strive for it. Indeed, on explaining to a cosmetics-obsessed housemate that Simone de Beauvoir saw make-up as a chauvinist tool of oppression with which women are forced to conceal the degradations of their female flesh, she replied simply – ‘I reckon she just hadn’t found the right mascara’. I have promised this second-year Wadham linguist that she shall remain anonymous.

Surely in the same way as I’ve seen a Godard film and read Nietzsche – isn’t it all just a self-conscious attempt to appear interesting to others, better ourselves and get the most from life? Am I not allowed to want those sleazy men, Hugh Grant included apparently, to buy me drinks at Wahoo on a Friday? However, even though I’m not so obtuse as to say girls have make-up and boys have the gym, there is some contrast between the falsity of an attractive girl and the rugged reality of an attractive boy. Therefore is there some truth in make-up as concealment – is our charm our covering? Then again, have you not seen the hoards of teeth-chattering semi-naked girls on Cornmarket or what we wear to Park End?

Girls have no problem exposing themselves, much to the dismay of my mother, and the feminists should let off. I’m not going to solve the gender war with 1500 words and a week without bronzer. But all I do know is girls want to be pretty and girls want to have fun, and the two are intertwined. Plus soon, I’ll shed my youthful beauty – which just necessitates a touch of rouge – and have to resort to numerous nips and tucks. So let me have my girlish fun, whether with or without make-up.

ELOISE and CHARLIE – On!

They said they would be willing to do it again, and ‘do it’ they did. Apparently neither was too worried about putting out on the second date, which happened only two days later. Recent reports suggest that Bridge was only worth the five minute pit-stop before Eloise was lured back to Charlie’s frat-pad.

CHRISTINA and TOM – On?

A rather chaste romance blossomed shortly after Christina and Tom’s first date. A close friend of Tom’s tells Cherwell ‘it was all very sweet and innocent, a bit of kissing here and there, but after a fateful trip to the Magdalen garden show they have since gone their separate ways.’ However Cherwell hopes a reconciliation may be on the cards.

HANNAH and SIMON – Off.

A shock rustication from Simon stopped an inevitable (?!) romance in its tracks. Many believe Simon has taken the time out to recover from his undoubted heartbreak after these two went their separate ways straight after the date (and were never seen together again). Let’s hope absence has made the heart grow fonder…

RACHEL and MARK – Off!

It didn’t take long before the self proclaimed ‘ChCh Big Dog’ revealed himself to be a Love Rat. A St. Hugh’s insider tells Cherwell ‘Mark had promised to buy Rachel a drink at Bridge, which basically means they were going to get off, but then he pulled her best friend at Park End the night before who then brought him back to college.’ Apparently Rachel bumped into Mark trying to sneak out of college the next morning unnoticed. AWKWARD.

5th: Read Sloane Ranger
At some point in your Oxford career you will be tempted to deride or, let’s face it, emulate members of the real Leisure Class. In either case, Barr and York’s classic satire, The Sloane Ranger Handbook, is an essential guide to all things Sloane and Rah. (For guidance on all things Prep and WASP, see Lisa Birnbach’s The Preppy Handbook.)

4th: Have a love affair
Not some one night drunken affray but a series of frantic, torrid trysts of staggering poignance and ineffable beauty. Life is far too short, bleak and dreary not to heed Emerson at least once: ‘Give all to love;/ Obey thy heart.’ (N.B. Emerson is helpful in orchestrating trysts.)

3rd: Take a road trip
On the spur of a moment, purchase a roadmap or coach ticket and pack only a change of clothes and Jack Kerouac’s On The Road. Do not pack any mobile or Blackberry. Feel liberated as you rediscover both yourself and the fact that the world can carry on just fine in your absence.

2nd: Get epicurious
The best time to learn cooking is the summer, when everything is fresh and relatively inexpensive (stick to farmers’ markets). Leave Mastering The Art of French Cooking in your mother’s kitchen cupboard (although we still love you Julia!) and stick with websites like Epicurious.com for loads of simple summer recipes.

1st: Do absolutely nothing
Especially for those sitting Prelims or Finals, visible displays of effort are sometimes unavoidable at Oxford, but that doesn’t make them any less dispiriting (or gauche). As a tonic for your soul, spend at least a week avoiding all responsibility in order to get properly reacquainted with the bliss of inconsequence.

Old Parsonage, Banbury Road

Allow us some end-of-term indulgence. Since our parents pick us up next week (sorry to those who have exams. Neither mummy nor daddy can save you from that particular brand of doom) can there be a better way to usher in the summer than a meal at one of Oxford’s finest restaurants?

The answer comes not so resoundingly in the negative as I would have hoped. The Old Parsonage is a wisteria-clad 17th Century hotel. We sat inside, late into the evening where everything was all thin-blown tumblers and half-molten grey candles, and more portraits than Christchurch’s Harry Potter hall. One whole wall is mirrored, to give the impression of more portraits. I don’t know who any of them was, and I doubt any diner has ever cared.

The food was beyond average. But not stunning. Perhaps I expected too much. My companion – “that Cherwell girl” – chose well: her chilled beetroot and buttermilk soup had a sweet creaminess and didn’t fall into the trap of tasting like a portion of Covent Garden poured straight from carton to bowl. It was quite sexy. Her main, too, a Halibut dish, was simply executed, perfectly cooked, with flirtatious notes of lemon and saltiness swimming out of the decently-sized dish. My veal, on the other hand, was very confused, which made me very confused. Veal: yes. Spinach: yes. Egg: okay, I’ll accept. Anchovy: where are we going with this? Capers: negligible. Sauce: indiscriminate. The meat was tougher than a baby animal should be, but the delicate flavour did well to plant its little flag upon my taste-buds. Puddings were yummy, though. Cherwell girl’s orange creme-brulée was not firm enough, but the flavours were there. I chose to cleanse my palate with the chocolate-sorbet, which seems akin to washing one’s car with Bollinger. Excessive, frivolous, beautiful. If the ‘rents are footing the bill, you could do far worse.