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Difficulty Sleeping in the Third Trimester: Causes, Positions, and Relief

External Contributor
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If you are lying awake at 2 a.m. wondering whether rearranging every pillow in the house will finally help, you are far from alone. Difficulty sleeping in the third trimester affects most pregnant people at some point – whether that means trouble falling asleep, waking every hour, or feeling wide-eyed despite bone-deep exhaustion.

Part of the problem is physical: a heavier bump, a bladder with opinions, and muscles that ache after long days on your feet—or long days at a desk, which many of us know too well during a packed term. Some people find that daytime maternity support belts ease back and pelvic strain, which can make it easier to settle at night. This guide explains why sleep falters late in pregnancy, which third trimester sleeping positions tend to work best, and what actually helps when rest will not come.

Always speak to your midwife or GP if sleep loss is severe, or if you notice breathing pauses, persistent low mood, or pain that worsens at night.

Why Is Sleep So Hard in the Third Trimester?

Pregnancy and insomnia in the third trimester often stem from a mix of bodily changes and a busy mind. Common drivers include:

  • Physical discomfort — backache, hip pressure, round ligament pulling, and general heaviness
  • Frequent urination — the uterus pressing on the bladder
  • Heartburn — especially when lying flat
  • Restless legs or cramps — that urge to move just as you drift off
  • Foetal movement — lively evenings in utero
  • Anxiety — about labour, deadlines, or life after birth
  • Snoring or sleep apnoea — worth mentioning to your care team if new or worsening

Research suggests that roughly two-thirds of pregnant people experience insomnia in late pregnancy. If you are pregnant and cannot sleep in the 3rd trimester, it is frustrating, but usually familiar territory rather than a sign that something is uniquely wrong with you.

Sleep quality matters: poor rest in late pregnancy has been linked to longer labours, higher caesarean rates in some studies, and increased mood difficulties. That is not meant to alarm you into trying harder: it is permission to take broken nights seriously and ask for support when you need it.

Experts generally recommend sleeping on your left side in late pregnancy. This sleeping position during the third trimester supports blood flow to the uterus and kidneys and may reduce swelling. A slight bend in the knees, with a pillow between them, often eases hip strain.

Positions to Limit

Sleeping on your back for long stretches can compress major blood vessels and may worsen breathlessness or dizziness. Sleeping on your right side is fine for short spells, but left side is usually preferred. Stomach sleeping becomes impractical as the bump grows—though brief rolls in the night are normal.

Building a Supportive Setup

Good sleep positions for the third trimester often depend on pillows as much as posture:

  • A firm pillow between the knees to align hips
  • A small wedge or rolled towel under the bump
  • An extra pillow behind the back to prevent rolling flat
  • Head slightly raised if heartburn flares, relevant for sleeping position in the 8th month of pregnancy and beyond

There is no single perfect sleeping posture during pregnancy third trimester nights; experiment until you find an arrangement you can maintain without waking in pain. If you wake on your back, gently roll to your left and settle again, and there’s no need to panic over every turn.

Matching Position to the Problem

Heartburn often improves with the head and upper body slightly elevated. Hip pain may respond to a pillow between the knees and another supporting the bump from below. Shortness of breath can ease when you prop yourself up rather than lying flat. Treat pregnancy sleep positions third trimester as adjustable: what worked at thirty weeks may need tweaking at thirty-six.

Practical Habits When You Have Trouble Sleeping in the Third Trimester

Beyond third trimester sleep positions, small daytime choices affect night-time rest—particularly if your calendar still looks like a Michaelmas term timetable.

Wind-Down Routine

Dim lights an hour before bed, skip caffeine after mid-afternoon, and put screens away if they keep your brain buzzing. A warm bath, gentle stretch, or quiet reading beats scrolling through essay crises, or pregnancy forums that spike anxiety.

Manage Heartburn and Bathroom Trips

Eat smaller evening meals, avoid spicy or fatty triggers, and finish drinking a couple of hours before bed without cutting fluids entirely during the day. When you wake to use the toilet, keep lights low and avoid checking the time; clock-watching fuels trouble sleeping in the third trimester.

Daytime Strain and Evening Aches

Long hours sitting in libraries or hunched over laptops can tighten the lower back and hips, and that discomfort follows you into bed. Take standing breaks, support your bump when walking, and avoid cramming all movement into late evening when you are already overstimulated.

When Worry Keeps You Awake

If you cannot sleep after twenty minutes, get up and do something calm in another room, then return when drowsy. Lying awake catastrophising trains your brain to associate bed with stress—a pattern many of us recognise from pre-deadline insomnia, pregnancy edition included.

Naps and Schedules

Short daytime naps can rescue a wrecked night, but long late-afternoon sleeps may make it harder to drop off later. If your timetable allows even a twenty-minute rest after lunch – between tutorials, not instead of them – it may take the edge off without stealing evening sleep.

When Might a Maternity Support Belt Help at Night?

A support belt will not replace sleep hygiene, but it addresses a common piece of the puzzle: daytime strain that lingers after dark. By lifting the underside of the bump and stabilising the lower back, a belt can reduce pelvic pressure during standing and walking—so you reach bedtime with less accumulated ache.

Wear one during the hours that trigger discomfort (commutes, errands, long desk sessions), not necessarily in bed unless your midwife suggests otherwise. Choose adjustable styles, remove the belt if you feel pinching or numbness, and treat it as one tool among many, alongside side sleeping, pillows, and realistic expectations about how much sleep a third-trimester body allows.

FAQ

I am 35 weeks pregnant and I cannot sleep. What could be causing this?

At 35 weeks, common culprits include bump size, back or hip pain, heartburn, frequent urination, restless legs, baby movement, and anxiety about labour. Try left-side sleeping with pillow support, lighter evening meals, and daytime pacing. Contact your midwife if pain is severe, you have breathing problems, or mood changes worry you.

Why is my insomnia so bad in the third trimester?

Hormones, physical discomfort, and a larger uterus all peak late in pregnancy. Many people also sleep more lightly because they wake to reposition, use the toilet, or respond to kicks. Insomnia is common, and it’s not a personal failure.

Is it normal to be wide awake at night during pregnancy

Yes, especially in the third trimester. Night-time waking does not always mean something is wrong, though chronic sleep loss can affect mood and energy. Focus on rest when you can, not perfect eight-hour blocks.

Does a sleepless night mean labour is near?

Not necessarily. Many people have broken sleep for weeks before labour. A sudden pattern of regular contractions, waters breaking, or bleeding are clearer signs to call your maternity unit. Occasional insomnia alone is not a reliable predictor.

Rest Is a Requirement, Not a Reward

Difficulty sleeping in the third trimester can feel cruel when you know sleepless nights with a newborn await—but better rest now still matters. Prioritise side sleeping, build a pillow fort that works, protect your wind-down, and ask for help with daytime loads where you can.

You do not need to earn rest through productivity. In a term that never quite slows down, giving your body permission to stop may be the most radical thing you do—and the best preparation for the weeks ahead, however your nights unfold.

A beginner’s guide to being an amateur

May Bruce
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A beginner’s guide to being an amateur

When I was seven, my grandma decided I was going to be a pianist. For the next twelve years, I sat through weekly piano lessons, despite a complete absence of enthusiasm for the instrument. Long after my grandma informed me that I was not, in fact, going to be a pianist, but rather a lawyer, I carried on these lessons. My goal was not enjoyment, but that treasure of infinitely greater value: a grade eight certificate.  

What teenage me didn’t understand was the value of putting time and effort into something non-productive, purely for the sheer joy of it.  I’ve heard people complaining that they don’t know how to relax, and the advice given in response is always that they’re lacking hobbies, that if they pick up a new interest their free time will become fulfilling and restorative. However, I think that what this fails to acknowledge is that it’s not simply a case of acquiring any old hobby. Our aim should be to find a genuine source of enjoyment, rather than a new avenue through which to seek validation.

We’re well into August now, the summer vacation stretching out both behind and ahead of us. While you’ve got a bit of time on your hands (Michaelmas pre-reading is a September problem), this is the perfect opportunity to ditch productivity and perfectionism, and instead, embrace the art of being an amateur. 

Amateur, a word often used as an insult, comes from the Latin verb amare, meaning ‘to love’. ‘Amateur’ in its modern form stems from the French word for ‘one who loves’. To be an amateur in the literal sense, therefore, isn’t about an absence of skill, or experience, but rather doing something for the sake of passion, and without profit. 

So what might doing something just for the love of it look like? This is an impossible question – the answer will look different for everyone, and will vary across different phases of your life. But the central idea is that whatever you’re doing, you’re not doing it for the sake of gaining something else. You might learn an instrument without taking graded exams, or maybe you want to write terrible notes app poetry that you will never show to anyone. Or perhaps what really calls your name is turning bottle corks into life-size models of the wildlife of the West Midlands. It doesn’t need to make sense to anyone but you. 

If there’s one thing we’re all familiar with as Oxford students, it’s the constant pressure to be ‘LinkedIn warriors’ and build up an impressive array of things to put on a CV. It seems even the much-coveted summer internship isn’t enough – you also need a hobby with tangible achievements that confirm your status as a strategic, results-driven team player. Activities that boost your employability are undoubtedly important, but they are not a substitute for doing the things you truly love. 

Around the time my grandma accepted that I was not destined for piano greatness, I joined a choir. I would love to tell you I joined purely for the love of it, but this would be a lie – I joined because my older sister had. However, after the first couple of months, I found myself hooked. The feeling of hitting that high note, perfecting that one impossible harmony, was a far cry from anything I’d felt playing the piano. I didn’t take singing exams, I never went for solos. And of all the hobbies I’ve taken up in my life, choir is the one I always return to. 

Let’s be honest, how many of us genuinely make an effort to try new things on a regular basis? It’s intimidating – it involves accepting that you will not be good at something, that the most you can hope for is ‘good for a beginner’, which is never much of a compliment. Perfectionism is not an easy thing to kick. And though it can be useful in many situations, it can also be very effective in holding you back for fear of failure. This is where the amateur thesis comes in. If you are doing something for the love of it, then the act of doing is enough. It doesn’t need to be perfect, so there’s really no way to fail. 

I think we can all agree that our culture is obsessed with productivity. Many of us now find the idea of doing nothing far from relaxing, and it’s sometimes even downright uncomfortable. With weekly essay deadlines, and a constant sense that you’ve forgotten something, the fear of time wasted creeps into every part of life at Oxford. Is it any wonder that committing time to being an amateur isn’t something that comes naturally to us? Maybe this speaks to a wider issue: a disinclination to see our own immediate happiness as a valid goal.

Through building up hobbies that give us joy rather than measurable achievement, we cultivate self-validation. As human beings, we are very good at outsourcing our need for validation. This is especially true in the age of social media, where you can build an image of the great life you’re leading, regardless of whether or not it’s true to reality. What if we tried to practice self-validation instead? What if your joy was an end in itself, regardless of whether or not other people knew, understood, or were impressed? By treating our own independent interests as something valuable, without seeking external confirmation of that value, we are, in turn, treating ourselves as worthy of effort. In our pursuit of confidence and self-esteem, this is surely a crucial practice. 

My grandma and grandad were two very different people. While my grandma was the kind of person who’d lovingly (but firmly) encourage me to chase the validation of the music examination board, my grandad was never happier than when he was with his beloved pigeons. He had names for the clans (what he called the different colours and patterns), and no one was allowed to feed them but him. No one else understood, and no one else had to. He was an amateur pigeon-feeder, doing it purely for the love of it.

The hypocrisy of aestheticised wilderness

Ava Doherty
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The hypocrisy of aestheticised wilderness

We seem to have been locked in an eternal attempt at domination over nature for millennia. My recent trip to Thailand shifted this into clear focus: perhaps the attempt was never really about humans over nature. Perhaps it was humans versus anything that refuses to behave itself.

When I was in Thailand, I saw signs telling tourists not to anger, feed, touch or otherwise harass the animals. Sensible enough. Yet tourists, and occasionally locals, still seem determined to test the boundaries.

I watched a pig bite down on a plastic water bottle handed to it by a boy on holiday. The pig squealed and fought back when the boy tried to pick it up. He dropped it. I felt shocked and unnerved at his behaviour, but clearly I could not intervene; it was not my place, and his family was there.

And there it was: an acute example of our relationship with nature in miniature. We like animals right up until they stop being cute.

The pig had not suddenly become aggressive for no reason. A teenager had put a plastic bottle in its mouth, invaded its space and then tried to grab it. It reacted like an animal. Yet somehow the animal becomes the villain: ungrateful, dangerous, and stupid. We are remarkably good at creating the conditions for conflict and then blaming nature for responding to them.

The double standard becomes even stranger when we compare animals with humans. When a person causes harm because they ‘didn’t know any better’, we often regard that as an extenuating circumstance. With animals, ignorance is rarely afforded the same generosity. An animal trapped in a man-made environment can respond according to instinct and still be punished as though it possesses the same understanding and intentions as a human being.

And before anyone reaches for the familiar argument that humans are more intelligent, we should be careful about confusing intelligence with moral entitlement. Being clever enough to build skyscrapers, develop financial markets, and create nuclear weapons certainly does not give us a sense of moral superiority over the natural world. We cheat, lie, and steal, and are not the perfect paragons of morality we assume ourselves to be. Besides, anyone who has watched five minutes of reality TV anywhere in the world might want to reconsider how confidently we use ‘intelligence’ as our species’ trump card.

The more interesting problem is what happens when humans’ supposed love of nature meets modern consumer culture. We don’t simply want nature; we want nature packaged for consumption.

Our consumerist tendencies towards nature are best seen through the ‘cottagecore’ trend: curated hiking trails, luxury eco-resorts, wellness retreats, and the endless Instagramming of supposedly untouched landscapes. Nature is wonderful, as long as it is photogenic, accessible, and preferably equipped with decent Wi-Fi.

This is the deception of capitalist aesthetics. We take something wild, unpredictable, and inconvenient and remove the parts we dislike before giving it attractive branding and selling it as an authentic experience.

Nature, but with a convenient booking link. Mud is no longer mud; it is an obstacle on the hiking trail. Insects are not part of an ecosystem; they are pests. Decay is not part of nature’s cycle; it is something to clean up. And an animal behaving like an animal is an affront to our sanitised version of nature. Thailand makes this contradiction particularly visible. Islands are marketed as pristine escapes while motorways and industrial-scale ferries help move ever-growing numbers of people towards these supposedly untouched places. Humans want wilderness – but we also want convenient infrastructure capable of delivering us directly to it. Ideally, between 10 am and 4 pm, with a return transfer.

Our environmentalism therefore has a surprisingly low tolerance for actual nature. As soon as it contradicts our perfect reality, with biting animals, unbearable heat, or a lack of creature comforts, we turn against it. This reveals something deeper than hypocrisy; it reveals our obsession with control.

We have spent centuries trying to place ourselves above the natural world rather than recognising that we are embedded within it. We pave it, fence it, landscape it, label it, and commodify it. We make it predictable enough to enjoy and tame enough not to frighten us, because genuine nature is volatile. It grows where we don’t want it to grow. It dies, rots, bites, floods, escapes, and refuses to care about our schedules, property boundaries, or aesthetic preferences. This is precisely what makes it frightening.

The fantasy of the sovereign human depends on believing that we exist outside of nature and are capable of mastering it. But this is not the case. We are animals who build unusually elaborate buildings and maintain an impressive capacity for self-delusion. The pig did not violate some sacred contract with humanity when it bit the bottle; it simply behaved like a pig.

Perhaps the lesson is not that nature needs to be taught how to live alongside us. Perhaps we need to learn how to live alongside something we cannot completely control. Does the responsibility not lie with humanity to learn to live alongside the uncontrollable force of nature rather than vice versa? The battle was never between humans and nature. It was humans versus our own arrogance, the desire to dominate, sanitise, and commodify a world that we are terrified to admit we never truly controlled in the first place.

‘One Night Only’ (2026) and the death of romance

Willow Jopp
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‘One Night Only’ (2026) and the death of romance

Romance movies are, on the whole, my favourite movie genre. But good romance movies, like good romantic relationships, are hard to find, and easy to mess up. It is hard to walk the line between too much (the near-pornographic 365 Days saga, for example) and too little (the chemistry-less Twilight series). Luckily, a filmmaker can make their own job a little easier through certain techniques which instantly boost the pheromones that their film gives off. One of the easiest is to set the film in a typically ‘romantic’ city, and few settings do more emotional heavy lifting than New York. It is a city which has produced some of the best romance films of all time; Will Gluck’s latest attempt to revive the rom-com genre, One Night Only, is not one of them.

The film’s premise is eyebrow-raising, to say the least: America is under a fascist government which mandates that unmarried people can only have sex on one night each year. It makes One Night Only into the kind of movie which is condemned to be remembered only by the lunacy of its premise, like M. Night Shyamalan’s Old. One Night Only follows singles Allie (Monica Barbaro) and Owen (Callum Turner) as they navigate The Night, and supposed ‘hijinks’ ensue. I would go into more detail about the plot, but about two-thirds of the way through, I felt my eyes glaze over as I waited desperately for the film to be over. It was both unromantic and unfunny, much like Will Gluck’s previous ‘rom-com’ Anyone But You (2023), starring Sydney Sweeney and Glen Powell, another pair of leads with no chemistry. What these films have in common, and the reason why they both fail, is their lack of actual romance. Both films are about two people who are not at all interested in one another, and are actively pursuing other people, until the final fifteen minutes. Both films attempt to create the ‘enemies to lovers’ trope, but have none of the sexual tension needed to make it work. The characters are essentially in two different plots for the entirety of the film, only crossing paths a few times across the night. And for a film about sex, One Night Only is as unsexy as it gets. Sex is everywhere in One Night Only as a concept – and as a source of panic – but almost nowhere as an expression of feeling. That might be fine if the film were more cynical, but it still wants the emotional reward of a traditional rom-com ending. The problem is that romance cannot just be switched on after ninety minutes of avoidance. A film can be chaste and feel charged; it can be explicit and feel completely dead. But One Night Only fails to commit in either direction, leaving a product with no sex, no desire, and no reason to watch. The film’s obsession with sex makes its lack of intimacy more obvious. Its fundamental problem is that it does not seem interested in desire as an emotional state, and instead uses it solely as a plot mechanism. The film is so focused on the flow of its events that it neglects the fact that romance, in films as in real life, needs time and attention. One Night Only does not so much revive the old rom-com as it does imitate its surface features. It has the attractive leads, and it has the energy of New York at night. But the old rom-com worked because it believed in its own emotional stakes. One Night Only feels embarrassed by romance, so it hides behind its premise.

It is clear that Gluck aimed to revive the once-beloved rom-com style of the ‘90s and ‘00s, but he ignores the reason why these films stopped being made in the first place. The truth is, being the lead in a cheesy rom-com is no longer a viable strategy for self-respecting actors – too many careers have been killed by bad rom-com movies. That is not to say that Turner and Barbaro are bad actors, but they are both relatively early-on in their careers as leads, with Eternity and A Complete Unknown having their respective biggest parts to date. If an actor is to pursue a romantic role, it is much more preferable to be in a dramatic, or ‘artsier’, movie, like Timothée Chalamet in Call Me by Your Name. Gluck’s films tend to hire first-time writers, unfortunately leading to disappointing scripts – the most important element of a ‘comedic’ movie. In short, Hollywood just doesn’t support rom-coms any more, and if One Night Only is the best the genre has to offer in 2026, I doubt that that will change any time soon. 

Part of the genre’s lack of success among modern audiences may come from the increased cynicism towards ‘fairytale’ romances, which feel far removed from the newer social dynamics which define today’s relationships. In the case of One Night Only, the main problem young viewers seem to have found is how ‘straight’ it is: “I need straight people to be exiled”, reads one Letterboxd review. “Straight people want to be oppressed soooo bad”, reads another. Of course, Letterboxd is no longer the space for focused film criticism and discussion that it once claimed to be, but it is clear that people just do not resonate with this type of film anymore. For me, the film’s problem is not its ‘straightness’, but the reliance on the assumption that a man and a woman placed inside a high-concept premise will automatically generate romance.

So I cannot in good conscience recommend you see One Night Only. It made me sad. It made me wish I was watching a better movie. So instead, I will recommend a better movie about people finding love in New York at night: Moonstruck, starring Cher and Nicolas Cage. It has all of the same ingredients as One Night Only, but uses them to create something with an immense level of charm – it understands what those ingredients are for. What Moonstruck understands, and One Night Only does not, is that romance is not the same thing as sex. Cher and Nicolas Cage do not need a dystopian law to make their attraction interesting, as the film gives them tender moments of loneliness and grief which humanise them, and allow the protagonists to properly understand one another. Yes, it may be melodramatic, but I’d rather that over the lifeless, unromantic energy of Gluck’s movies.

What the movie is ultimately missing is not attractive leads, or a unique premise, or attempts at comedy – it is sincerity. And that is what makes a romance worth watching. One Night Only is not proof that the rom-com is dead. But it is proof that a rom-com without romance is just a long night.

What’s in a (mispronounced) name?

Emma Heagney
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What’s in a (mispronounced) name?

When you read the byline for this article, how did you pronounce my surname? Chances are, you worked through it phonetically, elongating the vowels as you went along. It’s well-intentioned, but categorically incorrect. Should it irk me as much as it does? Perhaps not – after all, ‘we’re in England, we speak English’ – but it does truly grind my gears to feel so detached from my own surname. It sometimes feels as though I have a double life: the name which connects me to my family, and the name I’m known by to doctors, colleagues, and even my college tutors. If you also find yourself in the ‘difficult-to-pronounce-name’ club, you might feel the same as I do.

When I matriculated in 2023, I felt the same mix of thrill and nerves as any fresher does. The imposter syndrome was slowly settling in, and I was eager to hear my name read loud and clear at my college’s traditional admissions ceremony. As the Dean waded through the alphabet, beckoning forth each anxious fresher, I reflected on my journey to Oxford: the first from my school to attend such a prestigious institution, the child of working-class parents, descended from recent economic migrants. I quite literally could not believe I was there, and my belief remained suspended as the Dean confidently called upon the Other Me. Such a pivotal moment found its place in the pattern of misunderstandings I am so used to.

Everyday occurrences are lifetime occurrences, and these uncomfortable situations are just that. Sporadic trips to the doctor are where the Other Me is most present, with my ears attuned to listen out for her name, rather than my own. It is somewhat demoralising to mentally assent to this name, telling the doctor, the barista, the panel interviewing me for a graduate job, that “yes, this is she”. Hearing my tutors mispronounce my name hits the hardest – they know my thoughts, inside and out, how my mind works, the embarrassing mistakes I make in my essays, but do they truly know me? The simple facts of my life, my identity? They are hardly at fault for making such a minor error, but I once again feel stuck, too stubborn not to let it affect me, but too afraid of being seen as pedantic that I rarely choose to correct them.

For the first twenty-odd years of my life, the spectre of the Other Me was little more than a minor inconvenience. But as I continue to mature and develop a professional career, my name has come to represent much more than the string of syllables I answer to. Greater opportunities often mean greater disclaimers – when I spoke at a conference last year, I had to awkwardly ask the host to pronounce my name correctly. This approach has the warning label that I might offend someone for possibly thinking them too stupid to pronounce it, but I also risk not being introduced by my actual name. Particularly in the journalism industry, having byline recognition is ever-important for building a reputation. Nevertheless, I am still overwhelmingly met with a chuckle and “I definitely would have pronounced it the Other Way”.

Growing up also means thinking about my future and all the things that come with it: career, children, and marriage. Do I change my name? Do I get rid of these insecurities once and for all? For the vast majority of human history, this would not even be a question, and my family name would pass from my father’s to my husband’s. In many ways, it is a privilege that I have the choice to be able to cherish the name I grew up with, warts and all.

But warts, they still are. The story is a common one: a non-English name, brought to England by those once under British rule, mispronounced by many, but representing the few who keep our history alive. While I complain endlessly about the problems brought on by my name, my grievances do not stretch far beyond the conceptual, and as a white woman, I certainly do not experience the racism and xenophobia that other people with the same problem often do. But the sentiment nevertheless remains, that our family names hold meaning, not only because we share them with those we love, but because they represent entire histories and peoples. Mine, in particular, is a rarity – I have never met anyone with this name that I am not related to.

Changing my name is not on the cards, at least for the foreseeable future. On the one hand, I am swayed by the desire to change and therefore be seen and understood on my own terms, as myself, but on the other hand, I would not have it any other way. For all its downsides, this lifetime occurrence is my lifetime occurrence, and it would not be my name if I didn’t have to spell it out every time I said it to someone new. ‘Being me’ means having this name, and I will make peace with it being unique, even if it means being a ‘Heegney’ instead of a ‘Heagney’.

Visual politics in Oxford’s streets

Jiayue Shi
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Visual politics in Oxford’s streets

One of the most enduring images of grassroots politics is the pamphlet and the pamphleteer: the putting up of flyers, the taking over of public surfaces, the giddy circulation of agitational print, the vexation of the powers that be. “Is not all the controversy, whose slaves the poor shall be?” demanded a Leveller pamphlet in 1648, during the English Civil War. If, in the past, such material emerged from societies of lettered men and small printers, today Oxford residents walking down Cowley Road or George Street will easily find entire ecosystems of posters covering abandoned shops, construction hoardings, and disused telephone booths. They call out to passersby to campaign for affordable rent, attend an internationalist feminist protest, organise against animal abuse, or, provocatively, to smash the Epstein class. The peeling leaflets reveal older ones underneath. Lampposts and bus stops throughout town have an impressive past (and present) life in stickers. The distribution of print as a means of political communication remains as strategic and ungovernable as it has historically been.

It is just as well that street posters appear and crumble away through storied cycles of their own; yet much of mass organising today has migrated online, and finds its widest reach and most calculable impact there. It leaves the impression that physical media is somehow marginal, or touchingly quaint. Who takes notice of these posters? How do they speak to us, or fail to? In practice, different causes and their aesthetics find themselves fighting for space, literally, on Oxford’s streets. Paper is ephemeral; flyering is decentralised; anyone can as freely put one poster up as tear down another. This quiet, tactile, relentless agency shapes what our streets look like all the time. Street posters form a living, changing map of the communities and persuasions that inhabit a town.

You might begin to plot that map at the closed Debenhams in Oxford city centre. It is a hotspot for flyering of all kinds, due to the significant foot traffic the intersection receives. In May, the shop’s exterior displayed Stand Up to Racism’s “Oppose Tommy Robinson” posters – one of them already half-ripped – under which lay Together Alliance’s older, anti-far-right protest posters from March. Later that month, these remnants were also pasted over by the Oxford Renters Union’s newest campaign leaflets, to be found on various deserted shop windows and scaffolding sites elsewhere in town as well. The Union tells Cherwell that these leaflets are a crucial link between the Union and anyone struggling in a housing system that, year by year, increasingly disadvantages the socioeconomically vulnerable.

Those current leaflets all concern the Union’s resisting rent increases campaign, part of a broader national campaign demanding an end to unaffordable housing. They all display a QR code that takes you directly to the Union’s home page. In it, one finds the pledge to challenge the next rent increase at the First-tier Tribunal, as well as information on renters’ rights, legal recourse for when a landlord hikes up the rent, and exactly how much money one could save by making an appeal at a rent tribunal, even if the appeal fails. A mass campaign at a tribunal could delay verdicts, thereby extending the rent freeze period, and possibly help lower the fair market rate for everyone. For many, the public flyer provides an entry point to all of this.

Union spokesperson Maisie Wilson told Cherwell: “Leaflets and posters help us reach people who don’t have easy access to social media – which will be more and more people if we don’t fight the housing crisis. 

“When we’ve leafleted about events, many people, especially older people, have said how glad they are that we leafleted: they wouldn’t have known about it otherwise as they don’t have an online presence. Our Union is for everyone who rents, not just those who are tech savvy!”

Oxford City Council reported in March 2026 that the number of Oxford households requiring temporary accommodation had more than doubled over the past several years. Homeless Oxfordshire drew attention to the fact that, in 2024-25, the number of Oxford households owed a prevention duty (meaning they faced imminent eviction) had risen by 111%. The rising threat of homelessness comes from the nationwide cost-of-living crisis, rapidly increasing local private rents, and the shortage of affordable social and private housing in Oxford and its environs. Excluding London, Oxford consistently yields the highest average rent in the UK. The average monthly private rent in Oxford increased by 6.6% in the twelve months leading up to May this year, and had, in August 2025, reached a staggering 11.7%.

Those struggling to keep a roof over their head, or to accommodate a family, hardly have the luxury of spending hours on the internet untangling policy documents to figure out what rights they are entitled to and how to uphold them, or seeking resources for collective advocacy for affordable rent. The visibility and simplicity of Union flyers lining a city’s main streets make such resources patently more accessible, and offer up the plain fact that a struggling renter is not alone. Wilson also states that the Union would like to further increase their accessibility by producing leaflets and posters in other languages. Immigrant households are, after all, more likely to be in the private rent sector due to lower home-ownership, and were the head of 22% of households assessed to be homeless or at risk of homelessness in the 2023-24 financial year.

“Grassroots activism is still vital in political organising, and it is very important that this is seen to be taking place within people’s own communities rather than exclusively online”, the non-profit animal rights organisation Animal Aid told Cherwell, echoing the Union. “And physical media is vital for this.”

Indeed, there is an entire repertoire of visual strategies surrounding the work of being seen, and of being seen in community. With the survival of the Ultimate Picture Palace at risk due to Oriel College’s graduate accommodation plans, a notable number of shops in Cowley have put up “Save the UPP” flyers on their doors and shop windows. A bold icon of the deeply beloved local independent cinema is depicted against a simple green, pink or red background, and one only needs to take a walk in the area to feel the solidarity. Oxford Stand Up to Racism and Animal Aid both supply leaflets to groups and individuals to use as they choose, with the former stating that, aside from putting up posters in city streets for the general public to see, “flyering from campaign stalls and distributing posters for workplaces are also important to involve people in collective activity”.

Joseph Miller, the director of PauseAI UK, a volunteer-led movement dedicated to incentivising governments to regulate frontier AI development, similarly says that flyering is “a good activity in itself, for the community to work on, for people to get to know each other and contribute in a useful way”. These posters visualise the identity and stated goals of a cause as much as mutual recognition between its people.

Thought also goes into where the flyers go up, or, more precisely, where they are allowed to. The latter-day pamphleteer in this country deals less with persecution of free speech than with the fine tangles of public property. Flyposting on public property is not permitted and could lead to legal ramifications; Oxford City Council investigates resident reports, submitted via FixMyStreet, of unauthorised posters, stickers, and advertisements, then works to remove them from street furniture within seven working days. Flyposting on private property, such as empty shops, is the responsibility of the property owner. The reactive nature of anti-flyposting law enforcement means that pockets of the flyer landscape could get systemically rubbed out every once in a while, or, alternatively, preserved for an impressive duration if no one is offended enough by the sight to report it. Organisations tend to post on surfaces that are highly visible in high-footfall areas, and whose legal ownership isn’t quite so straightforward or sacrosanct in practice.

“We mostly just find those spots where you can put wheatpaste on a surface and then stick up the poster and not have it be in anybody’s way”, says Miller. “So these are places like electrical boxes…or building sites where there are lots of people passing by.” 

Quantity, however, might matter more than the exact location: “Often just having it in lots of different places is more important than where it is, because people might not notice it the first time or the second time, but the third time they see it, they’ll actually look at it.”

After all, we, the passersby, are vital participants in this politics of looking and seeing. The posters, small or large, plain or strikingly designed, each in their own way call for our attention and reaction. Often they persuade the viewer to take practical steps: to sign a petition, attend an event, participate in a boycott, seek help, or make contact with an organisation. When asked how PauseAI links bottom-up involvement to its lobbying of national or even global institutions, Miller explains that their flyers and events encourage people to show up at protests, sign open letters, or email their local MPs for support on such issues as PauseAI’s ongoing AI liability campaign. The campaign pushes for the UK Parliament to introduce legislation holding AI companies accountable when their models enable critical harm, such as security breaches of national infrastructure and biosecurity threats.

Regarding the people that tend to respond to PauseAI’s projects, Miller observes that “our biggest demographic is people who work in AI themselves, people who are experts in technology in some way”. The tech industry in London has provided a large inflow into the movement, as has climate change activist circles, and academic populations in cities such as Leicester and Oxford itself. There may be a limit to how far posters can induce someone to reconsider an opinion or notice something they previously hadn’t, if they don’t go out of their way to look at them. What the posters are best at, perhaps, is inspiring action in towns already politically amenable to what the posters call for, and in people for whom AI, or rent, or Oxford Union platforming, or the far right, is already a pertinent issue.

Still, leaflets and posters might simply seek to educate. According to Miller, PauseAI is interested in raising awareness of AI’s risks, including deskilling workers, facilitating cyberattacks and other safety hazards, and enabling an “extreme concentration of power to a small number of tech companies”. This may be done through talks and discussion groups advertised by flyers, or information shared by the flyers themselves.

Likewise, Animal Aid told Cherwell that their leaflets “may simply exist to inform the public about an issue”. On their anti-horseracing leaflets that have appeared on High Street, most of the space is taken up by information on the British horseracing industry, whose profit-driven exploitation of racehorses is well documented. “Around 200 horses are killed each year on British racecourses”, the pamphlet reads. When their racing careers are over, large numbers of thoroughbreds “are sent to the slaughterhouse…either unwanted or broken down through injuries”. It also tells the story of the racehorse Underwriter, who, upon his retirement, was sent to a sale and to almost certain death, until the Hillside Animal Sanctuary in Norfolk rescued him by bidding directly against the slaughterhouse. “Many horses are not so lucky”, the text reminds us. The bottom of the sheet shows Animal Aid’s contacts, and the option to donate to a sanctuary.

There is a simple humility to these walls of paper-and-print, which speak of affairs vast and small to whoever might listen, emerging and dwindling wherever there is street activity. Among the hundreds of other things that constitute life in Oxford, the streets themselves tell us what manner of a place it is we inhabit, and how we move through and belong to it. They are a palimpsest of how people make their demands known, and where we finally pick up on what others have been saying, perhaps for a very long time.

Journey to decentre of the earth: Wilful ignorance of men

Nora Miles
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Journey to decentre of the earth: Wilful ignorance of men

When I went back to my high school last year to talk to prospective applicants, the number one thing I was asked was: “Are all your conversations, like, really smart?” And I felt a slight sense of shame to admit that they weren’t. I recognise that it’s pretentious to want to discuss philosophy at brunch or the political and economic state of the world right now in the queue for the club, but I do sometimes lament the extent to which my conversations are filled with gossip – and it’s almost always gossip about boys. 

So a few weeks ago, when I came across creator cc’s thoughts on TikTok, who had captioned her video: “POV: trying to make plans with the friend that decentered men”, I stopped and paid attention. It featured a presentation of successive, slightly outlandish activities. “Sorry, I can’t hang out today”, she announces: “I’m working a NASCAR race.” Or she would be studying Spanish in Mexico, or being a seatfiller at the VMAs, or doing a matcha workshop, or going to the outdoor library, or working as a TV extra. 

Carmin is not the first to use the term ‘decentering men’, and as an amateur internet sociologist, I will take it upon myself to try to define it for you. As I understand it, to decentre men is to construct an ascetic resistance to the parameters of your own thoughts. To recognise a masochistic obsession with the male gender, and to focus on yourself, with force. To denounce men is not to completely reject romance, or develop cynicism regarding love; it is simply to carve out time where those things don’t consume you. To resist the temptation to obsess over being perceived. To reclaim solitude, or time with friends, as a space for reflection, and not for courtroom-grade crush interaction cross-analysis. 

Far be it from my job to tell you how to live your life, but in my opinion, such a mindset can hardly be a bad thing. I was lucky enough to be able to talk to the account owner, Carmin, about her content, and we discussed the benefits of taking time for yourself in this way (though, perhaps, less extravagantly) in order to reinforce your sense of self outside of your relationships with men: “A lot of people are afraid to spend time by themselves but, because of that, they’re missing out on things that would have otherwise in some capacity, and the majority of us have concrete plans for the future, or at the very least a concrete desire to do something meaningful, whatever that may look like. been great experiences.” 

I pointed out that almost all of the activities which she showcases on her account involve taking part in some kind of in-person activity. Carmin believes that this is key to widening your outlook: “There’s no substitute for putting yourself out there and trying new things IRL”. Here, then, is a tangible step to be able to take in Oxford. Although Carmin definitely takes the cake when it comes to adventure, there’s so much that you can do in Oxford on your own to try to tap into your own sense of independent free spiritedness. 

“It’s like you’re charging different parts of yourself, when I’m by myself I can have that time to reflect.” When considering this more closely, the challenge then is not to not let men invade these reflective spaces. Even taking a walk has been appropriated through a lens of desirability. Your ‘hot girl walks’ score negatively on the Bechdel test, and you should be honest with yourself about it. Social life has become cloaked in this strange level of self-denial. You’re not going to the club ‘to dance with your friends’ if you spend the whole time constantly looking over your shoulder at the men around you, and that’s ok! But so is a night in where no one desires you. 

Although the term ‘decentering’ is a modern one, or one that seems to have gained popularity on digital platforms at least, it has roots in centuries’ worth of feminist ideology. The problem that this phenomenon seems to attempt to tackle is similar to the one that De Beauvoir identified in 1949: “Defined to the sphere of the relative, destined to the male since her infancy, accustomed to seeing him as a sovereign whom she cannot hope to equal, the woman, who has not stifled her claim to be human, will dream of overcoming herself by uniting with one of these sovereign beings” (translation my own). 

Betty Friedan continued this feminist psychoanalysis by trying to draw attention to “the problem with no name” – an inexpressible dissatisfaction with a life lived revolving around men. But when I picked up a copy of The Feminine Mystique, I was struck by how different the modern picture really is. Friedan explains that when she interviewed seniors at Smith Women’s College (at some point before 1963), she observed that “many of us could not see ourselves beyond the age of twenty-one”. I don’t think this is true today. I think almost every woman at Oxford does want to use her education in some capacity, and the majority of us have concrete plans for the future, or at the very least a concrete desire to do something meaningful, whatever that may look like. 

The problem no longer lies in the disruption of aspirations, but in the suppression of the means to achieve them. The obfuscation of the end goal and the onset of a certain kind of oxymoronic mania sees a brilliant woman concern herself with whether or not her tits look good while she sits in the library, pushing the limits of her field. We are not Friedan’s prospective trapped housewives. The modern “feminine mystique” is such that women need to be simultaneously ambitious and desirable, that we pursue greatness but without relinquishing the need to be looked at while doing it.

Oxford is a city filled with the smartest girls hand-picked from all around the world for their genius, and who pursued their best interest so ferociously that they managed to gain admission through sheer hard work. 

The women of Oxford conduct ground breaking research, translate in and out of dozens of languages, and consider books in ways that no one ever has before. We wake up at 6am to play sports, we volunteer to give back to the city, we write, we dance, and we sing. Are you really going to look me in the eye and tell me that the floppy-haired boy in hall is the most important thing in the world to you right now? 

How Student Founders Choose Their First Office or Retail Space

External Contributor
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Moving out of a dorm room or campus incubator into an actual commercial lease is one of the earliest, and honestly one of the trickiest, strategic bets a student-run startup ever makes. This guide walks through it step by step – from figuring out if you’re even ready, all the way to what to watch for buried in the fine print of a lease.

Step 1: Figure Out If You’re Actually Ready

Signs you’ve outgrown home or campus operations

A lot of student ventures start somewhere unglamorous – a dorm room, a home office, a shared desk at a campus incubator. That’s fine, honestly. It’s how you validate an idea without burning cash on rent before you know if anyone wants what you’re selling. But a few signs tend to show up when it’s genuinely time to move on: a team that needs regular in-person collaboration, growing client meetings, inventory that’s quietly taken over multiple rooms, or foot traffic outpacing whatever space is currently available. Student entrepreneurship isn’t some fringe activity anymore, either – GEM data shows 18 to 24 year olds in the US are now tied with 25 to 34 year olds as the most entrepreneurially active age group, with youth early-stage activity up 2.5x over the past decade. GUESSS’s global student entrepreneurship survey found that among students already founding a venture, 43.7% have written a full business plan, which says something about how many ventures reach that point where informal space just stops working.

Take an online retailer, for example – once inventory occupies multiple rooms of an apartment, that’s usually the tell. A software startup might hit the wall sooner, once confidential meetings or frequent team syncs become genuinely awkward in a shared co-working lounge with strangers walking past every five minutes.

When waiting makes sense

Not every startup benefits from leasing right away, and this part gets skipped over a lot, oddly enough. Businesses running mostly online, with remote teams or unpredictable revenue, can preserve real capital just by staying in coworking spaces a bit longer than feels comfortable. Delaying a lease buys flexibility while the product gets refined and demand gets validated, without locking into an occupancy obligation before it’s actually needed. There’s no prize for signing a lease early.

Match the space to the business model

What kind of space actually gets needed depends entirely on the business itself – there’s no universal answer here. Consulting firms want meeting rooms and professional polish; retailers care about visibility and product displays. Manufacturers, food businesses, and logistics companies often need specialized facilities from day one, no way around it. The goal isn’t leasing space for the sake of having an address. It is to choose commercial space that actually supports daily operations and leaves room for where the business is headed next, not just where it happens to be right now. Understanding what to evaluate before signing a lease – from location and layout to future scalability – can make that decision much easier.

Step 2: Pick the Right Type of Space

Traditional office space

Traditional offices suit businesses built around collaboration or confidential client work, like software companies, accounting firms, legal practices, consulting businesses, and marketing agencies. Longer lease terms can offer more stability too, particularly for companies with predictable staffing needs that aren’t going to double overnight and blow up the whole plan.

Retail space

For customer-facing businesses, location is often the whole game, and there is not really a workaround for that. Retail properties get evaluated on visibility, pedestrian traffic, accessibility, parking, and who else is nearby. A great storefront helps enhance customer experience, sure, but the less glamorous stuff – storage, deliveries, layout – matters just as much even though it’s a lot less exciting to think about when you’re touring a space for the first time.

Flexible offices and co-working

Plenty of early-stage startups keep choosing flexible space simply because it avoids long-term commitment while still offering professional amenities like furnished workspaces and meeting rooms. And honestly, this whole sector has picked up serious momentum this year. The global flexible workspace market sits around $29 billion in 2026, growing 14% annually, and industry commentary now describes flex space as “the default conversation” for tenants of nearly every size, not just startups dabbling in their first lease. In India specifically, co-working operators leased 8.6 million square feet in just the first half of 2026 alone – a 32% jump year-over-year – now capturing nearly a quarter of all new office space taken up nationally. Yes, monthly costs look higher on a per-square-foot basis, and that math bothers some founders at first glance. But the ability to scale quickly tends to be worth it during periods of uncertain growth, and the broader market seems to agree: lease terms are shortening everywhere, with 5- and 10-year deals giving way to 1- to 3-year agreements as more companies, not just students, start prioritising adaptability over commitment.

Step 3: Build a Realistic Budget Before Searching

Calculate total occupancy costs

Rent is only one component of the overall cost of leasing commercial property, which is the part that catches a lot of first-timers off guard. Founders should also budget for utilities, internet, insurance, maintenance obligations, security deposits, furniture, equipment installation, signage, parking, and any applicable common area maintenance charges. Understanding total occupancy costs upfront prevents unpleasant surprises after signing a lease – and by then, it’s usually too late to renegotiate.

Protect cash flow

Young businesses should ensure occupancy costs remain sustainable relative to projected revenue, not hopeful revenue – there’s a real difference between those two numbers, and founders who confuse them tend to regret it. Maintaining adequate cash reserves provides flexibility to manage seasonal fluctuations, unexpected expenses, or slower-than-anticipated growth. A conservative approach here often supports stronger long-term stability than maximising office size early, even though the bigger space always looks tempting during a walkthrough.

Plan for growth without overspending

Choosing space that accommodates realistic expansion is important, but excessive square footage just creates unnecessary financial pressure without actually helping much. Leasing only what’s needed today, while preserving room for future expansion, usually strikes the best balance between flexibility and cost control.

Step 4: Evaluate Locations Like an Experienced Investor

Understand your customer

A good location begins with understanding the people being served – local demographics, accessibility, visibility, transportation options, and general convenience. Retail businesses often prioritise customer traffic; service providers may care more about parking or proximity to business districts. It really depends who’s walking through the door.

Analyse the local business environment

Neighbouring businesses can significantly influence commercial performance, more than people expect going in. Complementary retailers, restaurants, and professional services may increase customer activity, while excessive direct competition might need a closer look before committing. Growing neighbourhoods with planned development often offer stronger long-term opportunities than mature markets that have already hit their ceiling.

Think beyond today’s needs

Commercial property decisions should support future operations as well as current requirements. Hiring plans, delivery access, employee commuting patterns, logistics, parking, and transportation infrastructure all deserve a seat at the table before signing anything. It’s genuinely easy to plan only for today’s five-person team and forget about the fifteen-person team that shows up six months later.

Step 5: Understand Commercial Lease Terms Before Signing

Lease length and renewal options

Lease duration influences both flexibility and financial commitment. Shorter leases provide greater adaptability, while longer agreements may offer stability and potentially more favourable rental terms. Renewal options should be reviewed carefully too, so they actually line up with anticipated growth rather than working against it.

Rent structure and additional costs

Commercial leases vary a lot more than most people expect walking in. Under a gross lease, many operating expenses are generally included within the rent. Modified gross leases split certain costs between landlord and tenant, while triple net (NNN) leases typically require tenants to pay base rent plus specified operating expenses on top. Understanding these differences is really the only way to compare properties on total cost rather than just the advertised rental number, which can be misleading on its own.

Negotiable lease provisions

Many commercial lease provisions are negotiable, more than founders often realise. Tenant improvement allowances, expansion rights, renewal options, signage rights, and early termination provisions may significantly influence long-term flexibility. Carefully reviewing lease terms before signing helps avoid unexpected obligations that surface later.

Step 6: Avoid the Common Mistakes

Leasing too much space

New businesses often overestimate future staffing or inventory requirements – it’s a natural instinct to plan big. Excess square footage increases rent, utilities, maintenance, and furnishing costs without necessarily improving productivity at all. Starting with appropriately sized space usually provides stronger financial flexibility down the line.

Choosing prestige over practicality

A prestigious address may enhance image, but it doesn’t automatically improve business performance, no matter how good it looks on a pitch deck. Convenient access, functional layouts, and operational efficiency often deliver more long-term value than a prestigious location alone. Commercial space should support business objectives, not just project status to whoever’s watching.

Ignoring future flexibility

Business needs rarely stay static, and pretending otherwise is a common trap. Companies that overlook expansion rights or adaptable lease structures may face expensive relocations as staffing or customer demand evolves. Planning for flexibility from the beginning reduces disruption later – a lesson the broader flex-space industry has clearly taken to heart too, given how fast shorter, more adaptable leases have become the norm in 2026.

Step 7: Run the Search Process Properly

Define business requirements

Before touring anything, write out a checklist covering square footage, layout, budget, customer access, parking, tech needs, storage, accessibility, and anticipated growth. Having objective criteria makes property comparisons a lot more consistent than just going with a gut feeling after one visit.

Compare multiple properties

Evaluating several commercial properties reveals valuable insight into local pricing, amenities, lease structures, and neighborhood differences. Comparing multiple options using the same criteria usually leads to better decisions than just committing to the first suitable spot that comes along. Documenting strengths and weaknesses for each helps simplify the final call.

Complete due diligence before signing

Before executing any lease, founders should inspect the property thoroughly, estimate total occupancy costs, review lease terms, confirm zoning compatibility, understand maintenance responsibilities, and evaluate future expansion opportunities.

Following a structured process like this reduces risk and helps make sure the selected property supports both current operations and whatever comes next.

The Takeaway

Selecting a first commercial space is a lot more than finding somewhere to work: it’s a strategic milestone that shapes customer experience, employee productivity, operational efficiency, and financial performance for years afterward. Successful student entrepreneurs take the time to honestly evaluate whether they’re ready, choose property matching their actual operating model, build realistic budgets, understand lease structures, and prioritise flexibility alongside affordability.

The strongest real estate decisions come from disciplined planning, not excitement about finally having a “real” address. Businesses that align property selection with long-term strategy and financial capacity tend to grow more sustainably while taking on less unnecessary risk. And given how much the flex-space market has grown just this year, with lease terms shortening across the board to match, student founders are honestly stepping into one of the more forgiving leasing environments in recent memory. The ideal first space isn’t the biggest or the flashiest one – it’s just the one that gives the business room to grow into whatever it’s actually becoming.




A solo diner’s paradise: Rincha Café review

Prity Laloux
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A solo diner’s paradise: Rincha Café review

As the sun shone over Oxford and my collections drew ever closer, I decided I needed a change of scenery from the panicked atmosphere of my college hall. So, I headed to Rincha Café to sample some Thai specialities and catch up on reading. I was excited to try this casual, sunlit spot, open continuously from 10:30am-8pm, so I could enjoy delicious food while watching the sun set over Oxford. 

I often approach solo dining with a bit of apprehension. I always worry that I will be the only solo diner in the restaurant, or that everyone else is judging my attempt at reading while slurping down noodles. Fortunately, Rincha Café appeased these fears immediately. As I walked in, armed with my Plato and performative wired earbuds, I was greeted by smooth jazz, a wealth of individual seating, and many students with open laptops and noise cancelling headphones. I had found the perfect place for my solo dinner. 

My fears abated, I took my seat across from another reader, and set out to decide on my meal. This was no easy feat, considering the sheer number of options on the menu. In the end, I decided to try the Thai pork meatballs as a starter, the chicken mixed dry noodles as a main, and the mango sticky rice (obviously) as a dessert. I placed my order at the counter, and the food arrived only minutes later, served by friendly and welcoming staff. 

The skewers were a lovely balance of sweet, spicy, and savoury, with the tamarind sauce providing a tangy contrast to the pork meatballs. I will say that the flavour of the pork is quite pronounced, so I would skip the dish if strong meat flavours are not to your taste. The portion was generous, with three skewers that had four meatballs each, but not so large that I did not want to eat my main. 

While I had set out to have a semi productive dinner, this task was made tricky by the delicious chicken noodles I was served next. This dish commanded my full attention. The moment it was set down at my table (almost as soon as I had finished my starter), the peppery smell of the sauce had me salivating. The bowl was loaded, to say the least. Thin rice noodles coated in a sweet and peppery sauce, a pile of minced chicken, three generous chicken meatballs, a handful of soybean sprouts, and coriander to top it off made me question whether I had over ordered. My book lay forgotten beside me as I focused on constructing the perfect bite. The different elements provided a satisfying balance of chewy, spicy, savoury, and fresh. I must admit that I was almost defeated by the sheer amount of ground chicken in my bowl, which might not be a problem for protein-lovers. 

Next came the star of the show, the love of my life: mango sticky rice. This mini dish came in a small plastic cup, the perfect portion size after my previous two courses. There was definitely more mango than sticky rice, but when the mango is perfectly ripe, that can never be a complaint. The sticky rice itself was warm with a pleasant coconut flavour, yet not overly sweet. The perfect end to the meal. 

While the prices certainly do not make it an everyday treat, considering its location and the fact that it is an independent business, I felt they were fair. In a city where everything can feel rushed and overwhelming, the calm setting and friendly service at Rincha Café are a welcome addition to the hustle and bustle of Broad Street

A day at the races: Corpus Christi 2026 Tortoise Fair

Abigail Christie
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A day at the races: Corpus Christi 2026 Tortoise Fair

Oxford is full of weird and wonderful traditions, and the Corpus Christi tortoise race certainly takes the cake for the latter. What likely began as an informal competition between Corpus students some 100-150 years ago, has now blossomed into a day-long affair of tortoise-related festivities and slow-speed racing, attracting hundreds of spectators from across the University and the wider public. Tickets quickly sold out for what can only be described as the highlight of the Trinity social calendar, with numbers capped at 725. Having won the 2025 tortoise race, and despite a few hiccups in previous years, Corpus’ own tortoise Foxe was favoured to win this year. 

I was lucky enough to be able to sit down and chat with Vivi, Corpus’ JCR tortoise-keeper (custos testudinum), in the week leading up to the race. I began by asking what exactly the role entailed, and the position turned out to be more varied than I expected. Vivi told me: “You [get] a big book of standing orders, and most of it is about organising the tortoise fair. But you also have to say that you will sign your life away for Foxe’s wellbeing. […If] the building was on fire, and I could either save Foxe or […] myself, I do have to say that I will go and save Foxe”. 

Vivi described admin, and event-planning, as a large part of the role, with some aspects being fairly time-consuming: “I got into the position on the Saturday of week eight in Michaelmas and then started working immediately. It’s a lot of ordering merch, and I’ve got volunteers in from the charity that we supported [RSPCA Oxfordshire]. You have to work out training for people, how many tickets you’re selling, and where you’re selling them. There were lots of emails in college about what’s going on, and lots of health and safety meetings”.

On the day, occasional spells of June sunshine accompanied the thoughtfully curated schedule of events. Entering through Corpus’ front quad, the RSPCA stall, and tables of tortoise merch greeted incoming visitors, with displays ranging from tote bags and t-shirts to tortoise plushies and face-paint. The wafting scent of the barbecue encouraged foot traffic to move through the college, before visitors arrived in the gardens, where live music, tortoise figurine painting, and dancing were all taking place. The joint efforts of Vivi, volunteers from Corpus and RSPCA Oxfordshire, and the wider college community certainly paid off – almost everywhere you looked, there seemed to be a beaming face sporting a tortoise t-shirt or holding a tortoise plush. 

Aside from the actual tortoise race, the event of the day that attracted the most spectators was the human tortoise race. As a fresher, I remember learning there was a vacancy in my college’s JCR for the position of Tortoise-Keeper. I was (understandably) very excited at the prospect of looking after a tortoise, only to be met with the mildly terrifying reality that my college did not, in fact, have a pet tortoise, and the Tortoise-Keeper was actually required to don a costume and attend all tortoise-related events as if they were one. Needless to say, I did not apply and, to the best of my knowledge, the position remains empty. 

But there was a very different atmosphere on the day: at 2.45pm, the Tortoise-Keeper announced the human tortoise race, and encouraged any volunteers from the crowd to step up. The two individuals dressed as respective halves of a tortoise were the first to enter, followed by an enthusiastic group of people happily exercising their free will. The contestants were required to eat a head of lettuce as messily as possible, and then crawl to the finish line. A humorous array of crawls across the grass ensued, with Corpus bringing victory home. 

Although 2026 marks the 52nd tortoise race, its documented history is not exactly linear, with it having only become a consistent annual event in the last few years. When speaking to Vivi about its history, they referenced a document known as the Illustrious History of Tortoises, which has been passed on from predecessors. “I think there was a year in the 70s when Blue Peter entered a tortoise, and I think that same year they painted designs onto the top of the tortoises so you could see where they were from. It’s been relatively recently that it’s turned into a sort of fair event. It used to be just an inter-college thing and now it’s more open to the public to raise more money for charity”. 

As the afternoon progressed, crowds started to gather around the hexagonal race track for the event everyone had been waiting for: the tortoise race. The growing anticipation drew spectators in surprisingly early, with people sitting down at the track for over an hour before the race began in order to secure an unobstructed view. Tortoise enthusiasts of all ages rallied together at the fence-posts, keen for the race to begin. There were five competitors for the 2026 race: Foxe (Corpus), Bernard (Corpus), Kale (Nuffield), Truffle (Regent’s Park), and Wendy (Balliol). Excitement only intensified at the sight of the Tortoise-Keeper laying down a ring of lettuce for the tortoises to race towards. From where I was sitting, a firm fanbase had their hearts set on Wendy as the winner, despite her being the smallest and the youngest (at only three years old). Wendy had been socialising with her tortoise-keeper throughout the day, winning the hearts of everyone she crawled by, with her pancake-shaped shell. 

After a best-of-three race was declared, the tortoises each started their crawls towards victory. Truffle and Kale were unperturbed by the pressure of winning, and the cheering of the crowds, each taking the distance to the lettuce in their own stride. Wendy, being the smallest by far, still gave it her all and made a beeline for the lettuce as fast as her little legs would allow. Foxe seemed less concerned this year with winning glory, and more focused on trying to bite Wendy. Speaking to Vivi about Foxe’s personality, I learnt that he seems to have a penchant for biting and a long history of grumpiness. Nevertheless, victory was still brought home to Corpus by Bernard, who reached the lettuce to a chorus of victorious celebration. 

The painstaking thought and effort put into the organisation of the tortoise fair, and the dutiful care taken of Foxe by the Tortoise-Keeper and his caregivers in the lodge, embody how Oxford’s communities are more than meets the eye. Animals, though a minority at the University, tend to shine light where it is needed the most. Discussing their importance, Vivi summarised it best: “Animals really help it feel like somewhere you live, rather than just somewhere you work.” 

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