Oxford's infested, claims an Oxford Academic, amid fears that the number of rats are on the rise in Oxford.The investigation comes after Dr Frances Kennett claimed that rats had infested her house in Jericho. The Oxford Academic claimed that the reduction of waste-removal services in the area had brought the issue about:"I have lived in this house for a very long time and have never had rats until three months after the new collection was introduced. The whole thing is turning into a farce."Local council claimed that it wasn't the fortnightly collections that were causing the problem, but the significant damage to the sewage pipes until Dr Kennett's house. City Councillor Jean Fooks added: "We do know the sewer under Dr Kennett's house has got a lot of damage.It needs to be fixed – the question is who pays for it because it is high time it was done.As I keep saying until I am blue in the face, there is no evidence of an increased rat population in Oxford or tat fortnightly waste collections have anything to do with it."Thames Water will carry out surveys of the sewers under the houses on Great Clarendon Street next week. A 2-foot long torpedo-shaped probe, complete with a camera and lights, will be sent underground to see whether or not the sewers under the houses in Jericho are infested with rats. Experts hope to ascertain whether or not the reports are valid and how to deal with the issue if it is.

by Rees Arnott-Davies

 
Somebody once told me that if you want to give a play a bad review, simply describe what happens in it.  King John begins with the promise of a war of sovereignty between England and France, with the French disputing John’s right to the English throne, arguing that his cousin, Arthur, holds a legitimate claim to the crown. Meanwhile, Philip the Bastard is made aware that he is the illegitimate son (hence bastard) of Richard the Lion Heart, after having been knighted, and given the opportunity to fight for John in France. In France, a number of strangely unconvincing noblemen, including the Archduke of Austria, the Dauphin Lewis and King Philip of France convene outside of Angiers with the aim of deciding how to win the crown for Arthur. They are soon met by the English army, led by John, and battle ensues, without any sign of victory for either side. So the kings decide (with the help of an impartial bystander) that perhaps it might be a better idea to resolve everything with a marriage, as was the way back then. So there’s a marriage, making some people happy and some people sad, at which point the Pope’s legate comes along and breaks it to everyone that John’s been a bit sacrilegious and will have to be excommunicated. This unravels everything, causing France to go to war with England all over again, a war in which John is victorious, capturing Arthur with the intention of killing him. I think you get the idea. One of the foremost problems with this production, besides the fact that it seemed a little under-rehearsed, was that it focused on presenting this story of blood loyalties and power-games in the style of Eastenders. The scenes between Queen Eleanor and Constance were bizarrely similar to a shouting match in the Queen Vic. The moments of intrigue and surprise were positively begging to be interrupted by an aerial shot of London and the tune that invariably denotes another cliff-hanger. This is not to say that the production was without merit.  Both Alex Bowles and Chloe Sharrocks as King John and Constance gave generally good performances, but as the performance wore on it seemed as if words took longer and longer to come, and when they did they were often stumbled over. Of course I understand that a cast of post-grads and finalists may have more important things to worry about than learning lines, but the general lack of any directorial impulse (it seems characters spent most of their time, when not speaking, standing with passive and aimless looks upon their faces) coupled with the farcically over-directed battle scenes (soundtracks of an indecent amount of grunting) left the audience feeling that perhaps they had stumbled upon a revamped Beyond the Fringe. However, despite Helen McCabe’s portrayal of the royal court as an East-End pub, despite performances that put the amateur in dramatic, despite somewhat rusty stagecraft, despite all these things and more, it may be worth going to see King John, if only because until the RSC performed it in 2006, the last recorded professional performance of King John was in 1944.

by Elena Lynch
 

The message of this thoughtfully directed and excellently acted production is that life is only about love and jazz. Adapted from Boris Vian’s L’Ecume des Jours, Crescendos in Blue is a whimsical mixture of fantasy and realism.

One of the more unusual aspects of this production is its inventive staging. The audience is seated around a central acting space on the floor, but the actors are far from confined to this space. The action takes place directly in front and around you, on the balcony behind and the small platform at the front. Every available space is used. Actors crawl past your feet, shout down from above, sit amongst you and glide behind your backs. The disadvantage of this ambitious staging is that the audience’s view is sometimes blocked, and you have to strain to peer round at things behind and above you.

However, it immediately involves you in the lives of the characters, the “six teenagers and a mouse” as the introductory talk tells you. They fall in love but ultimately lose that love. It’s poignant and sad in several places, as well as being amusing. The painful moments of being a teenager, such as having that first dance together, are briefly but vividly brought to life by the actors. Particularly notable is Barthélémy Meridjen (Colin), who gets a lot of laughs when he gets carried away passionately kissing his own hand whilst pretending it is Chloe, the girl he’s in love with.

This realistic presentation of teenage life is balanced with more surreal scenes. The bizarre puppet scene featuring a conversation between a mouse and a cat completely confused me. In other scenes, characters confide in the mouse and show you what they are imagining. They immerse you in their fantasies and their whirlwind world of parties, friendship and love as soon as the play begins, helped by the fantastic playing of Les Alcolytes, an up-and-coming French Jazz band. They give the play passion and atmosphere. Unfortunately, sometimes they were too loud and it was a strain to hear the actors’ voices. Crescendos in Blue is not a conventional play, and it is worth paying attention to the talk before the start. Although this talk is a bit too long, it does provide some useful insight into the play’s peculiarities. The heart of the play does overcome these, and what you really remember afterwards is the bittersweet story beautifully brought to life. A lot of care and thought has gone into every aspect of this piece, from set and costumes to the musicians who join in the dancing. If you fancy a break this week and want to try something a bit different, then go and experience it.
 
Crescendos in Blue runs at the Maison Francaise through Saturday, October 27th at 7:30 pm. On Saturday, there is a 4 pm matinee.

by Frankie Parham
 

For something with an exclamation mark in its title, you’d expect Roussos! to be loud, bizarre and confrontational. For all the promise of ‘Extra Special Guest Appearances from Sir Elton John and Dame Shirley Bassey’, writers Sam Caird and Jack Chedburn immediately throw their audience into one of the most mundane and uneventful scenarios imaginable. Two inept bodyguards wait backstage for a washed-out rock star on his final tour, ‘Forever and Ever’.

Demis Roussos is past his sell-by date; in fact he was barely even famous, much as it pains Jack (Jack Chedburn), his faithful bodyguard and obsessive admirer. Pacing back and forth, fiddling with his walkie-talkie and nervously pulling on his trousers, Chedburn infuses Jack with mild traits of OCD that do well to fuel the trivial conversations he has with his colleague, Sam. Sam is similarly played brilliantly by an effortlessly lethargic Laura Hanna, she merely nods along to Jack’s neurotic rants, more concerned with her crossword puzzles. The scenes between the two are impressively engrossing. Neither looks at the other, they only speak at one another and when they do come into physical contact (while Jack is trying to revive one of Roussos’ hits backstage) the chemistry is suddenly awkward, as if they barely know each other. Much of the humour comes through in their continuous petty discussions, which range from ball-point pens to the reasons why dogs pant to what eagles eat (Is it rabbit or rabbits? Do you pluralise?). Reminiscing about Roussos’ one-hit wonder and incidents with Dame Shirley Bassey expose the meaningless of celebrity, treated with such indifference as it is by these two numb characters.

 
These cringing scenes would lose their edge if they weren’t contrasted with something different, and this comes stumbling in (literally) in the form of Will Cudmore, convincingly doubling as both Franz Kafka and Samuel Beckett – yes, two of the previous century’s heavy-weight authors who are in fact dead. Sam and Jack are confronted backstage by these two characters (first by the befuddled Kafka and then the more intense and aggressive Beckett) and one assumes that surely their humdrum existence should somehow be altered by such supernatural events. On the contrary, the circumstances are merely treated as chance events (Jack does not even know who either author is by name) and so we enter the realm of the obscure. However, Roussos! does not alienate so much as it draws in its audience.  Its seemingly unexciting, but realistic opening scenario is followed by something so extraordinary that they buy into it. There seem to be parallels (between the waiting of Jack and Sam for Roussos, and Beckett’s Waiting for Godot) but the action moves so quickly that these could just as well be coincidences – futile attempts of the audience to figure out the play’s meaning. It is competently acted and unmistakably original, and problems would only arise from an audience that refuses to succumb to the play’s juxtaposition between the tedious and the wacky. Fans of Spinal Tap will be easily entertained, but be prepared to feel amused and confused. 
Roussos! runs in the BT late slot (9:30) until Saturday, 27th October. 

Three members of Oxford University staff have been named as 'Oxfordshire Women of the Year 2007'. Mrs Elizabeth Crawford, Professor Helen Mardon, and Professor Irene Tracey were selected along with five others by the 'Oxfordshire Women of the Year' Lunch and Assembly committee, for an award designed to bring outstanding women in Oxfordshire together from all ages and backgrounds.Mrs Elizabeth Crawford is the Domestic Bursar of University College, and the chairman of the Domestic Bursar’s Committee for all 39 Oxford colleges. Professor Helen Mardon is a Tutor in Medical Sciences at St Catherine’s College and Professor of Reproductive Science. She runs a research group at the Nuffield Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology investigating technologies for stem-cell micro-monitoring and expansion, in particular the interaction of extra cellular signalling molecules with their receptors in the womb lining. Professor Irene Tracey is Director the of Oxford Centre for Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging of the Brain (FMRIB) Centre, Nuffield Professor of Anaesthetic Science, and a Fellow of Medicine at Pembroke College. Her team is researching on using FMRI and electroencephalography to study pain processing in the brain and spinal cord of chronic pain patients.Sister Frances Dominica was announced as the overall ‘Woman of the Year 2007’, whose achievements include the founding of the world’s first children’s hospice, Helen House, in Oxford in 1982.

Get this. The German elite are up in arms over the Frankfurter Allgemeine's latest "redesign". If you can call it that.
The leading national paper, always a serious and erudite title, has decided that now, in additional to the striking red box (dimensions 3cm x 3cm) on the far left column, it should lead with a (tiny) photo – yes, a photo – on the front page. A photo?!A media expert here in Frankfurt tells me that, two weeks after the relaunch, the intelligentsia aren't too chuffed. Pictures, they cry, should be saved for big stories – like skyscrapers being destroyed or Berlin Walls coming down. But a photo of a rock star? And he's not even got a Nobel Prize? Outrageous.The explanation, I'm told, is that 90% of the FAZ's readers are subscribers, who are attracted not by on-the-spot hooks but by respectability over a long period of time. Compare this with Bild, their answer to The Sun, which offers no subscription and has to grip its readers with the cover if it wants to make any money.The UK broadsheets, on the other hand, are somewhere in between the two extremes, while our tabloids are more like Bild.And all this on the day that The Times leads with a photo of Tom Cruise and the Daily Telegraph runs a cute badger. UPDATE: It appears Harry de Quetteville's Telegraph blog from Berlin had the same thing to say. Unfortunately he got there a couple of weeks before me. Oh well, speed's not all.

by Christopher Perfect

In today’s Oxford, the enormous changes of the last thirty years, of which we are reminded at every opportunity, sometimes make it difficult to imagine an era before mixed-sex colleges, informal hall and Friday night at Filth.  Simultaneously, constant demands for ‘modernisation’, ‘transformation’ and the ‘equalisation of opportunity’ make the stereotypical picture of Oxford one which often goes unrecognised by the modern undergraduate.  These two conflicting approaches to viewing the University are harmoniously brought together by the exhibition at Sanders on the High, consisting of maps, prints and lithographs of the University and of the City, dating from the last four-hundred years.

Oxford, as presented in a 1705 prospect from the ‘Britannia Illustrata’, was, initially, a city primarily dedicated to religion. As the tourist buses sail up and down the streets in search of Harry Potter, Sebastian Flyte, or just an unfortunate finalist in sub-fusc, they miss the dominant aspect of the prospect: the sight presented by the spires and towers of Oxford’s religious institutions. Churches outnumber colleges in the piece’s annotations and consequently present a pointed reminder of both the university’s origins, and its long existence, as a primarily religious institution.

Some exhibits, of course, are immediately recognisable;  Charles Murray's 1896 etching of the High Street, with a view towards Carfax, features the familiar sweep of the street and the  unrivalled dominance, then, as now, of St Mary’s Church, enhanced, perhaps, by the marvellous absence of traffic.  And yet, even when presented with the most immediately familiar view of the great university city, we are still faced with the unaccustomed sight of students and academics in academic dress, and reminded of Waugh’s description of Oxford as ‘a city of aquatint’.

A large number of smaller exhibits by artists such as Mortimer Menpes, M.K. Hughes and Sydney John present individual aspects of the Oxford we all know taken from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.  The pelican of Corpus Christi, the dominance of Tom Tower as viewed from Pembroke Street, and the magnificent dome of The Queen's College, all serve to reinforce the exhibition’s status as a window into what is an unfamiliar world, framed within unforgettable, hauntingly beautiful architecture.

'Light and Shadow'-An Exhibition of Oxford in Early Twentieth Century Print, at Sanders of Oxford, High Street, till November 3rd.

Our reviewers round up the best and worst of this week's single releases. 
Sons And Daughters – Gilt Complex (Dan Rawnsley) *** 
A best of Sons and Daughters should be in the soundtrack to your insanity.  The guitar scratches up your spine and the bass threatens to fracture your skull.  ‘Gilt Complex’ has a place in that best of, but Sons and Daughters have produced two albums of spine scratching brain beating songs.  The sound is tweaked and tightened; it scratches in an oh-so-slightly more pleasurable way, but it’s more of the same.  A stable rather than innovative track, but then again innovation might not have been the aim.  Bonus points for the b-side ‘Killer’, which managed to break my back.  
Willy Mason – Gotta Keep Walkin’ (Charlie Radcliffe) **** 
It is a huge injustice that the implausibly wet James Blunt, nice chap he may be, headlines Wembley Stadium while fellow acoustic strummer Willy Mason is still making do with a support slot on KT Tunstall’s tour. New single ‘Gotta Keep Walkin’’ does not have the infectious tune of his Tunstall collaboration We Can Be Strong or the sing-along factor of breakthrough hit Oxygen, but it still manages to combine adept storytelling with a swirling melody. ‘Gotta Keep Walkin’’ is not Mason’s finest moment, but it still makes Blunt et al look incredibly pedestrian.  
Keane – The Night Sky (Rees Arnott-Davies) ** 
I feel guilty about giving a charity single a bad review, but nowhere near as guilty as how I’d feel if I were to pretend that ‘The Night Sky’ was anything other than a droning mess of self-congratulatory pretension. The opening verse ‘One day I will be / Back in our old street / Safe from the noise that’s falling around me’ eerily captures the feeling of listening to this song. Through strained ears, every now and again I can make out some semblance of a tune, but mostly it’s just noise. But buy it anyway, for charity and stuff…   
Beverley Knight – Queen Of Starting Over (Portia Patel) ** 

Beverly Knight is one of those artists from whom you know what you’re going to get. ‘Queen Of Starting Over’ from Knight’s latest album Music City Soul, is no different to the usual fusion of pop and soul that she has traded in over the years. There is no denying that Knight is a talented soulstress; however, this track does not really do justice to her passionate and flamboyant vocal abilities, failing to take off after a promising opening. The lyrics are repetitive and unmemorable, and the chorus is seemingly non-existent and gets lost amidst a background of southern soul-inspired horns. ‘Queen Of Starting Over’ is no ‘Piece Of My Heart’. Beverley, sorry to say, but you ‘Shoulda Woulda Coulda’ done better!

Photo of Sons and Daughters by Jason Evans.

“It was a feeling of total inertia. I just didn’t want to do anything, not even get out of bed”.  “Everything I used to enjoy seemed pointless”. “I felt very alone.” 

Depression is a serious medical condition. It is not something that you can remedy by ‘pulling your socks up’ or simply ‘getting on with it’.  The causes are complicated and still not fully understood.  In some people it is caused by an under-active thyroid gland which can make you put on weight and feel sluggish and lethargic; other people may experience it as a response to certain foods; and still others become depressed as a symptom of illness. Often though, it has no apparent physical cause. Some experts describe it as a form of ‘unfinished mourning’ following a major life change or a major shock.  And while it is unclear as to whether there is a genetic basis for depression, it seems that some people are more susceptible to it than others.   

As far as Oxford goes, the environment that students are in is one which can be conducive to depression.  It is a very intense place.  Many of us find when we get here that, although we were easily among the most able and talented at school, at university we are suddenly just part of the crowd.  There are other changes too.  The workload can at times seem not only daunting but physically impossible and as a fresher you might be separated from your family and friends for the first time.  Suddenly your old routines and your old support networks are gone.  Even if you’ve been here two or three years already, it can still be difficult to cope at times. It is easy to feel that you are not as successful, as popular, or simply as happy as many of your peers. 

It is important therefore to keep things in perspective: to remember that most people here are not superstars.  They are just like you, and just like you they have low points and times when they feel that they aren’t getting the most out of university.  However, a ‘low point’ is reasonably common amongst most people.  Think of it as the mental health equivalent of the common cold.  It is no fun, but it will pass after a while.  The clinical term ‘depression’ on the other hand, refers to something more serious.    

The main symptoms of depression include: having negative thoughts, feeling extremely anxious, not enjoying things that you usually enjoy, wanting to distance yourself from others, feeling restless and agitated, having difficulty sleeping, feeling helpless, feeling aches and pains with no physical cause, and feeling tired.  There are other symptoms, and people with depression may experience a different number of symptoms, in different combinations.  The way people experience depression is very varied. For some, it can even be a strangely productive period.  One student told me “I sometimes relish those days when I feel depressed. I can wallow in pure selfishness.  I don’t care about anyone or anything else. I do a lot of thinking then.” For others however, depression is extremely dangerous and can lead to self harm and even suicidal thoughts. 

In Oxford there are reasonably good welfare services. OUSU provides counselling services run by trained professional counsellors where most students can get an appointment within a week, there is the student run ‘nightline’ open from 8pm to 8am and each college runs its own welfare system, often with student peer supporters and professional members of staff.  However, the symptoms of depression can mean that it is difficult for people to get help, and students can fall through the welfare net.  A depressed person often lacks the motivation to actively do something about the way they are feeling and may also be less inclined to talk to others than usual.  So it is important that friends and neighbours keep an eye out for each other.  

The good thing is that depression is treatable.  Exercise, for example, is particularly good because it stimulates the endorphins in your brain and also eating a healthy diet, especially one containing oily fish, can help a lot too.  But it is not an easy battle.  Depression is something which feeds off itself and fighting the negative attitudes that it creates is tough.  Oxford does not always provide the best atmosphere in which to deal with this, but the support is there if you need it.  The important thing to remember is that you are not alone.

Employees found misusing internet networking websites like Facebook or MySpace will face disciplinary hearings, it was warned earlier today.Local district councils, such as the Vale of the White Horse and Oxfordshire County Council have already put measures in place to prevent employees from accessing the site, but elsewhere, staff have been warned "we are watching you" as access remains unrestricted.Oxford City Councillor Dr Tia McGregor commented: "Employees have a responsibility not to waste time. I think some people are spending too much time on it."The past five years have seen as many as 21 council employees disciplined on the grounds of internet misuse. Under a revised internet policy, some businesses are allowing networking websites were left open for employees to use, though the changes are being monitored to ensure that workers do not abuse the priviledge, with regular usage reports are being produced to ensure employers are aware of the situation.Thames Valley Chamber of Commerce spokesman Claire Prosser said: "These sites are highly addictive. Businesses are under enough pressure to become more efficient and issues such as this add to their already mounting workload."