Bar Risa, Hythe Bridge StreetSaturday 16 April
After an hour and a half of freely flowing beer and copius numbers of cocktail pitchers, the Saturday night Jongleurs crowd were always going to be up for a laugh. This certainly made it easier for compere Andy White as he worked his way through some standard audience banter complete with reasonably witty topical comments, before handing a thoroughly warmed-up audience over to Kevin Dewsbury. Dewsbury delivered a series of wry social observations, making it clear what makes him a Kevin and definately not a ‘Kev’, and sharing his frustration at the frequent need to explain that Cheshire is not in fact populated by the fit female denizens of Hollyoaks: “’Cos if it were, why would I leave?” Quite.
Next up was self-proclaimed ‘Souf London geezer’ Harry Denford, a man whose bombastic voice is second only to his girth. Blustering on stage in a roar of expletives, Denford’s presence commanded complete attention and he quickly gained control of his audience. After dispensing with the obligatory “fat bastard” and :Souf London” gags, he moved onto more original territory by recounting his experiences as a former airline pilot and his way with the ladies. In these routines he deftly led seemingly predictable gags in unexpected directions, delivering punchy lines to confound the audience. He used bully- boy tactics, and even managed to force some unsuspecting males from the crowd onstage for what seemed little more than a torrent of unnecessarily harsh abuse. But towards the end of the show, even this achieved a comic climax as he somehow convinced them to perform a Full Monty.
With a regular Tuesday night slot at London’s Comedy Store and numerous TV and radio appearances under his belt, veteran circuit performer Sean Meo came equipped with a reputation for brutal satire. He began his set tamely, playing the laconic Brit delivering pithy observations on the state of the British railways and illegal immigrant London cabbies. As the set progressed, Meo’s profoundly macabre humour knew no bounds, venting spleen on Germans and starving African children with equal vehemence. Gags about terrorist taxi drivers and deformed midgets occasionally stretched beyond the bounds of decency, yet Meo broadly managed to walk the fine line between humour and discomfort with the ease of a consummate professional.
Meo’s biggest crowd pleaser was undoubtedly his audience banter. Within minutes he honed in on his chosen unwitting targets for the evening, manipulating their responses to his seemingly innocuous questions and then launching into a relentless barrage of cutting jibes. With a group of hairdressers in the front row, he was never going to be short of material. Despite often resorting to cheap insults, his vituperative wit remained close enough to real life to ensure that laughs were plentiful: proof positive that well-aimed invectives will always be funny however unashamedly un-PC.ARCHIVE: 0th week TT 2005

Remembering his ten hours queueing in the Vatican City, Mark Cooper describes his pilgrimage to Rome to honour the late Pope, John Paul II. While the atmosphere was at times mixed, the reward was to bid farewell to the great man.
Most will have seen images on the news of the great crowds gathering to walk past John Paul II while he lay in state. The ten hours I spent in that crowd turned out to be some of the most memorable of my life. Words cannot fully convey the mixed emotions I felt in that situation, from the sadness of John Paul II’s death to the joy of remembering his enormous achievements.
I flew out to Rome in the early hours of Tuesday 5 April, reaching the Vatican by about 2pm to join the masses of people queuing to pay their respects. Feeling somewhat put off by the severe numbers I asked one of the stewards how long the queue was going to be. He said it would be about four hours, so I decided to go ahead. After all, what would be the point wandering around Rome for two days when the only way I could justify leaving behind my revision for finals was that I wanted to pay my respects to the Holy Father, the man who had meant so much to me? I reached the High Altar of St Peter’s at midnight. John Paul II is the only Pope I have ever known, so his death marks the end of an era for me. He has been such an inspiration to millions of people, young and old, and I wanted to pay my final respects to him. But I was disappointed at the behaviour of some in the crowd, many of whom were hungry and exhausted. Elderly Italian women would push me, yelling that I hadn’t moved that extra available inch towards the person in front of me. I felt lonely too, as I queued by myself while everyone else seemed to be in groups. I stood bewildered seeing so many people of different nationalities, ages and attitudes. It seemed some were queuing out of a morbid curiosity: I heard an American woman remark, “We’re not religious – we’re just in Rome for a few days and thought this would be something to do.” I was finding the waiting difficult for emotional and physical reasons, and here was someone who was quite happy to bring her family into such a situation for “something to do”.
To their credit, the Roman authorities gave out free water at a rate of one million bottles per day, and there were plenty of ‘portaloos’ around. Medics were on standby to deal with those in need. There were a million people and Rome was completely overwhelmed. Occasionally some of the young people in the crowd would start chanting “Joannes Paulus” and clapping, but few seemed to be joining in with the hymns and prayers coming through the speakers. The majority of those around me were young Italians, aged between 14 and 30. What a testimony to the legacy of John Paul II, I thought.
When hearing of the thousands of young people gathering in St Peter’s Square on the Friday before he died, the Holy Father remarked, “I have looked for you. Now you have come to me. And I thank you.” I reflected on this while waiting, and realised how much of an achievement the Holy Father had made with young people. The World Youth Days, which had been held in Rome and Toronto, had attracted millions of young people from all over the world, who wanted to come and hear the Pope speaking about the Good News of Jesus Christ. Another day is planned for this year in Cologne, and the Holy Father was said to have been looking forward to it greatly.
At 9.37pm, on Saturday 2 April 2005, Pope John Paul II died in his apartment in the Apostolic Palace, Vatican City. Despite its grandeur, the Holy Father’s own rooms are relatively simple, with a bed, a side table, a few cupboards, a study with a selection of books, and a dining room. The rooms leading from where the Pope lay had been bustling with cardinals, other senior clerics and nuns who look after the Pope. In addition there were doctors and members of the Vatican Press Office, all making sure that that he was comfortable and that the world was being informed of his state of health. Born in 1920, John Paul II grew up in pre-war Poland. As a youngster he excelled at sport, enjoying football and skiing while his great love for the theatre almost led to him becoming an actor. However, he decided to study philosophy before training for the priesthood. He was eventually ordained in 1946 and after rapid promotion he became Archbishop of Krakow in 1964. Archbishop Wojtyla, who became a Cardinal in 1967, was considered very much an outsider for the Papacy, after the sudden death of John Paul I, after just thirty-three days as Pope. Taking the name John Paul II, Cardinal Wojtyla was elected Pope in 1978.
When the news broke that the Holy Father’s health had severely deteriorated I was just about to go to bed. It did not come as a complete surprise, for he had been ill since February, having undergone a tracheotomy to aid his breathing. Over the past ten years or more, the world has witnessed the physical deterioration of a man once known as God’s Athlete, largely due to Parkinson’s disease.
The period of Sede Vacante (or ‘Vacant See’) is a mixed one: the Church is without its chief shepherd, the vicar of Christ. However, it is also a time for reflection upon and celebration of the life and work of the late Holy Father. Never has a period of Sede Vacante been more significant than after the recent death of Pope John Paul II. The Church’s 264th Supreme Pontiff had been the first non- Italian for over 450 years and the youngest for over a century. His twenty-six year Pontificate was the third longest in history, after St Peter and Pius IX, and in that time he wrote more than all of his predecessors put together.
With one of the most recognisable faces on the planet, Pope John Paul II was hugely significant on the world stage. Most Popes have not tended to leave the Vatican a great deal. The running of the Roman Curia (the Church’s administrative and governmental workings) is a very busy job. The Pope has to personally oversee all appointments of cardinals, bishops, nuncios (ambassadors to the Holy See) etc, as well as speaking out on a whole range of moral and social issues. Adding a hectic program of international travel was a vast undertaking by John Paul II, and a step in a very new direction for the Catholic Church. In his twenty-six year Pontificate, the Holy Father visited more than 120 countries. To each of these countries, including various parts of the UK in 1982, he has taken his message of The New Evangelisation.
Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, the newly elected Pope, and John Paul II’s Prefect for the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, and Dean of the College of Cardinals, summarises the New Evangelisation as follows: “Human life cannot be realised by itself. Our life is an open question, an incomplete project, still to be brought to fruition and realised. Each man’s fundamental question is: How will this be realised — becoming man? How does one learn the art of living? Which is the path toward happiness? To evangelise means: to show this path — to teach the art of living. The deepest poverty is the inability of joy, the tediousness of a life considered absurd and contradictory. This is why we are in need of a New Evangelisation — if the art of living remains an unknown, nothing else works. But this art is not the object of a science; this art can only be communicated by [one] who has life, he who is the Gospel personified — Jesus Christ.” With this understanding of the New Evangelisation in mind, we can make more sense of his Pontificate. We can see John Paul as a man persuaded of his mission to spread the word of his God, applying his faith to the significant problems facing the world. He will perhaps be best remembered for his stance against the communist regime in his native Poland, where he supported the Solidarity Movement. Along with pressure from US President Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, the communist regime was toppled and the people of Poland looked to their country’s greatest son as a father for the whole nation. In more recent times, John Paul II firmly opposed the War in Iraq and labelled it “a failure of humanity”. Both George W Bush and Tony Blair individually visited the Pope during the conflict, and he apparently expressed his immense sorrow and disappointment at the action they were taking in Iraq.
John Paul II’s radical pilgrim papacy almost led to his death in 1981. While being driven around St Peter’s Square four shots were fired by two would-be assassins. One ran away and was never found, but the other, Mehmet Ali Agca, a Turkish Muslim, is still in jail. John Paul II famously met Agca in prison after recovering from the attack, offering him forgiveness. During the week before the papal funeral Agca reportedly asked to attend the Requiem at St Peter’s, but his request was turned down.
A key theme of John Paul II’s Pontificate was ecumenical and inter-faith dialogue. Much has been done to heal the split between the Eastern and Western Churches, such as the returning of the relics of great Eastern Patriarchs Saint Gregory of Nazianze and Saint John Chrysostom, which were stolen by crusaders in the Middle Ages. During his 1982 visit to the UK he became the first Pope since the Reformation to meet the Archbishop of Canterbury. The Pope was involved in a number of ecumenical services during his visit—something unthinkable in previous eras. Great crowds, both Catholic and Protestant, followed his every move and there was even talk of union between Rome and Canterbury. This was an historic trip made all the more significant as it took place during the Falklands Crisis. He called for a peaceful end to the conflict, an appeal repeated in a visit to Argentina days later.
John Paul II met with senior representatives of all the major religions throughout his papacy, and will be especially remembered for his dialogue with the Jewish and Muslim people. Jews in 1978 were not at all sure what to make of a Polish Pope, yet he has come to symbolise for them much of what is best in Christianity. He was the first Pope to visit a concentration camp, Auschwitz, in 1979, and made history in 1986 by being the first Pope since St Peter to visit and pray in a synagogue, condemning anti-Semitism as “sinful”. He also affirmed the validity of Jewish faith and of God’s covenant with the Jews: “The Jewish religion is not extrinsic to us but in a certain way intrinsic to our own religion. With Judaism, therefore, we have a relationship which we do not have with any other religion. You are our dearly beloved brothers, and, in a certain way, it can be said that you are our elder brothers.” During 2000, the Pope went to Israel. As was his custom, the Pope kissed the soil of the land he was entering and listened to its national anthem. The Pope visited the Western Wall, the last remnant of the Jerusalem Temple and like so many humble Jews before him, he placed a prayer of petition to the God of Israel in a crack between the stones. Dialogue with the Islamic faith too runs through the Pontificate of John Paul II. In his eyes, there should be no hostility between Islam and the Catholic Church. When the Pope hosted the World Day of Prayer for Peace at Assisi, thousands of Muslims accepted his invitation to world religions to observe a day of fasting and prayer for peace. The Pope’s outreach to Islam began with his address to 50,000 young Muslims in the stadium at Casablanca, where King Hussein introduced the Pope to the crowd as “an educator and a defender of values that are shared by Islam and Christianity”.
On reaching the doors of St Peter’s I realised what had been going on for the last ten hours. My pilgrimage to pay homage to the Pope had been a tiny reflection of his life of much travelling and physical suffering. How could I possibly complain about ten hours of sore feet, tiredness and hunger, when the Holy Father had suffered from Parkinson’s disease and other ailments for so long? There is an old Polish saying that anyone who dies in the Easter Octave goes straight to heaven, and as I walked passed his body I was sure that John Paul II was already enjoying the fruits of eternal life. I paused and genuflected for a brief moment before being ushered along by the stewards.
By the time I left Rome on Wednesday, the queue was reaching well over fifteen hours yet it seemed not to discourage people from joining it. There were at least three separate queues to join the main one, which started at the bottom of the Via della Conciliazione and trailed around the side streets for a couple of miles then heading straight up to St Peter’s Square, before meandering into the Basilica. Watching the crowds on the news back home filled me with great joy, particularly the images from Krakow. Images of thousands of Poles being crowded onto trains to undertake an uncertain journey are usually found in films about the Second World War, but these Poles were undertaking the greatest pilgrimage of their lives — to bid farewell to one of their greatest countrymen.
Now the Church looks to the future, with Cardinal Ratzinger to be the new Pontiff, as Pope Benedict XVI. Whatever his plans for the Church, one thing is not in doubt — John Paul II will be difficult to replace.ARCHIVE: 0th week TT 2005

Plum Sykes, socialite editor and novelist, entertains Josh Spero with stories of Bergdorf Blondes and American Vogue
Considered from afar, Plum Sykes is an imposing figure: a popular novelist, a contributing editor at American Vogue, a history graduate from Oxford, all wrapped in a glamorous and fashionable lifestyle. In person, however, she wears this clothing with grace and charm, as I discover over lunch with her one day in South Kensington; her unforced friendliness soothes my nerves. The type of woman who possesses both striking success and style often accessorises them with hauteur, but this is not Sykes.
Asked by her old tutor at Worcester to give his students advice on how best to pursue a career in the media, Sykes is coming to Oxford to talk at the Union on the evening of Wednesday 27 April. In the same week her first novel, Bergdorf Blondes, is released in paperback, so when we meet both topics come up.
Bergdorf Blondes is far more than its “veneer of extreme silliness” (in Sykes-speak), and although I approached it with low expectations, the satire brilliantly confounded me. It is acute, but not bitchy. Sykes disagrees with my choice of the word ‘satire’ for this tale of Park Avenue princesses and their quests for PJs (private jets) and ATMs (rich boyfriends): “I always picture a satire as political and something with which you really attack something, but I think of [Bergdorf Blondes] more as a social comedy, I suppose. I was going more for social comedy in the vein of those 1940s movies like The Philadelphia Story.”
Terminology aside, there is certainly sharp rebuke for the superficial world of New York heiresses, albeit clothed in the faux naivety of the narrator, identified only as Moi. If calling a character Moi seems precious, it is only a diversionary tactic: she is sharper than she lets on, making penetrating remarks under the shadow of shallowness. Part of the reason this book is trumpeted as printed Sex and the City and was dismissed by many critics is because Sykes employs a great deal of subtlety in her prose, covered by a layer of brashness and fashion which proves distracting.
‘Moi’ also implies a level of autobiographical involvement. I ask Sykes, how much of ‘Moi’, is ‘Me’? “That’s not my life – I’m writing about a group of very, very elite, privileged New York girls. Now I discovered that because at American Vogue I was always reporting on them so I got that inside view. That wasn’t me living it, but I was very much party to it.” This is true of much of her work for Vogue, and proved by the fact that, the day after our interview, Sykes is flying to Paris for three days to write about bras. However, she is anything but complacent, “Believe me, I know I’m really lucky in the sense that the job has glamorous moments but if you’re being a journalist you’re always remembering, ‘Well it’s not actually for me.’ I’m not going to wear these handmade $900 bras – I wish I was. I’m just writing.”
The outrageous nature of many lines and scenes in Bergdorf Blondes makes me wonder what could have provided inspiration. Much is drawn from life. “I think a lot of the best lines in the book, I couldn’t have made up because they’re too good. I interviewed so many heiresses and stuff so I had loads of material I hadn’t used in my articles. I was sitting next to [a Bergdorf Blonde-type] at the MTV awards or something, and she said, ‘You know, Plum, I’m such a New York grooming addict that my nails actually ache if they’re not manicured.’ And so I put that in the book. I’m not clever enough to invent aching nails.”
Surely, then, drawing so heavily on real women, Sykes must have upset those she parodies (however affectionately)? “Do you know what’s really weird? All the girls, all those Palm Beach heiresses, were reading it by the pool, laughing, and they think it’s very flattering to be called Bergdorf Blondes because they think, ‘Oh we’re funny and we’re glamorous.’ They can see the funny side and they feel flattered.” But if they were flattered, I would have thought they wouldn’t have realised the satirical subtext of the book. “The thing is, when these girls in real life say this, they know that they’re dumb, they know it’s all a performance, so they’re all in on the joke that they’re a joke in Bergdorf Blondes.
“They’re meant to be the conflicted modern girl: glamorous, silly, intelligent, smart, shoe-obsessed, and I’ve always had this thing in my life where people think because I’m glamorous I couldn’t possibly be intelligent, particularly in New York. The city is full of really glamorous, really intelligent women who will play up to their silly side because they know it’s funny and they’re living for the performance. The Julie Bergdorf character is very true to an heiress who’s performing, hamming it up. So it’s meant to be quite real.”
There are, however, some appallingly obtuse, self-unaware characters, like Moi’s friend Jolene. “Oh Jolene’s just really dumb. Julie and Moi are the smart funny ones but the rest of them – the Greek chorus – are completely stupid. You can’t have a comedy full of smart people, it doesn’t work.”
Sykes may be far away from the air-headed characters she writes about, but Moi’s circumstances bear suspicious likeness to Sykes’: they are both writers at top fashion magazines, both had unsuccessful engagements to photographers, and the quick intelligence of bothis often overlooked. The English press are Sykes’ bete noire for this reason and others: “They can’t understand how a serious person could write a silly book.”
Sykes’ most public, bruising runin with the press came in The Daily Telegraph under the headline ‘Bergdorf Bitch’. She shows no signs of this viciousness at our lunch, so where did it come from?
“Well I was a bit stupid. [The interviewer] showed up and started asking me all these confusing questions and in the end I said, ‘Have you actually read the book?’ Eventually she admitted she hadn’t. So I very stupidly said, ‘You’re unprofessional,’ and I’m afraid it went downhill from there. But I learnt my lesson, which is, unfortunately, that with the English press you have to lie.” However the conversation we have and the opinions Sykes proffers mean I am willing to believe that she is making an exception in my case. Perhaps this is part of her magic.
Later, we talk about how Sykes started in the media. Coming from Oxford, she was lucky to be taken on at British Vogue as an intern, which translated into a full-time job. “I was virtually sweeping the floor of the fashion closet at Vogue.”
In 1995 Sykes quit British Vogue for its American sister, where she rose to assistant editor. However, she stepped down in 2002 to become contributing editor, which requires her to submit occasional pieces. This transatlantic move was not popular, as the sisters are also rivals: “I got stolen. You can’t really move between the two without actually quitting one and moving to the other. They’re very competitive – they [British Vogue] absolutely hated me for moving, but I wasn’t going to say no.”
Sykes succeeded in her career despite not being involved heavily in student journalism. She is keen to show that there is no guarantee of meteoric success after being involved at university level. “It’s the weird thing about student journalism that all the people who were very interested in it when I was at university since became editors at newspapers – not top editors but they’re moving up – or they became writers, but none of them became really, really famous. None of them have made a massive splash like, ‘Oh, I remember them.’”
Sykes acknowledges she has been fortunate. “When I was at Oxford I just thought I wasn’t clever enough. The main thing is thinking you can do it.” However, she emphasises that there is no golden road to a career in the media straight after university. “I hope you realise that life when you come out is awfully disappointing. Let’s say you’re interviewing David Starkey now, but if you wanted to work for a newspaper, you’d be cleaning up their coffee mugs. After you leave Oxford, nothing will ever be that good.”ARCHIVE: 0th week TT 2005

Ben Coffer gorges on pies
THE BE-MULLETED eighties pop duo Tears For Fears were wrong about so much, yet in one respect they were right on the button: this is, as they sang on the soundtrack to Donnie Darko, a mad world. And in such a mad world, there are few things which have any enduring significance. Popes die, promises made to Chancellors of the Exchequer are forgotten; even the royals we assumed would live in sin forever eventually do the right thing and tie the knot.
Nonetheless, there remains a single area of modern life that is, like one of those towns on the retreating cliffs of Whitby, firmly immured against the salty tides of change: the Great English Pork Pie. Anything the world throws at it simply slides off its greasy pastry outer shell, disdained. The pie is a monument to empire. The pie is forever. The pie will be here after Armageddon to feed the cockroaches.
The reason for this is simply that the pork pie is the perfect food, in no need of change. Its pastry crust speaks to a diner of infinite potential, obscuring what’s within and defying conventional conceptions of identity. “Don’t ever f**king judge me,” it proclaims, like those modern-day philosophers and renowned lovers of the pork pie, Slipknot. For who can say what lies beneath a crusty mask? While the ’Knot remain forever obscured by theirs, however, the ever-rewarding savoury simply teases until all is revealed with the first bite. Further mouthfuls continue to surprise, offering the full range of textural experiences: an average pie (if such a thing exists) provides the obvious moist chewiness, along with moments of unexpected and inexplicable crunch, and even the more unconventional quivering of the jelly.
Such icons inevitably have detractors. There are those, for instance, who frown and tell me that the Pork Pie is too unhealthy to survive in a world where even McDonald’s sells salads. But so what if British meat is accepted worldwide as a breeding ground of BSE, Foot and Mouth, and myriad other plagues? No sane Englishman seriously expects a pork pie to contain real meat. It’s a scientific fact that a pie is 73% safer than a British steak. Pies: one; modern world: nil.
“But that’s not the only reason they’re unhealthy,” retorts that insistent voice of modernity. “Pies are incredibly fattening.” Yes they are. And it’s an acknowledged truth that the majority of girls prefer larger men. Pies two; modern world: nil.
Still, though, our whining contemporary society persists in its attempts to prove the invulnerable Pork Pie defunct, practically screaming, “Pies don’t actually taste very nice.” No, indeed they don’t. But to dwell on such points is really to misunderstand the ethos of the pork pie. This is a pastry that doesn’t care what people think. It doesn’t need your affirmation. It couldn’t give a toss whether or not you like how it tastes. Rather, it challenges you to eat it in spite of its blandness. This isn’t some nouveau riche foodstuff that wants to be loved. The great English Pork Pie is the aristocrat of the culinary world, and I but its humble serf.ARCHIVE: 0th week TT 2005

Bipolar disorder
MANIC DEPRESSION, or bipolar disorder, is essentially a brain disfunction causing unusual shifts in a person’s mood and energy. These shifts are manifested in dramatic mood swings — from overly “high” or irritable to sad and hopeless, often with periods of normal mood in between. The periods of highs and lows are referred to as episodes of mania and depression.
Bipolar disorder tends to occur in the late teens and early twenties, with most sufferers having their first episode before the age of 30. About one in every hundred adults will suffer from manic depression at some point in their life.
Since Edgar Allen Poe wrote that genius and insanity were linked, many theorists have perceived a connection between bipolar disorder and creativity. Virginia Woolf, William Blake and Van Gogh are all believed to have suffered from bipolar disorder.
Each episode of mania or depression generally lasts several months. Anyone who has a manic episode is diagnosed as having bipolar disorder, although some people never suffer from symptoms of depression. Symptoms of mania, or a manic episode, include increased energy and rapid speech, reflecting thoughts that occur in quick succession. Elevation of mood is also often apparent, either appearing as cheerfulness or undue optimism, or in other cases as irritability. Socially inappropriate behaviour is another sign of a manic episode. Sufferers may demonstrate promiscuity or go on unrestrained spending sprees. In addition, a sufferer could have ideas of elevated status, for example, thinking he or she is a religious prophet. Insight is impaired, so that the patient may have no recognition of the fact that they are acting out of the ordinary.
When a sufferer is not in a manic phase they may suffer from depression, resulting in tiredness, ideas of guilt and low self-esteem, coupled even with suicidal thoughts. There can also be biological symptoms of reduced appetite and weight, early morning waking and reduced libido.
So what causes bipolar disorder? Scientists now agree that many factors act together to bring on the illness. Stressful events can be blamed, as can genetics and our childhood experiences. It is true that if someone in your family suffered with bipolar disorder then you are more likely to suffer with it than the general population, although the exact mode of inheritance is yet to be discovered. Other factors are also important, including personality type, significant life events and some kinds of physical illness.
Medications known as Mood Stabilisers are usually prescribed to help control bipolar disorder. However, as an addition to medication, psychosocial treatments are believed to have a positive effect, increasing mood stability. These include cognitive behavioral therapy, psychoeducation and family therapy. Who knows what Edgar Allen Poe would have thought?ARCHIVE: 0th week TT 2005

Miranda Kaufmann discovers that there is more to Morris Dancing in Oxford than just old bearded gentlemen with bells on
Instantly recognisable by their white outfits and strange accoutrements, all Morris dancing groups have their own identifying quirks.
“The Ancient Men” is a fairly appropriate moniker for the Oxford University Morris Men, reflecting the average age of participants. Some dancers are female, easily spotted by their lack of beards. Purple waistcoats and breeches are exclusive to the Maids of the Ducklington Morris.
In the unlikely event you spy a group of beardless Morris men, they may be the 18-30 group on a dancing weekend. If accompanied by a hobby-horse, they may be linked to Banbury (of nursery rhyme fame). You may also see props such as lobsters or sheeps’ skulls on sticks. No group is complete without a Fool. The leaders of the Morris dancers have suitably antique names, such as Squire and Bagman.
The Morris is an ancient tradition, possibly of “Moorish” origin. Dancers used to perform in black makeup. While we might find this politically incorrect, our Puritan forebears were more worried by the sacrilegeous implications: “They strike up the Devil’s dance withall: then martch this heathen company towards the church and churchyards, their pypers pyping, the drummers thundering, their stumpes dancing, their belles jyngling, their handkercheefes fluttering about their heads like madde men.” (Philip Stubbes ‘Anatomie of Abuses’ 1583) This was the sort of dancing that Cromwell did away with.
Morris dancing was revived in the early 20th Century by the Tabs. Yes, it was our cousins in the Fens who are responsible for all this mirth. Joseph Needham, Squire of the Cambridge Morris, initiated the formation of the Morris Ring, the national federation of Morris dancers, in 1934. The commitment of these early enthusiasts is unquestionable. Walter Abson fell asleep in an initial meeting and awoke to find himself appointed Bagman. The onerous bag-dragging duties were presumably unlikely to be accepted while conscious.
On the weekend of 21-22 May, you could go along to Kidlington Lamb Ale, a revival of an age-old village festival. Here, in 1679, the custom was: “On Monday after Whitsun week there is a fat live lamb provided, and the maids of the town, having their thumbs tied behind them, run after it attended with music and a Morisco dance of men, where the rest of the day is spent in dancing, mirth and merry glee.” The glee was no doubt enhanced by copious consumption of Real Ale, still the Morris dancers’ favourite tipple. This year’s event will conclude with a barn dance.
If this sounds rather too lively, Morris dancers can be observed communing with nature at the annual Ducklington Fritillary. Here, the dancers adorn their sleeves with purple and yellow ribbons, the colours of a rare local flower, the snake’s head fritillary. If you can’t make it to Ducklington, the flower can also be found in the grounds of Madgalen College.
If, inspired by these traditions, you are keen to try Morris dancing for yourself, you could join one of twenty different groups found in Oxford and its environs. The Oxford University Morris Men practise weekly, as do the Rogue Morris, a women’s group.ARCHIVE: 0th week TT 2005

While desperately resisting the advances of blonde-loving South Americans, Louise Randall faces ?re and earthquake, as well as local culinary delicacies, in the village of Chol-Chol
It’s okay, thin women can be sensual too”. These were the somewhat unexpected words of comfort given to us by our headmaster as he told us of the dangers of Chilean men and wished us farewell. We then set off on our travels around South America during our summer holiday from the school in Chol-Chol where we were working as teachers.
By spending the last four months living and teaching in a tiny Mapuche Indian village in Southern Chile we honestly thought we had learnt all there was to be learnt about the average Latino man. Admittedly, it was our own fault that we looked ridiculous when we squirmed backwards out of our boss’ office after he had murmured “kiss me, kiss me” with characteristic charm, which we only realised later was a mispronounced attempt at “excuse me, excuse me”. But our cautious approach to Chilean men was not completely unfounded. Chile is the only country in the world where, after exchanging pleasantries with a local, I have been kissed on the cheek with tongues. It was most off-putting and certainly put a French twist into the average South American greeting. Fortunately, such acts of friendliness were exceptional and most of the time we were merely mildly bemused by the attention given to two blonde, pale skinned gringas. Never before have I had a 30ft articulated logging truck stop on an empty dirt track road in order to let me cross (serenaded by the toothy grins of the five men within), and when now I walk along Cornmarket, there’s still a part of me that misses the applause and cries of “I love you, baby”.
Hollywood has a lot to answer for in the colourful expression of Latino ‘machismo’ and we were occasionally offended until we realised that to call someone a “motherf**ker” has been misinterpreted by Chilean youths as an American flirtation technique, guaranteed to win the heart of any passing blonde. Nor is Hollywood blameless for the foreign perception of Western women as promiscuous, although when confusing the Chilean words for boyfriend and chicken and making the unfortunate announcement that “I have six boyfriends in England; I keep them in the garden”, I myself was also a poor ambassador for Western females.
However, nothing had quite prepared us for Victor. Travelling north along the 4300km coastline of Chile we spent three days winding our way through the fjords of Patagonia on a cargo boat, which unfortunately for us came complete with a red-blooded navigator who obviously hadn’t dropped his anchor for a while.
Kate and I felt ourselves to be equal to the challenge of evading Victor on the small boat. After all, as a teacher I was used to dictatorially controlling the classes of 50 seven year olds, even getting used to the fact that the younger classes were often still learning Spanish, and spoke indigenous Mapudungun as their first language. The only things that phased me were the pigs that continually ran through the classroom.
So, during the first few days of the boat trip we did well trying to escape the pursuit of the hapless Victor. We passed through channels edged by emerald mountains and snowcapped volcanoes; the starry night skies were unsurpassable. We slept on the floor, cooked on deck and spent the days watching dolphins jump and seeing sheep slaughtered.
We were eventually lured up to the bridge by the offer of steering our very own cargo boat, and just as we were distracted trying to avoid small islands, Victor whisked out the handcuffs and cuffed himself to Kate, much to her dismay. He was obviously convinced that this masculine demonstration of dominance was the way to the heart of this elusive blue-eyed waif, yet when the waif started playing dead-weight in protest, navigation became hazardous, and he reluctantly released her. It was us, not the sailors, who needed a glass of Chilean vino when we reached port.
It was with dismay, docking at the island of Chiloe, that we discovered the tipple tipico to be none other than licor de oro – fermented cows milk. With a spirit of enterprise that any student would be proud of, the locals made spirits out of absolutely anything, including seafood, yet it struck us that while knowledge is knowing how to make alcohol out of shrimps, perhaps wisdom is choosing not to. Thus, while undoubtedly tempted by the thought of a ‘Mussel Martini’, on this particular occasion we demurred.
As we travelled thousands of kilometres further north over the Chilean border we found the Latino men to be the same, the Spanish less riddled with slang, the cuisine equally inventive. And the two gringas? A little braver, so not only did we begin to think that spending 40p on a three course meal in a Bolivian greasy spoon was a wise idea, we also tucked into the Peruvian delicacy of roasted guinea pig, complete with paws and internal organs, with (relative) relish.
At length our holiday was over and we returned to our home town of Chol-Chol. We were greeted from the bus by three lone geese tied up in a sack bag by the roadside. They had holes in place of their heads, their bus-fare next to them, and were waiting for a ride into the local city of Temuco, where presumably a cooking pot awaited them. Transport is certainly a creative concept in Chile. We ourselves had learnt while travelling that hitchhiking on a tractor never was, and never will be, a good idea. It was impossible however to get bored of seeing whole families waiting by the roadside hoping to hitch a lift on a passing oxen-cart, normally already full with fresh fruit, vegetables and flowers being taken to market by colourful Mapuche women in full traditional dress.
Indigenous culture flavours every aspect of life in Chol-Chol, the heartland of the Mapuches, the indigenous people of Southern Chile. We saw much of the countryside as at the end of each week our rickety school minibus would run its journey deep into the heart of the Mapuche countryside, over dirt track roads, past traditional grass Ruka huts, far beyond the reach of electricity or running water, to drop the 160 boarders at their homes.
Upon our return to Chol-Chol though we found that teaching offered more challenges than the usual unruly swine. On 2 April, a devastating fire started at the ‘Escuela Anglicana William Wilson’, consuming the hundred year old wooden building, and destroying the entire boys’ boarding house on the first floor: the voluntary fire service was only fifteen metres across the road, yet that day they had run out of water. Everything was lost, yet thankfully all the children were safely evacuated, many into Kate’s care. Never has ‘Heads Shoulders Knees and Toes’ been sung with such urgency as to distract children whose school is burning down behind them.
Bizarrely, we were soon relieved at the school’s dramatic destruction. In mid-May Chol-Chol was woken by a factor six earthquake, whose epicentre was only 40km from the village.
The school had been one of the few two storey buildings in the village, and the hundred year old wooden frame shook when vehicles passed along the road below. It soon became apparent that, if the building were not destroyed by fire, it would surely have collapsed in the earthquake, with unthinkable consequences for the boys who lived there.
However, through the tumultuous events of the months you could always count on the Chilean male. It is a comforting fact, whether you like their style or not, that in the face of earthquake of fire, they never lose that sense of machismo.ARCHIVE: 0th week TT 2005

Driving on the left
IN VIOLENT feudal societies travelling on the left was a far better idea for the simple fact that riders on horseback carried swords on their left-hand side. For polite travellers this meant that by passing on the right their sword would not interfere with oncoming traffic. For early road ragers it meant that they could quickly take up their sword with their right hand, enabling them to strike out at would-be overtakers, regulate people pulling out in front of them, or merrily slash away at anyone coming in the opposite direction.
The switch to driving on the right seems to have been largely the fault of the French and the Americans, who began hauling luggage around using carts with horses in the 1700s. As your right-handed traveller needed to lash the beasts repeatedly to get to work on time it was necessary to sit on the left horse so that both were easily accessible with the whip. It then made more sense for the driver to locate himself nearer the middle of the road and so carts began to pass each other on the left.
With uncanny resemblance to his own political career, Napoleon ensured that the drift from left to right continued apace. Not only did he decree that everybody in France should travel on the right, he then proceeded to conquer most of Europe to encourage his continental neighbours to follow suit. Over a hundred years later, Hitler attempted to fill in the gaps that Napoleon had missed. When Hitler annexed Austria in 1938, he introduced driving on the right overnight. He seemed indifferent, or perhaps unaware, that most of the road signs were inevitably facing the wrong direction, and equally unconcerned that Austria’s trams continued to drive on the left for several weeks because they could not immediately be transferred.
It was the force of global industry that cemented the worldwide tendency for driving on the right. Henry Ford’s Model-T motor vehicle was the first in a long production line of cars designed with the steering wheel on the left. Exported all over the world, these vehicles made driving on the right the most sensible option for the 20th century nation.
Unless of course you were Britain, or a British colony. In a characteristic effort to stave off the rest of the world and global homogenisation, Britain boldly maintained its tradition of driving on the left. Napoleon had failed to conquer her. The growth of American industry would not influence her. Even the extreme ‘rightist’ policies of Hitler were defeated. During the invasion of Normandy in 1944, British military vehicles still drove on the left for a time causing numerous collisions with their American allies who were driving on the right. And so by the time Britain thought about switching over in the 1960s driving on the right was thoroughly un-British. Driving on the left appears to be here to stay.ARCHIVE: 0th week TT 2005

FINE ARTS student Roberta “Bobby” Coral first saw the symbol on the wall of a Rad Cam toilet. It was alongside the tracks of a downward juddering bandwagon of homage to Pete Doherty. Drawn in aggressive pencil, it was a gaunt black triangle, its sides two-thirds up punctured with what could have been angel wings, or horns on a Viking helmet. Above it in jagged letters: HEADLESS. All the more striking was the dirty pearl of blank wall around it, six inches wide. It seemed the symbol was universally understood, among those who autographed toilets, to be sacrosanct.
Bobby was eminently well-adjusted. If anything, that was her problem. It meant, as she knew, that she was rather supermarketbrand. Packaging like that of the market leader, only flimsier and in fewer colours. Hints of artificial sweeteners in that smile. But she did the job, with her shortcomings written plainly on the tin, and was not out to please an elite. So no ladders in her tights to lead you to snakes: the under-loved, the overindulged, the midnight quivers of a soul that needs always to be its own daydream. She was artless, no more, but no less. Not that she was wholly immune to itches for something more. She’d give herself an edge of walked through fire by charring her eyes with liner and mascara. Or stand in the Boots queue until it had tapered to only three deep, daring herself to go all the way with this blacking kit for her tresses currently reminiscent of weak tea.
But that day, in the Rad Cam cubicle, she felt no such itch. So she refused to spook out, even if it was so weird that no one dared write near it (What if she did, right now? What would happen?). She restrained the same impulse on seeing the symbol again the following week, this time in chalk on Longwall Street, a little way down from the long-running “FREEDOM: NOT YET OUT ON DVD”.
By her third encounter with it, her unease refused for a moment to get back in its kennel and howled clumsily through her veins instead. At The Sackler Library, a librarian whose stare at rest could disinfect a public toilet had told Bobby that ‘Aztec Premonitions of Modern Art’ was “naturally” on the shelf. Bobby searched for twenty minutes in vain. Then, at that point where it should have been according to its shelfmark, she noticed a tiny jaundiced tongue protruding from between two books. She prised them apart and pulled out a crumbling flake of card. There, drawn in ink that had purpled in antiquity like a bruise, was the Headless symbol. Paling, she took it downstairs to the librarian. “Book wasn’t there,” she told her. “But this was.” The librarian arranged her face into what she hoped was the highest madness antidote known to man. “So it was.”
None of which prepared Bobby for the fourth time. Late for her tute with Dr Pynchette, she puffed up a blaze of rickety momentum across Pembroke, at last knocking on his door and flurrying in without waiting for his customary “Entertain me”. The curtains were drawn, drowsing the incoming sun so that it curled up at the feet of his bookshelves like an old cat lapping plaintively at dust. Amid this light someone was standing – but it wasn’t Dr Pynchette.
Beside his desk, a woman upheld five feet, two inches of what they might tout as ‘Laura Ashley does Sexual Awakening’. She had her fingertips up on its oak, as though to takes its pulse. At Bobby’s entrance, she tightened with all the special force of a small woman and hissed: “Yes?” Bobby: “Dr Pynchette?” “He’s on leave. His students should have been told. Perhaps there hasn’t been time.” On leave? So abruptly? Bobby frowned: “Is it to do with the book he’s writing? Marginalia?”
The woman edged around the desk and folded into its chair. She murmured, “I’m not sure what it’s to do with. As you can see, his phone was off the hook. I’m his sister.” It took a while for Bobby to process each of these sentences, like digits punched rapidly into a telephone. She moved forward into the smell of fried eggs that always hung over his desk like a builder’s daydream. The phone was still off the hook – his sister had touched nothing, as though this were his last fragile sandcastle.
Bobby said, “He’s AWOL?” His sister flinched. “I,” she muttered darkly, “have three children, flowerbeds the dog waters and a suburban Jacuzzi of fellowship it sadly doesn’t. You know when I really wake up each morning? Raising the garage door. Shrieks like Bambi’s hit the blender and spits rust at me. That will always be so because I will never get round to fixing it. Yes, I have my frustrations too. Ray’s the only one who feels he can just disappear and come back if life rubs him the right way.”
“He’s done this before?” His sister shrugged. “I was six the first time. We were in a Bristol supermarket: Ray, me, our mother. I leant closer to a fridge, my breath clouding the glass and his reflection. When it faded, he was gone. He’d followed the sound of a city seagull down the aisle and out the door. He called us later from a record shop to play some jazz down the line…”
Bobby wasn’t listening. She was standing tremulously, having just had the breath whipped out from under her like a tablecloth in a show of tricks at a village fete. On a pad next to the phone, under the logo of the coffee-shop whose waitress he’d bullied it from and a feverish scrawl of ‘LOITERER’, was the Headless symbol.ARCHIVE: 0th week TT 2005

Papal elections can take weeks and picking a successor to John Paul II was surely no mean feat. But despite the rapid elevation of Josef Cardinal Ratzinger to the Papacy took me, and many of my Catholic friends, by surprise. I have (rather depressingly) never seen my boyfriend so happy, and I can guess from one of my good friend’s proud ownership of a Cardinal Ratzinger fan club mug (“putting the smackdown on heresy since 1981”) that he’s pretty chuffed.
My non-Catholic friends were generally less thrilled with the decision of the College of Cardinals to make the Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith the next Pope, although I do not suppose any of them were planning an instant conversion should their candidate of choice have come out top. “The world’s gone mad” one of them plaintively whimpered at me. Perhaps to him it has, but then he is an Anglican because he cherishes his right to “believe strongly in not very much at all”. So I don’t think he was going to be particularly overjoyed with whatever selection the Cardinals made.
For days now I have been listening to various commentators extolling the virtues of various African and South American Cardinals and I think they have somewhat missed the point. If anyone imagined that a Pope from the developing world would suddenly decide to alter centuries of church teaching (on abortion, contraception and the ordination of women) they were bound to be disappointed. The Church in Africa is more strict on Catholic doctrine than in the materialist West, and its representatives would argue that the answer to human suffering on earthis not to forsake moral truth because it seems expedient to do so and difficult not to.
Besides, there is a limit to what any Pope could feasibly do. Not only are all Popes bound to the teaching of their predecessor, they are also bound to unalterable Church doctrine. That does not mean that there can be no debate or developments of any kind. Indeed, Cardinal Ratzinger was one of the key supporters of the Second Vatican Council, which shaped the Church into the institution that young Catholics have grown up with. The Church is not without problems: falling vocations to religious life in the West and worrying instances of abuse must and, doubtless will be, tackled firmly. No Supreme Pontiff fears a challenge but the job is unpredictable. He will have to address these issues but we should not attempt to anticipate the methods of Benedict XVI too hastily.
On Monday before the Cardinals began their conclave Ratzinger gave a homily warning against the dangers of a “dictatorship of relativism”. If the Church failed to uphold the belief in moral absolutes then it would cease to be the one true Catholic Church in which all Catholics declare their belief. This Pope knows as well as the last one the potential dangers of secular culture and extreme political ideology. As John Paul II was struggling under communist oppression in Poland, Benedict XVI was shocked to see it sweeping in its intellectual form through German universities, having already lived through the horror of Nazi rule. As a man aware of the nature of modern society, he will fight for the purity of truth, even though it may not always be a popular move.
As Benedict VXI promises in his first sermon as Pope to work to unite all Catholics, a BBC commentator is telling me that he has, in the past, referred to other religions as “deficient”. Well, I don’t have to struggle very hard to contain my surprise on that count. In calling myself a Catholic, I assert the belief that it is the one true faith, as with followers of most religions. It might sound arrogant to those of a secular persuasion but it is not unusual. That does not mean that I and other Catholics don’t like people of other faiths, or that I don’t respect their right to hold their beliefs, I just don’t share them. Despite holding such views Benedict XVI has been encouraging dialogue with other religions and will doubtless continue to do so.
There is reason to believe that the new Pope is not entirely as he has been portrayed. A theologian to John Paul II’s philosopher, his job as a latter day chief inquisitor didn’t give the public much opportunity to catch a glimpse of his warm and fluffy side. Stamping out heresy within the Church isn’t always a popularity-winning exercise.
However, it might be worth considering the name he has chosen for himself. To those who were expecting ‘John Paul III’ and more of the same, the choice of Benedict is an interesting shift. Perhaps Cardinal Ratzinger was considering the heroic efforts of the last Pope Benedict who struggled in vain to discourage the outbreak of war in 1914. Or perhaps he was moved by the legacy of St Benedict, founder of Western monasticism in the sixth century, a holy man dedicated to peace. We might all be in for a surprise. Those expecting a war on heresy could instead be confronted with a call for peace through unity in truth.
ARCHIVE: 0th week TT 2005