This week visual arts in Oxford was nowhere near boiling-point. The new exhibitions in the Ashmolean such as Spectacular Impressions and An Englishman’s Travels in Egypt, despite their promising titles, were more lukewarm than usual. The former, showcasing prints from the 15th to 17th centuries by artists such as Mantegna, Durer, Rembrandt and Van Dyck, was definitely enlightening. Every one of the images on display has been recognised internationally as to be of the highest quality, and each could probably inspire an exhibition in itself. However, to the untrained and uninformed eye, they were impressive more in terms of technical skill than emotive power. Similarly, the Englishman’s Travels in Europe though interesting in its revival of the story of Edward Lane, a renowned Arabic scholar and fine draughtsman, invited only a passing glance.
In the same way, Ornamentation: drawings for the decorative arts, running in the Christ Church Gallery from 30 April to 30 July, seemed to me to be pleasant but entirely insipid, drawing on the College’s existing collection of graphic art and featuring particularly prominently the designs of Giulio Romano. Apart from a slight physical resemblance to Punch cartoons, the collection was unremarkable, offering plenty of faint drawings of ornamental vases, curlicues and seals.
In comparison to these, the permanent collection of paintings in Christ Church seems much more impressive. Needless to say, the 300 odd Old Master paintings and almost 2 000 drawings are definitely overwhelming in their grandeur and scope. I particularly enjoyed the detailed work in paintings such as The Devil, where a certain Abba Moses the Indian (i.e from Ethiopia) is painted a lurid shade of green, with sagging breasts, a beard, tails, winds and bird feet in one of the Nine Scenes from the Lives of the Hermits (Tuscan Schoolc.1440- 1450). Other gems include the Fragment from a Lamentation by Hugo van der Goes (the tears on the Virgin’s face glisten with tangible emotion), and Filippino Lippi’s The Wounded Centaur, which beautifully depicts the dangers of playing with love.
These, of course, are just a few examples of the wealth of delights provided by this small gallery, mentioned in every tourist guide, but under-utilised by the members of the University to whom, after all, admission is free (on presentation of a Bod card). In fact, I would recommend any bored visual arts buff to go spend an afternoon at Christ Church. More often than not, the permanent collection of the  college shows more dynamism and promise than newer arrivals to the city.
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It came as some surprise to Evelyn to learn this week that a stalwart of good manners and solid behaviour, Union Treasurer Huw ‘Hugsy’ Lloyd (Hertford) was embroiled in an unusual affair at the weekend. He went off on his annual jaunt to Badminton and ended up at Mark Tomlinson’s party. All seemed to be going swimmingly well, until a dispute arose concerning the previous afternoon’s affairs. A fight with Sam Brodie (Trinity) ended up with them quite literally swimming. After much madness in the pool they wandered around clad only in their boxer shorts looking for others to dunk. The unintoxicated few had made themselves scarce, and so Hugsy decided to push a car in, unfortunately he chose the wrong car: Prince Harry’s heavies removed Hugsy and drove him home. Motoring mishaps do not end there. Evelyn would like to suggest that Ed Tomlinson (Caligula) is never again put behind the wheel. One can forgive Eddie T for speeding the OUCA minibus on the way to Ascot and being caught by police cameras. After all, the vehicle was full of loons including the mad vicar. But it was a most unbecoming pratfall for Tomlinson to crash the Union minibus while delivery the slight Termcard. To make matters worse, the poor chap was interrupted when pleasuring one of the seccies in the Secretary’s office at the end of President’s Drinks. Send guesses to the usual address. Commiserations to VP-Barry, who surprisingly lost the local council seat in Epsom he was running for, despite the campaigning ‘help’ from minions Lomax and Bennett. Evelyn was most amused to hear that one publican canvassed by Bennett said that he was voting for Sullivan “because he looks more likely to get rid of the blacks”.
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I’m on the town every night. If you see me, wave. I’ll be at the back, fast-forwarding through a cheap imported Mexican video showing people with moustaches buggering a donkey. I want to find out if the donkey gets to smoke a cigarette at the end.
I’m heading to Mike’s birthday party in Cowley. Mike’s a really great guy, a lovely, lovely guy, a good mate. I don’t like him, so all I’ve bought him for his birthday is a copy of National Lampoon’s Loaded Weapon 1 I got from the newsagent on the way up. Mike will like this, because he will think it is “ironic”. The thing that’s ironic is that despite Mike being a really great guy, a lovely, lovely guy and a good mate, I’m only coming to this godawful party to steal as much of his booze as I can get away with, and possibly his girlfriend.
The party is a disaster. There is nothing to drink but some really scary looking gin that comes in a bottle with a white label saying ‘GIN’ in enormous black letters and ‘Made in London’ in much smaller black letters. There are no mixers because Mike forgot to get any from Tescos before it closed, and no-one else cares because they just want to get absurdly caned and talk about their miserable wankoff non-careers in student drama. Mike’s friends are working on a new version of Waiting for Godot at the Balliol Pilch Theatre. In their production, all the actors will stand on one leg and speak with crap, slightly racist fake Irish bog accents. They wrongly believe that this makes them interesting.
I wander down the hallway and bump into Greg. Greg went to a minor public school on the southeast coast that got closed down a few years ago, after the villagers invaded and began worshipping the statue of the school’s most famous old boy (Rick Astley) as a god. It was like The Wicker Man, except with less wicker and more nylon.
I’d like to ignore Greg or pretend I don’t know who he is, but I can’t, because he’s naked and shouting something at me about Teddy Hall. I realise with some pleasure that he has a rather small and thin penis, and sell him a gram of crushed up Crunchy Nut Corn Flakes that I pretend is coke for £100.
There’s a call on my mobile. It’s Paul, a guy from college who likes to talk about the fact that he drinks Real Ale. He wants to meet up with me for a pint (of Real Ale) and a sad-bloke discussion about the break-up of his relationship. Normally I would avoid this, but Paul has an extraordinarily silly voice that suggests he comes from a weird regional hell-hole. If this “girlfriend” turns out to be his sister, I’m willing to listen. I say goodnight to Mike, but he’s too high to notice I’ve gone.
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In Martin Amis’ autobiography Experience, Dad Kingsley (for it is he) memorably describes Terminator 2 as a “flawless masterpiece.” With accolades like that from one of the last century’s great writers of inoffensive fiction and curmudgeonly poetry, this summer’s third and final part has a lot to live up to.
And Terminator isn’t the only big-name trilogy to shudder to a climax this year. Two more installments of The Matrix, the Wachowski Brother’s moron and geek-friendly primer on the Western metaphysical canon (with big beat and big guns), are expected in the Autumn, and the final part of the Lord Of The Rings is due in time for Christmas (and next year’s Best Picture Oscar).
But is Part Three all its cracked up to be? Schoolhouse Rock, a children’s program broadcast in the US in the 1970s told us “three is a magic number” – a meme later promulgated by De La Soul and BBC Three, and Jack White, lead singer of The White Stripes seems to agree.
In spite of having two members, Jack thinks of the band as a three-piece: vocals, drums and guitar. When asked about the possibility of adding a bass player in a recent interview he was bewildered. “That would break up the thing of vocals, guitar and drums. Somebody else would bring this fourth component. If you’re going to have four components, you might as well have twenty, y’know.” It seems the symmetry of the trilogy appeals to saviours of Rock and Roll and film directors alike.
But does a third installment or component necessarily guarantee success? In an attempt to answer this question – and work out whether Terminator 3 will be any good – I examined some of pop culture’s many Part Threes.
Naturally my first thought was to consider past track listings of the venerable “Now! That’s What I Call Music” compilations. After a telephone conversation with a bemused assistant at the British Library failed to establish who appeared on the early Now! records, I struck upon a copy of volume 3 in gramophone format on eBay.
Released in 1984, the compilation is mainly forgettable songs from best-forgotten artists: Nik Kershaw, Howard Jones, Alison Moyet, OMD, and many more. The odd song almost makes it £2 well spent (The Thompson Twins, The Style Council and Special AKA), but the mere presence of Phil Collins left me in a dumb rage.
Album three is often tricky for bands. For every OK Computer there’s a Be Here Now. If the first two albums were successful there can be opportunity to experiment, but also a pressure to continue a winning formula. And fatally, there can be a lack of ideas. “Your first couple of records are based on your twenty-odd years of experience. The third record is all the experience you’ve had in between record one and record two. But that experience is basically just touring,” explains David Byrne of Talking Heads in his recent book about the band.
It is received wisdom that the Godfather, Rocky and Police Academy series went rapidly downhill after their second installments, which must count against threes.
Even more worrying for the trilogy are the Star Wars films. The portentous original plan was to make three trilogies and so far we’ve been subjected to all three of the middle trilogy (1977 – 1983) and, more recently, two of the first. The middle trilogy is watchable enough rot, but the recent films are joyless, plotless screeds on macroeconomics and industrial relations. Quitting while ahead obviously never crossed George Lucas’ mind.
In the cinema at least, trilogies seem to provoke appalling directorial hubris that writers of fiction are more able to resist. Perhaps the prospect of a lucrative DVD box set offered by filming any old shit for part three is too much to resist.
The Lord of the Rings films turns this on its head; they are tightly scripted, zippy reinterpretations of a bloated, forensic epic. But audience reaction to the final installment could be similar to CS Lewis’s apocryphal response to a Tolkien reading in the Eagle and Child: “not more f**king elves!”
Monty Python’s comedy was often an echo of Tolkien’s strategy of bludgeoning his readers into caring about a fictional world through sheer length. In an attempt to justify their more interminable sketches, they were wont to insist that jokes were funny the first and third times you told them. I attempted to prove this by telling my brother a Tommy Cooper joke three times (I slept like a log last night. I woke up in a fireplace!), but he insisted it got less funny. Stick that, Cleese!
Outside music and cinema, there are plenty of triumvirates and trilogies to add to the cases for the prosecution and defence of Part Three. For example, Prince Harry, third in line to the throne, is great fun. He’s like Robbie Williams in that he deserves to be clumsily kneecapped, but life is made infinitely more enjoyable by reading about him in articles in the Daily Mail about the collapse of society brought on by the permissive 1960s. Meanwhile, Charles and William are just regular idiots. The royal three wins.
So, sometimes Part Three is a good omen, but usually it’s bad. By all means be first in line for Terminator 3, but don’t get your hopes up.
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It was a moonless night in early September in the Atlantic Rainforest of Brazil. I had spent the last two days on crowded but friendly overnight buses and earth road connections from the sprawling, rapidly post-modernising metropolis of São Paulo, the pulsing economic heart of South America, to the tiny, isolated village of Rosário da Limeira. It was like travelling from Canary Wharf to Senegal without leaving the same country. On one hand are the Microsoft towers, CCTV-guarded apartment blocks and marble and glass investment bank headquarters; on the other, butterflies, hummingbirds and ox-carts between lianas and hanging orchids, mud and timber buildings raised on stilts to avoid the seasonal flood waters.
The Iracambi Atlantic Rainforest Research and Conservation Centre, when I finally reached it, was in a dramatic mountain range known as the Serra da Mantiquera which divides the coast of Brazil from the plains of the interior. There were twenty-two researchers when I arrived, from many countries around the world: the US, Canada, Germany, France, UK, Singapore; each with a specific interest. There were biologists studying the patterns of the bats, zoologists recording species diversity, geographers mapping the area with GPS and a camera crew making a nature programme. We all quickly got to know each other and everybody joined in working on nature trails, the medicinal plant nursery and taking care of the Centre deep in the forest.
It was an incredible sensation to wake up at 6am to the dawn chorus, to look out to see butterflies and iridescent parakeets just outside the window in the misty early morning light, or to climb up the nearest peak to watch the hanging mist clear from the valleys below. The early European navigators arriving in South America, believed they had reached the Earthly Paradise. When Columbus saw the turbulent waters of the Orinoco he thought this must be one of the four great biblical rivers that descended from Eden and from this early association came the legends of El Dorado. Later Francisco de Orellana, the first European to descend the Amazon, described great cities with gleaming gold rooftops and large temples, however since the buildings were principally made of wood they decayed rapidly in the intense heat and humidity of the tropical forest environment. Many of the tribal groups were affected early on by European diseases and did not survive beyond the Seventeenth Century but their legacy is present in the easy-going Brazilian approach to life, the sense of humour, their appreciation of water, streams and waterfalls.
As September wore on, the electricity in the air intensified, the rainy season was approaching and the rumbling in the air caused horses to bolt nervously in the open plains below the mountains. The subsistence farmers became agitated, as the rains were apparently late this year and all of their lives depended on a good ripe harvest. Then the rains came. The release was total; until that point the day had been long and slow, the pressure in the air had left us all half asleep but now suddenly it exploded, washing down the mountains, flooding the valleys and reducing slopes to silty mud. There was a waterfall with a rounded rock pool, where we would go swimming after working in the villages and on the nature trails. Theodore Roosevelt saw something similar whilst travelling in Brazil in 1914. “The river, after throwing itself over the rock wall, rushes off in long curves at the bottom of a thickly wooded ravine, the white water churning among the black boulders. There is a perpetual rainbow at the foot of the falls. The masses of green water that are hurling themselves over the brink dissolve into shifting, foaming columns of snowy lace.” The French researchers told me the river water was so refreshing after a day in the tropical heat that it didn’t matter that there were Piranhas brushing softly against your leg, as long as you weren’t bleeding!
The Research Centre was perched right up at the head of a valley at 1500m altitude, surrounded by a state park filled with shrieking Howler Monkeys, chattering Green Parakeets and majestic Blue Macaws, Armadillos, Coatis (related to the Skunk) and prowling Jaguars. I heard the big cats in the forest at night and on one occasion, a small one had been shot outside the village. The men in the village all carried pistols, for defence against the jaguars, wild pigs (javalí) and above all each other. It seemed that the people in the village had over the past fifty years deliberately distanced themselves from the forest, regarding it as a place of danger, even though they were the ones carrying the guns. I was given the task of working with local Community Groups on Environmental Education so one of the first things we realised was the need to bring people back into the forest.
This is reputedly the area of highest biodiversity on the planet and the teeming insect and bird life testifies to the presence of all kinds of rare and endemic organisms. However, to the people who saw it every day the forest was seen as an unproductive, threatening space; they were recent settlers and wanted to clear the slopes for coffee production, which led only to rapid degradation and intense erosion of the bright red soils.
Ultimately there is only so much to be done by outsiders, it is the residents who can truly change the environment. They are increasingly taking on the role of guardians of their own natural heritage. Brazil is a country with such huge natural resources (70% of the energy needs are met by clean hydroelectric power) that it is important that the people protect their own resources. As awareness grows steadily it could stand as a fresh society, highly conscious and newly environmentally aware. This combined with the powerful music and the heavenly beaches means that the myths of paradise might prove to be true…
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Most of the really great pubs in Oxford are something of a hike from the centre of town, but The Grapes is a gem right on your front door. Situated next to the Wig and Pen, it provides a nice alternative to those of us who don’t want to spend an evening wishing we were dead. You would be hard pushed to find two pubs so close together that are so different. The Grapes is tiny, so if you arrive during the lunchtime luvvie rush or after the score of regulars, then you’ll be hard pushed to get a seat, though with its pleasant 60s soundtrack and a moderately priced booze, you’ll want to spend some time here. To appreciate its unique charm try to get there at three and stumble out at half-past six. The walls are decorated with posters from events at the nearby theatres, and Daniel O’Donnell and the Chippendales seem to have a stake. The barmaid is beautiful, but we fear she is betrothed to the genuinely funny barman (sample comment directed to the Boy Texas: “would you like a haircut with your pint?”). We can still dream. The wonderful thing about this pub is looking outside to see the centre of Oxford in full swing, while you are sat in a sliver of George Street where time seems to stand still. The only interruption is the front door swinging open to catch a split second of passing conversation. We paused to consider the bewildering late afternoon light as we slumped out into what we had thought was the middle of the night. “That barmaid’s well fit,” mused Pat. “I know,” agreed Texas. “I really, really know.”
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Entertaining one’s grandparents is always tricky. So much must be borne in mind: will the place serve sherry at Granny’s preferred lukewarm temperature? Can a Zimmer frame fit through the front door? Will someone drone off into a story about the war while ordering? What will we do about Grandad pissing himself every five minutes? It was thus with trepidation that I booked a table with two of my oldest surviving relatives. Eventually I settled for the hack-ridden, OUCA-favoured, ChCh and Oriel staple Ma Belle. I had only been once before: a delightfully long, boozy lunch with the lady of the hour in Michaelmas one Tuesday afternoon, and fancied a return. I was not disappointed. It’s a wonderfully clattery French bistro, with fine house plonk but rather dodgy baguettes. Everyone began with salad: a chicken liver pâté for me; a goat’s cheese and a smoked chicken for the fogies, all served with delicate vinaigrette and the predictable paprika garnish. Delicious but for the flavourless tomatoes in the salads. It being the Sabbath and all I chose pork, while the geriatrics both chose to dribble into Coquilles St. Jacques. They assured me this was delicious but I must say it looked rather dodgy: you simply can’t serve the delicate flesh of scallops in a cloying, textureless mashed potato. My pork was really excellent: slowly fried in butter and moistened by a herby béchamel, again served with a mash fluffed with cream, chives and an onion gravy. A superb marriage of flavours, if a little cluttered. Both courses went well with a crisp Muscadet. Best of all, Grandad didn’t piss himself till after coffee, and even then nobody seemed to mind.
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Peter Harness isn’t brooding. He doesn’t have furious, intense eyes and he smiles a lot. I mention this because the Harness I have in my mind is silent, solid and scary. This Peter Harness is wearing a stone-blue Oriel T-shirt. He swings his arms as he walks like an affable goon. His eyes, I notice, are green-hazel not, as I’d thought, impenetrable brown. His squirrel-eyebrows have a tendency to fibrillate. Nevertheless, he scares me shitless.
I tell him. He chuckles. “Really? I know that I terrify people a bit but I don’t know why. I don’t want to scare people at all because I’m actually quite nice. I’m sorry I terrify you.”
The day before, the curtains had just closed on the first run of Mongoose, Harness’s first professional play. It’s “tough, delicate and cunningingly structured” (Guardian). An Oriel DPhil student, he’s managed to develop something of an iconic status among Oxford thesps and comedians from the second-year up. President of the Oxford Revue in 2000, most recently he adapted Dorian Gray. Yet an internet trawl only reveals the following: he was brought up in an old people’s home, he died on 21 February 1825, and at one stage in his life was bequeathed one Negro.
Apparently only the first one is true.
Although he doesn’t like scaring people, Mongoose has its fair share of unsettling bits. “Which bits?” Well, the bit with a ruler. “Oh that’s fantastic! Ted goes, ‘Mongoose stuck a ruler in his mouth,’ and the audience titters. Then he says, ‘Sideways,’ and they laugh. Then he says, ‘I had to cut his mouth to get it out,’ and they all gasp. They did it every night. I found it lovely.” Suspiciously, he chuckles again.
“Most people come out wanting to hug Ted and love him. What you’ve in fact seen is a man who writes poison pen letters, pushes his father down the stairs, sticks a ruler in his mouth, and eventually murders him.” Nope, there’s definitely a talking mongoose. “Everybody kind of ends up believing in it, which they should. Otherwise you’re stuck in a room with a psychopath.” He looks pensive. I decide there is something impenetrable about his eyes. “I think there’s a talking mongoose, too.”
Mongoose is about Ted, a lonely farmer coming to terms with the death of his lifelong friend. A talking mongoose. Did he have to suppress any urge to play Ted? “No I would’ve done it very differently. I saw him as this hapless, fat, Northern farmer. Richard had a nice kind of lilting voice, which I hadn’t heard [when I was writing].”
It must be strange having one foot here in Oxford and another in a professional world. “I’ve kind of gone on. I feel I properly left three years ago. I graduated in ’97, did three years of my doctorate and then got commissioned to do Chocolate Billionaire. I’ve just come back to finish off. I know nobody in my college anymore and skulk about. Nobody’s got the slightest f**king idea who I am.”
Harness stared in the student film Onion Club about a stand-up tragedian. Maybe there’s something of onions and tragedy about Harness. Maybe also loneliness. Mongoose is, after all, a pitiful study of a desperately lonely man. The shy, “solitary geek” from Yorkshire remains grateful for what Oxford gave him and attributes his writing ambitions to wanting to be someone everybody knew off TV. Is television still his goal? “I used to believe in television. I always wanted to write for it, I hope I will, but I used to want to be a proper TV playwright. That’s completely evaporated now.”
So he doesn’t want to be iconic? “It’s like pursuing fame for its own sake. You’ve just got to do it and not give a f**k about your audience. Well… I think you’ve got to entertain people. But most people are morons; you can’t just write for them. So you’ve just got to write to please yourself.”
Maybe his FilmFour experience left him somewhat jaded? “It wasn’t nice writing Chocolate Billionaire. It was my first proper commission. But it was hard work. There were so many f**king layers of commissioners and programme heads justifying themselves coming up with crap off the top of their heads. They perpetually said, could I make it more like something else. Apparently what they wanted was a cross between Citizen’s Kane, The Secret of My Success, Willy Wonka, The Good Life, and League of Gentlemen. It’s been rewritten fairly comprehensively now. It’s nice to have the money and it’s nice that it’s getting made. And if it’s ‘Based on an Original Story by…’ that’s fine.”
Does he feel that writing is like work at all? “I work hard on things if I’m doing them. I tell myself I’m writing and then I settle down, like a dog making its blanket into a nest, for about two weeks. I think about it, read Murder Casebook, have baths, get depressed. Eventually, I start writing.”
Sounds a bit miserable. “I can see why Virginia Woolf had to go and drown herself every time she finished her latest novel. Your brain’s been working in a certain way and when it runs out of stuff to process it starts sucking in all this other stuff. When I’d finished writing something last year, I ended up watching every episode of Inspector Morse. I couldn’t sleep because of the dreams. It’s a very silly way to work.” But, um, he’s happy now, isn’t he? “I am. But I still panic about it. Everybody does. Everybody’s beset with panic all of the time. But if I was doing anything else I don’t think I’d be…”
There’s a pause. He’s looking far away, his chin on his knuckles, forefinger pressed into his right eyebrow. “But… I’ve done nothing except this since I was twenty-one. I’ve been very poor and battled with the terror that I’ve just pissed away the best years of my life on something that’s going to go completely down the toilet. If I did anything else I’d be wholeheartedly miserable.”
Is there a tingle that he’s hit something that he can talk of as a writing career? “I’ve been doing it for such a long time. There was a long period before I got anything done professionally. I’ve been starting for a long time. But having Mongoose on, having nice reviews, people hearing of me as a writer… Starting to earn enough to live on. Touch wood. I feel I’ve stepped up a gear for all sorts of reasons.”
He swings his hand around and nimbly plucks a buzzing blob out of the air. He grins. I think he’s happy. Before we call it a day I ask after the Negro. “He’s fine.” Does he keep him in a box? “No, I make him work. No point having one, otherwise."
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Eva, 26, sells the Big Issue on Broad Street and lives in a tent just outside Oxford.
“I come from the south of Spain and first came to England about three years ago as an Erasmus student. Last year my boyfriend and I had jobs but this year we’ve found that we couldn’t find proper work or pay the rent. All the jobs we’ve found pay a week in hand so how are we supposed to eat and live for that week? So that’s why I sell the Big Issue. I think it’s a really good thing to do because you’re supporting other people like us.
We came here to try and find jobs but we couldn’t so we’re just stuck. We’re trying to raise money to get back to Spain. But I like England. The countryside’s beautiful, but at the moment it’s a bit cold. It’s not for the weather it’s more for the people really! I like the English people but I find in Oxford that their really cold. I don’t know why. In Portsmouth it’s just different. The people are poorer down there, but they treat you really well. When people see me here they cross the road. Girls walk past and hold their bags tightly ‘cos they think I’m going to jump out and take them. It’s really stupid. There’s people that don’t even look at me… I don’t understand why.
I’m trained as a primary school teacher, but in Spain it’s really hard to find a job as a teacher. I’d heard England really needed a lot of teachers, but there’s no equivalent to my Spanish diploma. I’ve had interviews in a few cities last year but they never called me back. So I gave up – I need to eat really. Going to interviews all of the time when people don’t call you back and you have no food or drink…”
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