Friday, May 2, 2025
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Review: Home Fires

Helena Aeberli
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Review: Home Fires

The setting of Paper Moon’s one woman play is simple; a single chair and a stool, sparsely lit. As the play unfolded, I began to feel the stool was like a second chair itself, filled by the ghost of the show’s second, absent character, the speaker Marie’s mother.

‘Home Fires’ takes place in the wake of Marie’s father’s death, as she plays out a conversation with her estranged mother in her head, seeking understanding and a sense of resolution. The minimalistic staging belies the complexity of the play, which touches on a variety of issues including family and inheritance, houses and homes, the ties that bind us and the chasms that divide us. Writer and director Maya Little has created something at once intimate and engaging, with beautifully crafted language and a powerful use of silence. The monologue finds the balance between conversational and poetic, with Little’s use of imagery to invoke emotion particularly striking; struck by grief, Marie finds herself ‘walking around like a burnt shadow’, for example.

Actor Georgie Dettmer truly completes the piece, breathing life into Little’s words and excelling at the complex job of performing two characters — both Marie, and Marie’s mental construction of her absent mother. The two voices are clear and distinct, with Dettmer fluidly switching between them, particularly in the snappy back-and-forth dialogues where Marie envisions herself arguing against, or playing meaning-infused word games with, her mother. Dettmer provides a soft vulnerability infused with pent up frustration which is released in controlled bursts of tension as Marie attempts to come to terms with why her mother has made certain decisions in life, such as claiming the house which was her daughter’s inheritance. ‘Mother I am trying to come back to you’, she cries at one heart-wrenching moment of emotional release.

Every aspect of the show was defined by attention to detail. All of Dettmer’s movements were controlled and carefully blocked; from walking across the stage to crossing her legs and the little touches of her hands, each had a sense of purpose. Accompanied by judicious use of props — the chair and stool, a water glass, and folded list — this meant every little motion was imbued with meaning. This simple staging allowed Little’s words to shine, particularly when the writing slipped into more poetic language. At times the dialogue felt a little repetitive and heavy-handed, with the show suffering from a slight second act lag which could have done with some further streamlining, but I was so caught up in Marie’s narrative I barely noticed.

Paper Moon also provided an enlightening post show talk with Dettmer, Little, and producer Jade Yarrow, which was particularly revealing about the process of creating ‘Home Fires’. Working closely together, the writer and actor shaped the play from intimate conversations, scrapbooking, and creative exercises — their collaborative vision and visual thinking being reflected in the marketing of ‘Home Fires’ as well as the masterfully woven finally product. As the post show talk proved, this was a truly collaborative process and one in which every team member provided something valuable.

I must confess that when I purchased my ‘Home Fires’ ticket I was slightly concerned about watching yet another online play in these days of relative freedom, but the performance more than made up from missing out on the sunny weather or pub trip. Following the success of ‘Spoon River Anthology’ earlier this term, Paper Moon’s latest production has proved their talent once again. Indeed, after the play ended I found that I, like Marie herself, was left with the ghost of a voice in my ears. It’s a voice that will linger there for a long, long time.

Image Copyright: Freya Hutchins.

Sticky

Annabel Rogers
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Sticky

My year threes are planning a coup. 

This is a fair assumption to make, I think. Sitting in the window of the staff room, watching a lazy May wasp drift in circles above my head, I can see them plotting in the periphery. Congregating on the playground, clutching at each other with sticky little fingers. Hushed glances at me, though there’s no way they can see me in the glare of the sun, not when the staff room is dark and cool. Small mercies. At the head of the classroom I always feel so exposed. 

5 minutes left of break time. I’ve been asked why I chose to become a teacher, and it’s not a question I have an answer to. I like children, I’m good with children, I will never have children. It precludes favouritism, at least. The wasp lands on the rim of my mug, probing delicately at the gluey honey. I have a cold coming on; I was on that playground only thirty years ago and now I’m the dispenser of common wisdoms, the drinker of honey and lemon, the elder to be eyed balefully and plotted against. 

# 

In the classroom it soon becomes clear who the nexus of this little coup d’etat is. My teaching assistant is handing out rulers and sugar paper the colour of a summer storm (You may want to do something more involved, she said to me earlier; there’s a lot of restless energy in the classroom today, I don’t know what it’s about.) as I write 3D shapes on the board in wide, child-friendly script. There’s something brewing, that’s true. Hushed voices, little laughs that escape sucked-in cheeks like

blown raspberries, producing yet more giggles in response. At least they’re enjoying themselves, I say to my TA when she comes up beside me with a crumpled packet of Extra and a furious look and a chewed up glob of gum lodges in the back of my hair. 

I turn. 

Find it with my fingers. 

It’s sticky and hot. 

I feel like a teenage girl again. There are crayons all over the floor; they radiate outwards, not so much indicating as illuminating the culprit, the ringleader, the queen bee. Everyone around her is flush with quiet fear, alternately looking between themselves and at me. Sophie just tilts her soft chin. 

Was this you? Asked directly, though that’s not the way to do it, but that hot storm hanging in the air has found its way to my blood, tapped in through the back of my skull via a little piece of gum. No, she says, with a smirk that says, yes. 

A hush in the air. The TA, aside, maybe we should— 

Continue with the lesson, I tell her. Sophie—staff room. Now. 

# 

She has no explanation for it. None. She sits in utter silence, watching earlier’s wasp dip and dive in hexagons around her head, as I tap the tip of my biro and notice a jam stain on her pinafore. My throat itches. I have no honey and lemon left. 

I’m not going to waste the rest of the class’s time, I tell her. You can sit here and think about your actions, and at the end of the day your mum and I will have a chat, okay? She just sits there, blinking big, blue eyes at me. Tory blue. Her mum will arrive in the Merc, Hunter wellies swinging out onto the gravel, long legs in expensive jeans… 

I cut the gum out of my hair in the staff bathroom using leftie safety scissors, yellow and green, blunt so it’s more like a hack job. Then I take my phone out and call Caroline: Ten minutes ago your daughter stuck gum in my hair. 

Nice to hear from you too, she breezes. I wish it was a Wednesday. 

# 

Wednesdays— 

Wednesday afternoon is games, always, the children ushered out of my care and into rounders or football for the rest of the day. It’s time I ought to spend marking, planning, cutting out templates and making powerpoint presentations. I try it, sometimes, sheets in a pool around my thighs and laptop panting with effort, but I don’t like to do it in front of Caroline. She winds herself around me and comments, scrutinises, runs her fingers down the side of the keyboard. 

I am fucking a Mother. Capital M. Woman’s Most Natural Career. 

So, on Wednesdays, I leave school. I drive through country lanes. I unfold myself in an expensive bedroom. I have her number saved in my phone: she texts me things like Come for two, lunch is overrunning or Richard is home today. Sometimes she thinks I’m someone else and sends me Whatsapp chains, political jibes I earn too little to get. She doesn’t apologise, but I know they’re not for me. Just as I know never to add an X to my eager, pathetic response. 

I don’t recall how it started. One day we were studying each other over a Pritt Stick-sticky desk, I just wanted to check in, see how Sophie’s settling in with the class, it’s so hard when you move out of the city and I’d like her to have friends here, you see, I’d like her to be happy, and the next it’s dirty words and hot breath in my ear, something rare and disgusting about it, something that makes it hard to look in the mirror. 

She won’t do it again, Caroline says, firmly, that afternoon in the staff room. Will she? Sophie looks at her mother, quails, shakes her head. This isn’t what I wanted, she mumbles. Caroline is wearing a blazer, big shoulder pads, black. I was right about the wellies. What did you want? I ask, out of curiosity. She doesn’t answer. They leave. Tomorrow is Wednesday. 

# 

I am picking my clothes from the floor on a Friday evening (She’s out, Caroline breathing into my neck, she’s at a friend’s down the road, it’s fine, just fuck me—). I have nothing better to do. I have been absorbed—June is crawling at my skin—I’ve started putting Xs on my messages— I’ve started kissing her goodbye— 

Mummy, Sophie says, and Sophie is in the doorway, looking at us, looking at that fragment of kiss still lingering on our lips, fully clothed but painfully bare, now, now she knows— 

She’s six but she has a father, a man who kisses her mother goodnight each night, a man who commutes every day and goes to dinner every Friday without his wife, a man I am not. We learnt about love on Valentine’s Day. As much as we could. (Not that this is love.) 

Sophie runs. I follow. 

I find her in the garden, where it is beginning to rain, fresh green and lawn shavings everywhere. 

It didn’t work, she says, whines, like a child, which she is. It didn’t work. 

What didn’t work? I ask her, voice slipping into that careful, cushy teacher voice, wrapping around her like a padded cell, like honey. 

You, she stings. To get you to stop. Mummy— 

And then I know. 

We all know, don’t we, when it comes to it; what we’ve done wrong, what its consequences are. Children have such an acute understanding of the world, this I also know. I know that sticky little Sophie wants her mummy all to herself and she raised me a challenge, like tilting her chin up when I asked her to tidy away her crayons; she marshalled her forces, laid down a duel. It was a power play. More concerning— 

She knew I was in her way. She knew something of the tangled gossamer stretched between us, Caroline and I, the secret loathing only I could find between her thighs—and how? Did Sophie stumble upon us, laid out on the bed, the sofa, the kitchen counter? Widen eyes and turn away, lock it into a manifesto for the future revolutionary? This is no soap, though, I know that. I know beyond today’s kiss it was probably far more subtle: her mummy’s perfume on my shirt, her mummy’s lipstick blossoming rosewood on my neck, the way I looked at her mummy. The way I looked at Caroline—lovelorn, as though the middle haircut of a million middle aged women and the gilet and the Merc and the name, even, Christ, she voted so I wouldn’t get to retire before eighty—as though she was anything different than every mother I sit across from when their child pours PVA on another—as though I had a right to the privacy of the language we breathed on Wednesday afternoons, when everyone knows children understand everything— 

She already knew. I say this turned half to Caroline. There’s a hot plum hickey on her neck; I was rough today, perhaps because I knew it was our last. 

Don’t be ridiculous. 

She already knew. Why else would she act out? Stare sullen, silent at me? Chew up gum and land it in my hair, hair her mother’s fingers had tangled in? Hair too long, hair of a primary school teacher, hair that comes undone. I doubt she told her co-conspirators. She ushered them, merely, magnetic to them as her mother is to me. These people are good at that. 

Don’t tell your father, Caroline is begging. This is our secret, okay? Don’t tell him. Don’t. I won’t teach Sophie any longer, I know this. I won’t see Caroline again. The year is almost over, so perhaps I’ll be lucky. Perhaps I won’t need a new job entirely. Perhaps she’ll be merciful. But already I can see them receding. 

I cannot have children. My ugly wound of a body prohibits it. Caroline and Sophie repel me; they make me desperate. I should like to cling to them. Nothing lasts, but I should like to stick to them, dripping. 

I have been deposed. Something crawls up my throat, more bitter than honey.

Artwork: Rachel Jung

“Everywhere else, death is an end. Death comes, and they draw the curtains –”

Evie Sutcliffe
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“Everywhere else, death is an end. Death comes, and they draw the curtains –”

It is five in the morning. Exactly five in the morning.  

Dawn shatters upon a black sky as the man in white is led down the dirt road. Granada lies a  mountain away. Víznar and Alfacar are closer, but still lost in the night. There is no moon in  the sky and yet the five soldiers and three other prisoners are visible. They shine in the slow  and shaky promise of tomorrow. The man in white is in his pyjamas, barefoot for they took  

him sleeping from his bed in the town. Every stone cuts his feet but he carries on walking,  silently, because he fears what will happen once they stop.  

There is something peaceful about the night, a perfect night; the kind of dark, pinpricked sky  one would write poetry about. His notebook and pen are back in his room. He left his last  poem unfinished.  

He shouldn’t have been so liberal with his time when he knew it was only a matter of it – 

The Black Squads, servants to an unlawful rebellion on the right, invaded his town, his  country, like influenza. They choked the democratic will of the people, silenced their voices,  turned their loss into usurpation. They were not a minority, after all, it seems. They lost in the  polls, but then violence makes a man feel safe, and suddenly there is an army of them, and  suddenly regrowth becomes demolition. He wonders if his baker has joined them, or the boy  that sells newspapers on the street corner in his adopted city Madrid. How many? How many  men poisoned into taking people’s lives for a cause? How many men want him dead? He has  heard their battle-cry in the streets, always followed by an instrumental of stuttering gunfire.  He hopes they do not scream it when they kill him. He does not want his death to be theirs. 

“¡Viva la muerte!”—Long live death!” 

Death, the question of questions. The glance into the void. What is waiting on the other side  of this black night? Sleep without an end – fitting, he thinks, he is dressed for it. Will the dust  creep into his eyeballs, the moss blanket his body, the raw red earth expertly unpick the petals  of his skull? – And now his blood comes out singing. 

He wrote those words once, for a friend, but what will his blood sing?  

And with what mouth? What tongue? What voice? What words? 

Is it a sorry tune, or a triumphant blare of trumpet, the kind at the bullfights? He can almost  hear the castanets across the silent country, chasing his heartbeat. 

As a child, he would go to watch the bullfights with his father. The crowds, a raucous throng  of workers and politicians, would pulse and heave, throwing their bodies this way and that in  line with their passions. He would get swallowed by those crowds, his father gripping the  collar of his shirt to keep him close, steering him round people to make sure he could see. He  remembers the day a man got speared by the bull. Gorged through his chest. And the way his  body was flung across the ring like a trampled leaf. The crowd gasped, some women cried.  The bull was taken out back and shot. A priest was rushed into the ring and a coffin from  somewhere was found to tumble the body into before the stage was cleared. The tragedy  complete. The next bullfighter entered to applause.

The curtains were closed on that scene and he’d forgotten about it until now. 

There are two bullfighters in this funeral march, ahead of him. He wonders if they regret  chasing Death, having convinced themselves they could outrun him their entire lives only to  stumble when he caught them up. Or maybe they recognise its taste on the air, like freezing  cold ash. He wonders if this is why they shiver in the early morning. 

The bullfighter’s cape was red to hide the blood. He wishes he hadn’t worn white to go to bed  in last night. 

The soldiers carry German Mauser rifles and he wonders where they are going to shoot him.  He hopes it is the head and he hopes it is quick; the bullet tearing apart his brain so quickly he  barely feels it. He wonders if death feels like a migraine coming on.  

Before their arrest, Ruiz Alonso had shouted, “He’s done more damage with a pen than  others have with a pistol!”  

They shot him instantly with their pistols. What use was his pen then?  

It has been playing in his mind ever since, like a vinyl needle stuck on the same part of a  track, obsessively repeating. Each time the gunshot goes off in his head, he jumps a little, and  the scene restarts. He’s lost his pen but the men marching them into the heart of the country  still have their pistols.  

What damage have I done? 

You write and you love and they disagree with that. Sometimes the most rebellious thing is  just to be.  

The soldiers stop at the gate to a dark field that doesn’t look to end. They can bury us easier  in there. The soil is softer. 

They turn and shepherd the prisoners into the field like they are cattle.  

I am more the bull than the bullfighter, he thinks.  

The ground is soft, the grass brittle and yellow. They walk a little further and the dawn breaks  a little more, crumbling into reluctant morning. The red eye of the sun blinks open behind the  mountains, and it is as though she is covering her eyes. She cannot watch Spain declare war  on poetry.  

His shoulder is grabbed and they speak to him but he doesn’t listen. This is not their moment.  These will not be their words. He is forced roughly to the ground, his pyjama knees dirtying.  The gun is cold against his sweaty head and Federico García Lorca stares at death.  

Winged heart, do not fail me now. Words, stay damaging. Will my blood sing for me –?

There is a crack in the silent sky.  

“Everywhere else, death is an end. Death comes, and they draw the curtains – Not in Spain. In Spain they open them.”

Eve

Alison Tan
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Eve

It will take you by surprise: a warmth in your chest,

a sunbeam in your bathroom mirror, a drop of honey

from a bird’s beak. Not after the years in which

you cradled womanhood like shrapnel to your chest,

your prize of war the taint of touch in the darkness.

I have seen you mutate in the compost of your closet:

a razor of light, a lipstick, a beanie, feral thing

in a silk skirt. I have seen you at the windowsill

wearing sleeplessness like a lace veil, aching

to plead the euphoria of birds. Go, then – O girl,

O derivative of, gather up these snowflake-

tender bones and keen them into flight. 

Someday you will learn to reach into the back door

of your body and fling it open. Someday you will learn

that wholeness was just a trick of the light.

Image Credits: Mikhail Evstafiev / CC BY-SA 3.0

Eve’s Laugh

Katherine Dorkins
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Eve’s Laugh

Humour me with golden words, generously will I laugh at timely jewels. Spin a kingdom of well-turned phrases, you seem to offer broad skies and tumbling hills. Hold out your hand, beckoning articulateness’s fluid beaches: I will notice amphibian skin stretched over emphatic knuckles, the elegant point of resolute finger. Paint your face with baubauled declarations, raise your cheekbones and make symmetrical your features. Charm me into seeing your straight nose and noble profile. Show me the path to enunciation, you seem to offer part of your simile-crown. Might I, too, learn to dress in silk and lace words? to scurry, selkie and gleeful, donning and shedding velvet identities? Yet you, handsome in sharp lines and strict hollows, merely illude to nature’s tangible openness. Your enounced elevation does not, though you promised, furnish me with words as giving as my erstwhile laughter. Mute, I watch cheated as you sweep up my halfway compositions, shining neon brighter by robbing my flickering mediocrities. Now, you fix me under steely gaze, pin me captive to your pedestal. Represent me and re-represent me, using those same brushes intended for my sparkling debut. Force me into successive dresses unsuitable for my size, revel in driving identities down my silent throat till I gag to peals of selfish laughter. Require me to be svelte and ample, pale-skinned and full-lipped, hairless and sexed. Ignore my vacuum-screams with totalitarian ease, choke me so tightly that I begin to believe your stuffed contradictions. 

Adam it’s impossibly obvious Adam I don’t think I’m helping myself but who’s to say whether I can muster the energy to try and refrain Adam next time I will make a more original choice I promise

Yet does this confinement not afford me protection? Am I not relieved that full skirts and ringed fingers bear the weight of faltering remarks? I might be tuck-tummied and cone-chested, I could win horses and kingdoms in a flutter of acrylic lids or flick of peroxide locks. Crawling, feet buckled under the sway of fifty centimetre waist, I may rifle through reams of plastic treasures; I can delight in satins and chiffons. Happily might I exchange damsel letters and virgin words for filled lips and taut skin, on learning that even Athenian exclamations could not buy chiselled utterings or hardy compliments. Tempted, I could beg for captivity, yearning to be chained in well-constructed sentences. I could pant to be sat on Koonsian haunches, feral and mutted under twisting gaze. More, confused by penetrative tricks and slights, I might convince myself that freedom is no more than acceptance of unthinking tyranny, that puppy love for Stockholm bars might as acid erode rather than offering steely reinforcements. For, conducting exuberant from articulate heights, you are no longer content that the alloyed cage on which you squat should be malleable. Guffawing, you have exchanged girded cast-iron for artery locks and keys, you buttress marble coops with neurons and synapses. No longer threatened by expressions, you satisfied your vulgar urges by erecting sinewy barriers on fledgling conscience. Not sated by extinguishing utterance’s rustlings, your silicone length has aborted every foetal musing before conception. Snickering, you’ve blocked my auxin soul and tethered me to metal trellis. Now, howling, fever-pitch, you offer support for titled pelvis and bunioned heel. Giggling, drunk on stolen redness, you stroke thalidomide buds and Agent Orange leaves. Hysterical, maniacal, you teeter with infant power as you realise that I now exist only in your consequence. 

It is cruel what you’ve done here Adam you make me want to puke retch hurl spew all the poison love you’ve forced on me I told you Adam just show me the way and I’ll let myself out

And yet! Chained close to your balloon-form abruptly I spot the limpness of those declarations! My penetrating gaze pierces your brittle shell to find toddling self-expressions, pink and wavering on chubby thighs. By no herculean effort I scratch gold from the surface of pinata words, a single strike of long-nailed finger. Graceful, I discern in turn your own meek frailty, for crusaders brow and arching curl have not blinded me to the warpings of unwieldy psyches. Even hunched on all fours, my trenchant gaze recognises that in creating a companion so dwarfed and bound, you have imprisoned yourself in contorted reflection. And now! More obvious still than the nonsensical flogging of your own freedom, the noxious rhizopean pinnacle of a frame so imposing that even your murmurings of aesthetic beauty from within are muzzled by its lumbering weight, I see my own subjection! Staring brilliantly at tender wrists, I observe my tasselled chains clearer and more brightly than the sun could shine in those nature-bribes you used to capture me. Comprehendingly, I look at greening nickel links which truss up indescribable wrists, frantically spewing out expendable synthetic words, seeking to capture the cosmos in each second. Nodding, I stare at those Perspex polystyrene words and synthetic negentropic descriptions, and gawp at how lamely they attempt to impose on those inexpressible transcendent unspeakable sublime wrists of mine pathetic singling adjectives or ailing metaphors. Then, gasping, spluttering with the motion of an engine that for weeks and days has been locked in a garage, I raise my head and start to laugh. Laughing at their weight as light as they are heavy, laughing at their fiery shallows and pearly ravines. Giggling, I plumb their flattened mountain-tops and deep-dive their celestial puddles, tittering, I soar through their earthy skies and lounge in their icy deserts. Chuckling, cackling now, my roaring head titled back to make way for streams and gallons of noise reverberating and vibrating, bouncing, pouring out of my jabbering mouth, words guttural and soulful now swilling overflowing flooding through corridors and ceilings, running into all the cracks and crevices, soaking every cranny and submerging every cobwebbed nook I scream! 

Eve consciously naked devours apple after apple Eve proudly bodied temporally beckons and all the greenery unfurls in her direction Eve gets carried from place to place on snakes’ backs who demand nothing in return 

Now, joyfully spent from the pleasures of sonant excursions, I realise my body. Freed from rouged propaganda and preening censorship I can navigate unguided through unpossessable territories. I can set Cribbars in motion from impenetrable forests without worrying about whether they’ll be there the morning after. No longer tongue-tied, single sentences barely heard stand sovereign over encompassing minutiae, pupils and lips, even the ebb and flow of blood thinkingly respond to the unimposing supplications of whispers. Fleshy and Achillean, though displaying the backs of ankles unworriedly, my ethereal skin lies atop broad shoulders and my sinewy tendons support slender calves. My labyrinthine veins under parchment coverings pump, unaffected either by pithy scrawling or rambling inscription. You glimpse, belatedly, my ptero branchial limbs, my reptile hooves and arachnid claws, my crone’s luster and infant’s furrows. Make of my weightless patchwork cloak what you will, subject it to screaming defacements or muttered tendernesses. Seek to insert two thumbs and rip, tear it upwards and outwards in the hope misplaced of wrapping your not unlimitedly elastic mind around immeasurable incalculable inexhaustible depths and lengths and widths. Or rather, grasping finally your entire impotence against my gaping wholeness, bursting with penetration gaps against which you thump limply, you will seek no longer to veil but to give me our armour and mirror symbols. Then, jointly we will play in panoptic plasticine, we will wrap in phi ribbon and Fibonacci paper countless representations and harmonic we will offer them laughingly. Eyes in eyes, we will chatter unceasingly with void and universe tongues, duettists forming thicket and cove from infinitive and participle. 

To Galilee Eve journeys leisurely Eve in the midday sun surveys rounded Mary lying legs spread unconcernedly sex plain screws unhurriedly Joseph unabashedly fondling taut erection undemandingly Eve raises head spontaneously and appreciative starts to laugh 

Stalked by a bear at high table

Natasha Saunders
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Stalked by a bear at high table

act 1 

The woman put her little name card in front of T. 

‘That’s who I am,’ said the woman. i do not know who that is 

T could feel the bear’s eyes on her. Watching her every move. She knew if she turned around she’d  be able to see its small beady eyes staring from the corner of the hall, perhaps flickering in the  candlelight, oblivious to the hum drum surround sound. With this in mind, she nodded, forced her  most agreeable smile, and tried to think of something to say that might catch-all – 

say something good say something good 

‘So… what do you do?’ shit 

Not the words that T had intended to come out of her mouth, but the words that were spoken  nonetheless. The murmur of chatter in the great hall behind her seemed to expand and poke into  her ears like cotton swabs. The dark wood-panelled walls, once comforting in their robust oldness,  now appeared to T as the boundaries of a giant sarcophagus. She became painfully aware of her  chapped lips and licked them but – oh no – she had lipstick o 

 they are probably stained red from the wine by now oh god 

‘I write books. I write books and millions of people buy them and that’s how I make my money,’ said  the woman.  

T had already forgotten the woman’s name. In fact, she’d barely heard this last line due – in  particular – to her increasing paranoia about the bear. In a bid to end the conversation as quickly as  possible she turned back to the food on her plate. Unfortunately, the solace she sought could not be  found: it was foie gras. T had never had foie gras before and the brief encounter she was currently  having was making her glad she hadn’t. 

Like a small child, she pushed it around with her fork. the wrong fork, no doubt, i should  have used the one on the inside 

‘Where are you from?’ the question came from front and centre, and she looked up to see the  middle-aged man opposite staring at her in anticipation. He had dark grey hair, long and ratty, and  looked, perhaps, like the kind of man you would see in a film: a face full of angles and bones. His  voice was well-rounded. It sounded expensive.  

T would have welcomed this intrusion on her silence had it come from a milder or more pleasant  source.  

‘I’m… you won’t have heard of it,’ T said. what do you want me to say?  marlborough, wycombe, city of?  

‘What do you do, then.’ His voice adopted a slightly sharper tone in response to T’s deflection.  ‘I don’t really do anything. I’m a student,’ she said. can you not feel the bear?

The man on her other side – the older man, his suit too small though it still looked nice, the one who  had had his back to her for the entire meal so far – elbowed her in the ribs.  

He didn’t even turn around. it’s alright i don’t mind. i don’t mind. i’m happy to be here 

‘What do you mean you don’t do anything? You’re at Oxford. The best university in the world.  People would kill for what you have.’  

i cannot tell you what i do, who i am, because you will look at me like i am an injured puppy ‘I spend most of my time in the library. It’s quite boring, really.’ that’s it. sell yourself She smiled thinly at the waitress as she whisked away T’s embarrassingly full plate.  

In the silence that followed, rather than work up the courage to turn around and face the waiting  bear, she snuck a look at the man she’d been invited to meet. The Writer. The whole reason she was  at this dinner, the whole reason she was sat on the High Table with these people that made her feel  like she was about to fall off a cliff. The whole reason she was being stalked by this bloody bear in  the first place, 

But he was deep in conversation, speaking in hushed tones, talking about Important Things. 

She’d known, before, she’d never be able to use this dinner to network – whatever that means – but  she thought maybe she’d have a conversation, a chat, make an impression. Use whatever status she  had managed to gain from being a student at this university to elevate her beyond her past, beyond  her station, towards something Better, 

‘Well why on earth are you here?’ said the man. It came out like a bark. 

 i am not supposed to be here 

‘I was invited, I said I liked his work, I do like his work, so they said I could come along. It’s funny – ‘  she turned around briefly to face the rest of the hall, to see the rows of tables full with students in  their Friday finest, and though she ran her eyes over almost every face (almost every face – she  aggressively avoided the bear’s) she couldn’t seem to find the little pocket where her friends were  sat – ‘my friends are down there somewhere and I’m up here.’ 

The man smiled then, but only because he understood that he was supposed to. She looked at his  face, at his cheekbones, at his grey hair resting in curtains,  

 he is speaking to me in latin, whispering of dulwich and harrow and  charterhouse, of formal dinners and   High Tables and 

 using the right fork 

T felt the bear sniff the back of her neck. 

act 2 

She tried desperately to put any memories of that dinner into a 6ft grave in the week that followed.

The burning shame of it had only solidified when the man who’d invited her did not smile back when  she had bumped into him on the Monday. 

 i was not good enough. i missed something 

As well as the shame, a sense of frustration and guilt jostled for space in her ribcage, each  periodically rearing their head only to be torn down by another like clockwork. Every time she  remembered the excuse she’d given for leaving early – the hurried ‘I promised I’d be elsewhere…’  with her eyes pinned on the man’s shiny cufflinks on his tailored suit – embarrassment briefly  appeared, punching right up to her cheeks, 

‘You don’t need to feel embarrassed.’ well i fucking do okay i do ‘Yeah, I know.’ 

Her mum’s crackly voice on the other end of the phone, ever trying to cheer her up, ever saying the  wrong thing, 

‘What was her name again?’ 

T told her the woman’s name, having spent time staring at the name card after all conversation had  ceased. 

‘No idea. No idea who that is. Very odd. She said millions?’ 

‘Millions. I wasn’t sure what to say.’ i was worried about the bear ‘What did you say?’ 

‘I didn’t say anything.’ 

‘Did you get to talk to the writer? What was his name?’ 

‘No, not really.’ 

‘Why?’ i did not know how, i did not know what was going ‘He was busy. He was talking to someone else.’ on i had never sat at an elevated table before ‘You could have talked to him. I’m sure he wouldn’t have minded.’ 

‘I just didn’t… the vibe was off. It was odd. I don’t know.’ it is hard to talk when you are being  stalked by a bear ‘Oh. Oh dear. Well. At least you were there. That is a little rebellion all in itself.’ no it was not 

act 3 

A full week after the dinner-that-shall-not-be-named, T found herself in the great hall again. Sat in  the little pocket with her friends she had so desperately tried to find when she had sat at High Table.  And though she did not feel stalked – the hair-raising sensation of the bear’s eyes resting on the  back of her head had disappeared – she could still feel it’s presence, sloping around the hall, padding  up the steps to the platform where the High Table stood. Guarding it’s territory.

that is a little rebellion all in itself no, no it was not 

Perhaps her mere presence in that space, that space not meant for her, perhaps that was a rebellion  all in itself even though it had felt like a sick joke. Perhaps she did not know what a rebellion was.  Was it accepting an invitation, a permittance? Was it being allowed to be somewhere, being asked,  being let-in? Was it no, no I won’t tell you, I won’t tell you who I am, I won’t tell you what I do, because I don’t want you to look at me with commiserations – although perhaps she had lost  already, a birth lottery, perhaps those looks would be apt – was it I promised I’d be elsewhere? 

Where before the mix of shame and embarrassment and frustration and guilt had made her sick,  had made her lame, had injured her, it now made her angry. Her eyes were fixed on the High Table  candelabras, the delicate metal, fixed on the free-flowing upper-tier wine, fixed on the nice suits and  nice dresses and nice shoes, fixed on the class and poise and design of it all – 

which bit of it had been a rebellion? 

T thought as she began walking towards the High Table.  

None of them seemed to notice the bear. They were deep in their conversations, shrouded in the  candlelight, their presence casting long shadows on the walls of the sarcophagus behind them.  

i want them to see me 

When she reached the raised platform she cleared a small space at the end of the long, thin table, politely whispered ‘excuse me’ to the nondescript man whose plate she was moving, and shuffled 

i am on the table! i am standing on the table! they are looking at me and i am on the table – 

The nondescript man muttered, much to his own amusement, asking whether she was looking

for  something in

particular 

i do not say anything. all it is, is that i am on the table.  

one of the kitchen staff grapples at my legs but i am holding fast. 

i am on the table! hahahah! yes. yes! i am on the table 

Do you not see the bear? Do you not see the bear now raising it’s head to let out a

roar?  this is a rebellion. i am not supposed to be here. that is the rebellion. my name is not  marlborough, my name is not wycombe not st pauls not francis holland 

it is not brighton not westminster not city of london it is none of them 

this is a rebellion, this is a mute insurgency of one! 

 No it is not. You are standing on a table. You are standing on a table and the bear – the bear – is bounding towards you – i can hear the crescendo of the dies irae 

The bear! 

this is a rebellion! 

You can’t rebel against a bear!

then what? 

Watch out for the BEAR – 

And the bear’s jaws came down on T’s head.  

Surprisingly, she felt alright. It was warm, and damp, and smelt a bit like fish, but ultimately, it was  alright. She waited calmly for the bear’s teeth to crush her ribs and burst her lungs, but it didn’t  come. Instead, she stared down the bear’s throat into a black abyss. It was as featureless as a cloudy  night sky.  

Sitting there, now, in that dark chasm, she realised she had inadvertently fed the

bear.  That bear. Always that bear.  

perhaps next time i will kill the bear 

yes.  

next time i will kill it.

Accidentally in Love: Shrek Twenty Years Later

Ciara Beale
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Accidentally in Love: Shrek Twenty Years Later

I watched Shrek for the first time when I was two years old. It quickly became a daily habit: my parents would plonk me down in front of the TV for a 1-hour-35-minute break from my nightmarish presence, only to be subjected to me screeching alongside Fiona, trying to hit that high note and waiting for the bird on screen to pop. Soon after, two Shrek and Donkey figurines in a toy shop caught my eye and I grabbed them with an iron grasp; an arduous ‘Terrible Two’ tantrum later, my mum passed me over the counter to scan the toys while still in my screwed-up fists. Aged ten, I became addicted to the DS game incarnation of the film  in  Shrek captured my imagination as a child and hasn’t ceased to since.

I love Shrek. Unironically.

Where do I even begin? Firstly, the soundtrack of every film is spectacular. From Smash Mouth’s ‘All Star’ and ‘I’m a Believer’, to the original ‘Fairy Godmother Song’, performed by the glorious diva herself in Shrek 2 (the best of the series – an indisputable fact), the soundtrack still accompanies my day to day life, from when I’m Livin’ la Vida Loca to strolling through the Funkytown that is Oxford.

Shrek has grown up alongside me but has aged better than I have. The generation who first watched the film are now our best meme-creators and its resurrection in meme form has not disappointed. Shrek’s good name may have been defaced in recent years by a certain YouTube video (I don’t think I need to elaborate) but I refuse to let this taint the joy the franchise has brought me over the years. The films themselves are as funny, if not funnier, to an adult audience, too – Shrek famously implies that Lord Farquard might be ‘compensating for something’ with his enormous castle… The films are timeless in every way.

Twenty years on, no animated film has come close to pushing the boundaries of the classic fairy-tale model in the same wayThe beautiful princess decides to become an ogre so she can choose who she loves and keep living like the feminist hero she really is, rather than be forced to marry a prince; the male lead is superficially ugly and guarded, but has a heart of gold beneath each oniony layer. The other fairy-tale creatures, too, each have their own moving storyline – from socially awkward Pinocchio to womaniser Puss in Boots, the film’s reimagining of such recognisable figures gave them a new lease of life for this century.

Donkey gets his own paragraph: he wins the title of Best Character, hands down. Donkey is loveable and affectionate, a loyal sidekick and the waffle-making friend we all wish we had. Voiced by the inimitable Eddie Murphy (the most iconic among the star-studded cast, featuring Mike Myers and Cameron Diaz), Donkey won all our hearts from his first touching lament of loneliness: ‘I’m all alone, there’s no one here beside me.’ We have all felt like Donkey, and when he finds love in the most unlikely of forms (the evil dragon, who is also allowed a redemptive arc), we can only celebrate (if we ignore the dubious inter-animal relationship).  

The lessons offered are clear: sometimes the knight in shining armour is an ogre, and Happy Ever After endings come in all forms; love can be found anywhere if you are open to its possibilities, and the best friendships keep you going through all manner of trials and tribulations. Shrek’s ability to provide hope in the darkness while never losing its humour is the reason it will forever stay in my heart.

Review – Spiral: From the Book of Saw

Jonathan Tevendale
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Review – Spiral: From the Book of Saw

My friend and I arrived about thirty minutes late to see Spiral: From the Book of Saw in the cinema. It didn’t particularly matter. There was no awkward shuffling down the aisle, because, apart from the phlegmy weirdo on the other side of the room, we were the only ones in the cinema. We smiled at him in quiet recognition of the reason we were all there; of the foul experience we had come expecting. 

Our lateness also allowed us to skip straight to gore, right past any pretence of interest in the plot. We were – after all – expecting a certain efficient minimalism from the ninth Saw film: an obliging nod to narrative structure, followed by a pervert’s buffet of blood and suffering. Then again, I’d read it had Samuel L. Jackson in it, so maybe it was going to be arty. 

But after an initial – rather promising – torture scene involving a tongue and a train, the film settled into uncomfortable new territory. There was dialogue not punctuated by screams. There was comedy, written by a comedian. Wait… is that Chris Rock? Oh god, what’s happening? The phlegmy weirdo on the other side of the room looks at me through the half-baked buddy-cop set-up, visibly tearing up. I shut my eyes, not wanting to spend another second watching police movie clichés ruin what was supposed to be an enjoyable experience. And yet the audio was even more unbearable. Why was the zebra from Madagascar shouting about his troubled past? I didn’t know his dad was the police commissioner. At this point, phlegmy weirdo was drinking vodka from the bottle, and throwing chocolate-covered raisins at the projectionist, who had themselves left in disappointment. 

But then something odd happened. Slowly but surely, the film started to grow on me. Chris Rock – it turns out – is a gloriously bad actor. Each time he earnestly shouted one of his lines before looking, visibly confused, into the camera was a new high point. Did he know where he was, or had the real Chris Rock stumbled into some waking nightmare? 

The buddy-cop set-up degenerated into a frigid, comical awkwardness. At times, it was like I was watching a Wattpad fanfic of Se7en, to the extent that I felt – at any moment – Chris Rock and his partner might kiss. 

In its attempt to elevate the torture by giving it some wider social meaning, Spiral takes aim at corrupt police officers, the focus of the mysterious killer’s work. And yet it does so in such a ham-fisted way that each shifty side-eye from one villainous, scarred cop to another pulls the plot further into hilarity. Only Chris Rock – loud, lost and confused – can save ‘generic American city’ from immorality, vice and a talented, but sadistic, engineer. Sure… why not? 

And then – at last – came the torture: gratuitous, and at total tonal odds with the rest of the film. It was best this way; I didn’t want it darkening the tone of the comedy I was watching, nor did I want comedy diluting the effects of the gore that phlegmy weirdo and I were enjoying so much. Eventually, the film settled into a satisfyingly regular structure, in which scenes of violence punctuated the hilarious plot every twenty minutes or so, like deranged ad-breaks. 

And every now and then Samuel L. Jackson saunters in, delivering a bad line with a little too much gravitas – the cherry on top. 

Critics have, en masse, missed what makes Spiral so enjoyable to watch, focussing on the distasteful gore, the ‘missed opportunity’ to make something better, or the film’s pretences of refinement; its desire to be a more ‘intelligent’ entry to the Saw franchise. But it is good because it’s bad, funny because it doesn’t want to be, and compelling because it’s so needlessly violent; because around every corner lurks a horrible thing which probably won’t happen to you, but what if it did? A better film would have been a bad Se7en; what we got was a masterpiece of accidental parody. 

And so by the time we left, phlegmy weirdo had fallen asleep in a vodka/torture-induced state of bliss, presumably to be jolted awake the next day’s first showing of Peter Rabbit 2. My friend and I left satisfied on all fronts. It’s great to be back in the cinema. Thank God we didn’t go to see something good, like Minari.

Spiral: From the Book of Saw is showing in Oxford in Curzon and Vue. 

Image Credits: BagoGames via flikr / CC-BY-SA 2.0

Fitness, fans and focus: OURFC prepare for The Varsity Matches on the 4th July

Maurício Alencar
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Fitness, fans and focus: OURFC prepare for The Varsity Matches on the 4th July

It’s a month and a half before Varsity kicks off, but the women’s rugby squad have just finished a brutal HIIT session. They have been sprinting up and down the pitch for quite some time now, and they were only allowed a few seconds of rest in between each burst. 10 seconds, precisely. At the end of the workout, the players convene as a group, and they discuss the importance of fitness in the lead-up to Varsity. After waiting for some time, some of the squad members from the women’s team shared some of their early thoughts on Varsity with me. There is a sense that, even with so long to go till the 4th of July, the squad demands an incredible level of discipline and focus ahead of the first drop kick on Varsity day.

“I think players are just super keen to get back to it and I think we’ve been looking really sharp given the lot of time we’ve had off. I think people just love being back and it’s definitely shown,” Fiona Kennedy, the captain of the women’s rugby team, tells me, panting. Bianca Coltellini, who will be playing Varsity for the first time this year, told me that “no one’s missed any sessions really” and that it was great to see “how badly everyone wants” to play rugby and win. It’s been a long year for the rugby club. Multiple lockdowns, having to adapt to new rules in training, and exams for many of the finalists in the squads have disrupted the club’s preparation in the buildup to Varsity. It’s been more difficult than ever before. That has been the case for every other sports club in the university, but OURFC’s Varsity Matches are last on the year’s sports calendar. They have the chance to cap the year off with two wins over the Tabs in front of a crowd of travelling supporters.

“The Varsity Matches” has a long history of 149 years, first being played in 1872. The Dark Blues have won a total of 79 Varsity Matches, with the men’s team winning 60 of the 138 matches and the women’s team winning 19 of the 31 matches. There have been a total of 14 draws in the men’s fixtures and no draws in the women’s fixtures. In a strange year where the Varsity Matches will be played in the summer rather in December- as is normally the tradition- George Messum, who is the captain of the men’s Blues, made a point of making the most out of the uniqueness of the year: “I think maybe one of the positives of this year is that it does make it different to perhaps what’s been happening in previous years. I’m fortunate enough to have been involved a few years ago and obviously last year, so as experience it’s certainly been different. It’s been a nice sort of change of pace and timing on that side.” 

Both teams will be looking to put December 2019’s results aside ahead of July’s match. The women’s team narrowly lost 5-8 to Cambridge at Twickenham in 2019, whereas the men’s team lost 15-0. Teams often change every year, with new talented undergraduates or postgraduates joining OURFC each year. Louis Jackson, who plays as a back, thinks this turnaround of players is “one of the kind of beauties of the Varsity Match”, as new players are able to inject added quality and energy to the teams every year. The official squads will be announced to the public in due course. 

Sam Miller has played in two Varsity matches before as a flanker, winning in 2018 but losing the year after. He tells me what kind of impact the “pleasure of winning and the displeasure of losing” has on pressure and preparation: “It adds that extra motivation to want to win and to avoid the losses. It’s definitely on the forefront of your memory but that’s not how you prepare for a game. You prepare for a game by focusing on your strengths and looking to win rather than being scared to lose.” Should the Oxford men’s team win Varsity, it will be their 8th win in 11 years.  

Both the men and women’s teams are preparing by looking solely at themselves. Little to no video footage from Cambridge is available due to the lack of matches played in the last year. “The focus is on us”, as Shirley Kennedy told me. 

Clodagh Holmes, a winger for the women’s team, said that “in the past there has probably been a bit too much focus on what Cambridge were doing and not necessarily on what we’re doing”. She added that they will focus on “strengthening ourselves and not aiming to weaken Cambridge”.

Sam Miller echoed these thoughts. The men’s squad is not tamed by the prospect of facing Cambridge’s locks Flip van der Merwe and James Horwill, who have 98 international caps between them for South Africa and Australia respectively. Sam said that they will “prepare how [they] can best rather than over-analysing the opposition”.  

Oxford will have some high-level experience of their own in the teams. Manon Johnes, who is currently training with the Blues ahead of what could potentially be her first Varsity for the Oxford women’s team, has 13 caps for Wales, whereas George Messum has previously captained ‘England students’. 

In order for the squads to gain match experience playing together, both teams are also making use of stage “E2” of the RFU’s “Return to Rugby” roadmap, allowing them to play full contact matches against other clubs. In one recent match against Maidenhead RFC, the men’s Blues beat a physical team 35-7 in a match which consisted of three blocks of 20 minutes. The women’s team will play Bristol University Women’s Rugby Football Club this weekend, in what will be a challenging test against a strong rugby side ahead of The Varsity Matches in Leicester.  

Although some match practice will be pivotal for OURFC in the lead-up to Varsity, there is little that can be done to prepare for playing in front of thousands of students.The change of venue from Twickenham to Leicester, due to “likely restrictions on numbers”, may be seen as a negative aspect of this year’s Varsity in the eyes of many, as the prestige of playing at Twickenham is arguably what makes The Varsity Matches so special.  However, in the eyes of the players, there are also many positives to be taken out of not playing at the home of England Rugby and instead playing at the home of the Leicester Tigers, Smaller and more tightly packed, Mattioli Woods Welford Road stadium has a capacity of just over 25,000 and it has previously hosted Rugby World Cup games, as in 1999 and 1991. George Messum mentions how the stadium’s standing areas and “vertical” stands will bring a great atmosphere, whereas Hannah Cooper said the “crowd will feel much closer”. She added that the pressure of playing at Twickenham will be removed from the match. 

Instead of taking a trip to West London to watch the Dark Blues play in December, students and other interested watchers will be taking coaches to Welford Road in Leicester from Oxford. Tickets for the matches are still being sold on The Varsity Matches website. After what will hopefully be a successful shoeing-of-the-tabs for Oxford, much of the Oxonian crowds will be attending the “After Party” event at Park End, should the government approve Step 4 in time for the 4th of July.  

As finalists get their exams done and COVID restrictions loosen, OURFC lead Oxford out of the academic year and into what will hopefully be the dawning of the post-pandemic world for the UK.  George Messum discussed how this year’s historic Varsity Matches make it “a pretty special year to be involved with the club”, with the summer match being played in the middle of a pandemic and shortly after multiple squad members finished important exams. He reflected, “I think the hope is that in 5-10 years’ time, when the boys are doing their reunions, we will look back and think- wow, this is a pretty special year to be involved with the club.” 

Image courtesy of OURFC

Nationalisation of power towards net zero?

Mez Benmaamar
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Nationalisation of power towards net zero?

Earlier this month, US Congressional representatives Cori Bush and Jamaal Bowman introduced a congressional resolution1 calling for the transformation of the United States’ largely private electricity and gas system into that of a publicly owned and governed network. Whilst such a bill poses little chance of passing the Democratic Senate it represents a guiding vision to a Green New Deal extolled by congressional members within the left of the American Democratic party.

The resolution succinctly began with the summary of its intent and rationale to:

“Express that the United States must establish electricity as a basic human right and public good, and eradicate the reliance on monopolized, profit-driven utility corporations and providers and the flawed regulatory regime that has failed to regulate these utilities in the public interest.”

This renewed call for the public ownership and operation of the electricity network is motivated by the United States’ increasingly untenable legacy of decaying infrastructure and continuous deferral of network investment, whilst regimes of private value extraction at the expense of public coffers run rampant. The logic follows that with the public ownership of the network, the surplus capital originally being delivered to shareholders could now be used to reinvest in the energy infrastructure required for net-zero and further develop societal outcomes.

Calls for this radical approach to an energy system transition can be observed in the white paper2 released in 2019 across the pond by the Labour Party, outlining the party’s plan for publicly owned energy networks. The evidence for such an approach may also be increasingly compelling; with it coming at a moment when the UK’s energy sector is decried to be central to decarbonisation3, yet Ofgem4 reports how our energy networks are contradictorily underequipped to respond to the task at hand. In fact, an estimated £35 billion worth of up-front capital is estimated4 to be required to realise a clean grid by 2030. Simultaneously, Citizens Advice5 in 2019 decried the ‘eye-watering’ high profit margins at the expense of households with the UK’s privately-operated distribution network operators making an estimated £7.5 billion in unjustified profits over the past 8-year period. What is more, this failure to invest appropriately in the infrastructure required to modernise the grid and reduce renewable energy bottlenecks comes at a time when British customers have reportedly ‘overpaid for electricity for years’6.

In sum, no matter how convincing the numbers are, the Labour Party’s manifesto to ‘Bring Energy Home’ and this short 12-page resolution have and will ultimately fail to galvanise change given the contemporary political landscape. They should however be understood as expressions of the silent battle at play between antagonistic narratives for different energy transition pathways in the West today; the clashing views of energy as both a fundamental human resource and as a basic unit of capital accumulation for a growth economy.

1 Bush, 2021. https://bush.house.gov/sites/evo-subsites/bush.house.gov/files/evo-media-document/Bush%20Public%20Power%20Resolution%20FINAL.pdf

2 Bailey, 2019. Bringing Energy Home. Labour’s proposal for publicly owned energy networks. [online]

3 BBC, 2020. Customers ‘overpaid for electricity for years’. BBC News [online].

4 CitizensAdvice, 2018. Energy Consumers’ Missing Billions. The profits gifted to energy networks. Citizens Advice [online].

5 GOV.uk DBEIS, 2020. Energy white paper: Powering our net zero future. GOV.UK [online].

6 OFGEM, 2020. Ofgem proposes £25 billion to transform Great Britain’s energy networks. Ofgem [online]

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