Saturday, April 26, 2025
Blog Page 334

Oxford organisations respond to the death of Sarah Everard

Sasha Mills
-
0
Oxford organisations respond to the death of Sarah Everard

CW: Sexual Violence 

Over 300 people attended an online vigil on Saturday evening hosted by OSARCC, Reclaim the Night Oxford, and It Happens Here, in memory of Sarah Everard. The event brought together both student and city groups, and replaced a planned in-person vigil, although a representative for OSARCC stated that in-person events will be held once COVID-19 restrictions allow. 

This follows some of the in-person commemorations that have taken place in the city, including the laying of flowers next to the Radcliffe Camera, organised by Oxford SU’s Women’s Campaign. Ellie Redpath, Chair of the Campaign told Cherwell: “Sarah Everard’s disappearance has affected us all, because so many of us have felt unsafe walking home at night, and we should not still be in a position as a society where women and non-binary people can go missing just because they werewalking down the street alone.” 

Of the commemoration efforts organised by WomCam, Redpath said: “It’s important that we show our solidarity in tragic times such as these, and hopefully by placing flowers in such a central location in Oxford, we can pay tribute to Sarah and show our solidarity.”

A representative for It Happens Here told Cherwell: “It Happens Here was involved in the creation and organisation of the vigil alongside OSARCC and Reclaim the Night Oxford. Three generations of our Co-Chairs spoke in turn about the work IHH does, as well as their personal experience and thoughts on the sexual violence women and girls in Oxford sadly continue to face.”

“We were deeply moved by all the women who took the time to share their own experiences, and by the hundreds more who were present, if virtually, to support one another, listen and commemorate the tragically short life of Sarah Everard. Although it’s a shame we weren’t able to meet in person, we continue to believe in the importance of creating spaces, in-person and virtually, where women can grieve, support one another and come together as a community in times like these.”

“The flowers that still lie outside the RadCam remain a poignant physical and visible tribute to Sarah’s life, and we’d hope to return to physical and in-person events as soon as it is safe to do so. Meanwhile, It Happens Here will continue to work with the other incredible organisations in Oxford to support survivors, create platforms to share experiences and remember those we’ve lost.”

The Oxford University Sexual Harassment and Violence Support Service can be reached by emailing [email protected] and offers free support and advice to any student at the University who has been impacted by sexual harassment or violence.

OSARCC is also available as a free support service which is distinct from the University.

It Happens Here can serve as an unofficial and informal point of contact for students with any concerns about the issues discussed in this article. 

Councillor Shaista Aziz has been contacted for comment.

Image Credits: Top, Anvee Bhutani, In-line, Ellie Redpath

This isn’t Music

Gbenga Chesterman
-
0
This isn’t Music

I listen to a lot of music which falls under the category ‘noise music’, and something I’ve heard more than once when others have (by design or otherwise) been exposed to it is: “this isn’t music” or “did they think this was good when they wrote it?” Past any immediate, stinging insecurity regarding my own taste it might cause, this kind of statement is very interesting as an indicator of what we generally ‘accept’ as music, and how we approach art and creative work as a whole. 

Landing on a concise, encompassing definition of noise music is essentially as impossible as dissecting any other generic label; for the sake of this article, noise music is music which features noise as a sonic feature (defining noise itself is, again, difficult, but the first thing which comes to mind is probably apt- heavy distortion, ‘unmusical’ sounds like that of a blender full of nails, a feline yowl, etc.).

This isn’t intended as an encyclopedic appraisal of noise music as an artistic field, and especially not as a justification or apology for noise, but instead an (insultingly) brief look at how it might work and what it might be saying in itself, and how this might reflexively inform or illuminate our critical habits.

One thing worth addressing is the inherently contrarian nature of noise. Artists create deliberately; the abrasive, venomous sound of noise is not included in a piece as an accident, a failure of sound engineering; it is employed for a reason. So what is the point of making music which sounds unmusical, which is unpleasant? Isn’t music supposed to be ‘enriching’ in our lives, a form of emotional self-indulgence where we are willingly coerced into feeling a certain way? Surely none of that works if the sonic quality of the music itself is this abrasive. I’d argue that this is the point. We often think of music, and in a more general sense art as a whole, as something which has been made for us as consumers. It is produced in a transactional system where the experiential pleasure a piece of media on behalf of its audience is exchanged for the continued, legitimised economic status of its creator — if people don’t like your music it doesn’t get plays on Spotify, if it doesn’t get played then you don’t get paid. 

So noise, broadly, is a rejection of this. It’s music which doesn’t owe you anything, which prioritises the expressive spirit of its creator over the pleasure or ease-of-listening of its audience (of course this isn’t to say that noise is the only kind of music which prioritises the creator’s expression, but is perhaps the most glaring example of such an approach, exacerbated by its intrinsically pugilistic features). 

With this in mind, I’d like to examine some actual pieces of noise music, and how they are a representation of this prioritisation, or might be interpreted as such. One of my personal favourite groups of all time is the currently-active, Dublin-born Girl Band (all male). Girl Band effortlessly combine noise features with the typical struggle between urgency and ennui of post-punk songwriting, all with a genuine tongue-in-cheek delight in the music itself, and some decisively monolithic crescendos. Girl Band’s approach to noise is one which I, as might be leaking through here, am particularly fascinated by. In several cases they have created pieces which, as they progress, are essentially wrought out of noise, in that they feature a strong current of noise throughout, from which something we might more readily accept as ‘musical’ is steadily built. In songs such as ‘Paul’, ‘Why They Hide Their Bodies Under My Garage’, and ‘Handswaps’ (all brilliant), noise seems to have a presence prior to the piece itself, as if it is not being generated instrumentally but instead summoned or reigned in. Perhaps a clearer analogy is that of sculpture, that from the massive brick of noise chunks are methodically and exquisitely hewn away to form the silhouette of music. Of course, the noise in these cases is being generated instrumentally — sound is not actually a material which musicians seize and manipulate with their hands like clay.

Even so, this analogy of sculpture presents in turn another worthwhile interpretation; that of these songs as a record of their own creation, starting as noise, being noise, and becoming something other than noise all whilst retaining something of its original matter. Music is often delivered to us in a ‘complete’ state, a devised sequence of rhythms, repetitions, melodies, etc. which has been constructed in full before its presentation to the audience. However, in this case the audience is treated to an insight into, or perhaps simulation of, the song’s creation itself, a reminder that it is not a phenomenon which exists separate to its artist but is instead a projection and continuation of their own existence — in truth you only have one degree of separation from every artist you listen to, through their music. 

Whilst this is only a minute selection of pieces, and an even more minute appraisal of them respectively (which does not reflect anything particularly on, say, the immediate, beaten-into-submission noise of Death Grips or the rapturously invoked noise of Lightning Bolt), it can lead into an appreciation of noise as a kind of abstract substance which reveals not only something about artistic approaches but a wider philosophy of existence. The above sculpture-analogy is essentially a creation-myth, where the oceans and firmament of music are separated from the preceding chaos of noise. Imagine, then, that we are surrounded by an endless field of noise — every person, whether they can ‘hear’ or not, is moving through this field of non-musical sound, the raw chaos of natural existence — and that although this chaos may not offer itself as pleasurable, it is necessary, and, for that matter, does not care what people think about it, with the moment of experiencing noise music itself being exposed to a natal image of transcendent noise. Understanding this gives you the opportunity to retreat from critical bias and conceive of yourself as a miniscule object in a vast and indifferent ocean (into which noise music is a merely human-sized porthole), whose expectations are justified only in themselves, and to in turn examine what exactly it is you value — not to berate or exalt yourself, but simply to understand on a deeper level what constitutes your taste and as such your identity. 

In other words, noise is a cold but not unwelcome reminder that the world does not revolve around the customer, the audience member, the individual, you. 

How you take or respond to this is, of course, up to you. 

That’s the point.

Image credit to the author.

As a non-Zionist Jewish student, David Miller’s rhetoric harms me too

Naomi Reiter
-
0
As a non-Zionist Jewish student, David Miller’s rhetoric harms me too

CW: antisemitism.

If you asked me to sum up what I think of when considering my own Jewish identity, the images that would come to mind are of my mum making latkes, dressing up for Purim as a child, visiting my grandma in America annually to celebrate Passover, and the dramatic search for the afikoman (a broken piece of matzah (think enormous cream cracker) hidden somewhere around the Passover seder venue that children compete to find) which would always occur. I would picture people gathering at my house for Hanukkah, preparing for my Bat Mitzvah, watching Fiddler On the Roof so many times the DVD cracked, saying a short version of the Shabbat blessings every Friday night, having a mock-Hannukah celebration with my uni housemates and introducing them to the joys of playing dreidel, trekking around Oxford with a Catholic friend of mine in a long search for the free challah available on Shabbat, and baking hamantaschen for the first time. You will notice that I mention Israel, Palestine, or Zionism nowhere.

For the purposes of understanding this article, it is important to provide a basic definition of Zionism. However, it is crucial to note that it is impossible to comprehensively define Zionism in one short paragraph and no one definition will ever be completely perfect. For a fuller understanding, I recommend engaging with a range of wider reading, starting with varied sources which will be listed at the end of the article. Zionism can be defined (not exhaustively) as a national movement for Jewish self-determination aimed originally at re-establishing and currently at preserving a state for Jews, also described as a ‘Jewish homeland’, in the region of Israel-Palestine to which Jews have an indigenous link. There are many forms of Zionism including religious Zionism, liberal Zionism, and green Zionism. An example of a Zionist stance is the belief that a) a state of Israel should exist and b) that it should be a Jewish state. Zionism is, however, highly complex, exists in many forms, and means completely different things to different individuals – the only way to truly know what an individual thinks is to ask them. Furthermore, being a Zionist does not equate to being a supporter of the current Israeli government or its actions.

For me, like many other British Jews, the issues of Israel, Palestine, and Zionism do not play a great part in my life; they are not the cornerstones of my identity. And yet, despite having never publicly expressed a view on Zionism until this article, I have been personally blamed for the suffering of Palestinian people from the age of 6. From my own experience, I know how easy it is for people to see any random Jewish person as a personification of the state of Israel; if people could do it to me as a Jewish child who did not even know what Israel or Palestine were, I know they can do it to any of us.

This is precisely why I do not accept the arguments of David Miller. He is a professor at the University of Bristol currently facing enormous backlash via open letters and petitions from students, MPs, and other academics regarding what an open letter from the University of Cambridge describes as “the latest manifestation of a long and ignoble tradition of conspiracy theories concerning Jewish individuals and institutions” which he teaches to his students. He argues that these statements and theories are not antisemitic but just anti-Zionist, and furthermore that the campaign by Bristol University students for him to face disciplinary action is in fact a secret sinister campaign by “pawns” of Israel to silence him rather than students acting of their own accord.

Another crux of his argument is that his antisemitic statements only impact Zionists and that his crusade is an effort to protect anti-Zionist and non-Zionist Jews such as myself, amongst other groups, from the tyranny of the Union of Jewish Students (UJS) and Jewish societies (JSocs).  This characterisation of the apparently nefarious secret motives of the UJS and JSocs is also an overt example of the centuries-old ‘dual loyalty’ antisemitic trope, which claims that all Jews are primarily loyal to Israel (or a similar Jewish collective) before their own countries and thus use their influence to advance that of the Jewish collective to the detriment of their own countries. This trope has been employed as far back as in the first century CE by the Romans and has constantly been used as an excuse to mistrust, mistreat and enact injustice against Jews. Let me be absolutely clear here: I would obviously, given my stated stance, have no problem if Miller’s words were only academic opposition to Zionism, but his statements go beyond that and into the territory of undeniable antisemitism.

The people whom Miller riles up via his legitimisation of antisemitism are not going to stop and ask me what my precise views on Zionism are before seeing me, a Jew, and attacking me in some way. If I go to a supermarket and take with me the first random tote bag I grab, as so many of us do, and that bag happens to be the UJS tote bag I got in freshers week, is someone who believes that the UJS is a scheming and malicious secret agent of Israel hell-bent on promoting its agenda through every constituent JSoc going to stop and ask what I personally think before making their move? Of course not. If someone launches an attack on an in-person Jewish group event (when these are allowed), will non-Zionist students magically not be harmed? That notion is laughable. Even taking Miller’s arguments at face value, it should also go without saying that someone being a Zionist is never a justification for carrying out an attack against them.

When I speculate regarding physical attacks, I am not pulling wild scenarios out of thin air. Miller’s statements such as calling UJS and all its constituent JSocs the “Israel lobby”  and “formally members of the Zionist movement” which “campaigns to silence critics of Zionism”, taken together with his view that “the Zionist movement…are the enemy of the Left [and] world peace…and they must be directly targeted” clearly amount to a call to arms which encourages people who view themselves as leftist and against oppression to “directly target” all JSocs, including my own in Oxford, as a means of defeating this “enemy” ideology.

As a non-Zionist student who is involved in Oxford JSoc and goes to our community centre for events, this instils fear in me and most certainly does not ‘protect’ me. This rhetoric reminds me of why it is necessary for every Jewish space in Oxford to be protected by tight security both online and in person – something Miller also denounces as Israeli interference. It is a matter of routine that our community centre does not publicise its address on its events. When I arrive, I have to give my name to a security guard before being allowed to enter. There is a reason why we have to go through security guards to enter our place of worship. In spite of Covid-19 restrictions, the UK total of 1,668 recorded antisemitic incidents in 2020 alone is the third-highest ever recorded by the CST (a charity which provides security for British Jewish spaces and acts as a place for Jews to report instances of antisemitism and receive support – Miller says this organisation “exists to run point for a hostile foreign government in the UK”).

This is why it was so hard for me and my Catholic friend to find the free challah we knew was available in Oxford – we had not given our information to the right people beforehand and so had to be treated as a potential threat. Miller’s rhetoric forces me to hide my Jewishness from view and be constantly on alert. If I do accidentally grab that UJS tote bag, I consciously carry it so that only the plain back of the bag is visible. I do not wear a Magen David necklace, despite this being a staple symbol of Judaism and Jewish identity. I ought to be as comfortable wearing this as a Christian student is wearing a crucifix necklace.

The truth is, all David Miller’s polemical rhetoric does for me is attempt to remove the few safe Jewish spaces I have found at university and, on a more personal level as someone who grew up always being the only Jew in my year at school, remove the sense of community I have found within them. Contrary to what David Miller and people like him would lead you to believe, you do not have to swear an oath of loyalty to Israel or to Zionism before being welcomed into a JSoc, nor do you have to pledge to spread the agenda of Israel to everyone you know before being given your free Shabbat meal. Shocking as this may be, there aren’t even special JSoc trips to Palestine where we hunt children and revel in their blood (another example of an antisemitic trope from the Middle Ages that should not have made it to the modern world) – a revelation, I know. Yes, this is a real accusation that has been levelled against Oxford JSoc and an example of the blood libel myth. This myth was started by the Catholic Church in the 12th century and stipulated that Jews regularly kidnapped Christian children to drink their blood. This accusation directly led to violence against individual Jews, the shunning of Jews in wider society, and in extreme cases the forced removal of Jews from entire geographic regions through pogroms. Rather, JSoc was the first organisation that ever made me feel comfortable being Jewish and not a Zionist. Every JSoc member I have encountered has always assured me that not being a Zionist does not make me a bad Jew or a less valid member of JSoc. The Oxford JSoc, just like the broader UJS, is welcome to Zionist, anti-Zionist, and non-Zionist Jews alike.

The Oxford JSoc is explicitly apolitical; it has members with a wide range of views on Zionism and each of these members is equally welcomed and accepted. JSoc has not given me an influx of malicious propaganda, but instead provided my first safe space to have open and honest debates about Zionism and Israel with people who I know are engaging in good faith with the goal of having constructive discussion. As a result of this community, I have been able to have productive conversations with Zionists and anti-Zionists about the most contested elements of the topic. JSocs give Jewish students a safe place to question Zionism and discuss it constructively without being accused of treachery or having to carefully monitor every word said to avoid being wielded as a token ‘Good Jew’ – a Jewish person who says things that, coming from a non-Jewish person, would be entirely questionable, and so is tokenised opportunistically by antisemites to legitimise antisemitism when it is expressed by non-Jews – by antisemites.

However, the most important point to be made about JSoc is that it is not what people like Miller would have you believe. It bears a far closer resemblance to the Jewish experience I detailed in the opening of this article than to some antisemite’s horrifying vision of a bunch of young hook-nosed Israeli lobbyists constantly congratulating ourselves on propagating an Israeli Zionist agenda. The events run by JSoc are apolitical, and the vast majority of them have nothing to do with Israel at all. JSoc is, fundamentally, a Jewish society. As it is false and antisemitic to automatically equate all Jews with Israel (the ‘dual loyalty’ trope), the same logic applies to JSoc.

It may be convenient to forget that the cornerstone of the Jewish community is our shared link to the religion of Judaism and/or Jewish history and culture – but this is the case. JSocs hold events ranging from discussions of controversial elements of Jewish theology, examination of particular parts of scripture and how much influence the Torah should have over intellectual life, discussions on how to eat healthily and ethically while staying kosher, and the hosting of Jewish academics to speak on various aspects of Jewish history and other areas, to Hanukkah card-making events, group baking events for challah and hamantaschen (especially chaotic over Zoom), and celebrations of important festivals in the Jewish calendar. These events are about celebrating and engaging with our shared Jewish culture. While JSoc does very occasionally promote events on Zionism and Israel, these are not done to convince members of a certain ‘correct’ view as Miller would have you believe. They instead are open to all political views and act as a way to start constructive dialogue around the issue. It is incredibly rare any such events would be promoted anyway due to Oxford JSoc’s entirely apolitical stance on Zionism and Israel more generally.

Fundamentally, it was through getting more involved with JSoc and making more Jewish friends (with whom I could have constructive and insightful discussions about Zionism) that I came to define myself as non-Zionist. Therefore, if we accept Miller’s tangled web of Israeli interference the Oxford JSoc ought to be fired from the Israeli secret agent network for its disastrous failure. Sarcasm aside, the labelling of our JSocs as malicious agents of a foreign government intent on proliferating a certain ideology which should be “directly targeted” not only puts Jewish students at a very real risk, it also threatens one of the few organisations that allows young Jews to build a sense of community – often for the first time in our lives – and safely and constructively question our own relationship to Zionism.

For wider reading about Zionism, I would recommend this introductory article from the Anti-Defamation League, alongside this piece from Vox which attempts to define Zionism within the context of the conflict between Israel and Palestine. This piece links to a larger group of articles around the topic which I recommend also reading. The Anne Frank House’s discussion of why ‘Jew’, ‘Israeli’, and ‘Zionist’ should not be mixed up or used without context is also helpful. This piece also explores some of the potential differences between anti-Zionism and antisemitism. Furthermore, I do not endorse all content within each of these articles – they are useful starting points for beginning to think about Zionism.

Image Credit: screenshotted from YouTube. Miller has previously claimed that an interfaith venture where Jews and Muslims made chicken soup together in a London mosque was “an Israeli-backed project to normalise Zionism within the Muslim community”.

Review: Weezer’s “OK Human”

Karan Chandra
-
0
Review: Weezer’s “OK Human”

There are two Weezers: the first is the legendary alternative rock band with universally acclaimed landmark releases such as the genre-defining Blue Album and Pinkerton. These classics managed to tactfully combine the catchiest pop melodies with an edgier embrace of noise and angsty lyricism. The other, unfortunately, is characterized by a painful mediocrity, occasionally supplemented by abrasively immature lyricism. Their output in the latter half of the 2000s (Raditude, in particular) seemed to represent an all-time low and could have been the band’s demise. Since then, though, Weezer have remained musically prolific.

In the last five years, Weezer have not strayed from the polarity that has defined most of their discography. The universally acclaimed White Album in 2016 was followed up with critical duds, 2017’s Pacific Daydream and, two years later, the Black Album. There was even an awkward covers record in between. 

For the most part, however, Weezer’s releases since the 90s have maintained some stylistic consistency, with the same signature ‘Power Pop’. The release of the first single from the delayed album Van Weezer, a tribute to the band’s pop-metal influences, changed this.

OK Human, recorded during the summer of 2020, represents such a deviation. Weezer has always referenced the catchy melodies of the Beach Boys and The Beatles as a key influence in their music; but in OK Human, that influence is elevated to another level. The band’s signature electric-guitar centric instrumentation and loud power chords is replaced with straight-up baroque instrumentation with a full 38-piece orchestra. Beyond the obvious sonic differences in this approach, the band seems to have reflected certain themes present in the album; they even stated on Twitter that “OK Human was made at a time when humans-playing-instruments was a thing of the past. All we could do is look back on ancient times when humans really mattered and when the dark tech-takeover fantasy didn’t exist.” The album title also plays into similar themes, referencing Radiohead’s OK Computer.

The opener and lead single, “All My Favorite Songs”, released a week prior signalled some cause for optimism. The lyrics are typically emblematic of teenage angst, “I love parties, but I don’t go. Then I feel bad when I stay home.” The chorus itself catchily laments the contradictions present in the speaker’s life: fundamentally, that “Everything that feels good is bad.” This culminates in great uncertainty and a lost sense of direction. While the subject-matter evidently is nothing new for Weezer, the songwriting built around delicate strings certainly is. It’s an effective combination, with the lush instrumentation complementing the moodiness of lead singer Rivers Cuomo’s vocals.

The second track, “Aloo Gobi”, employs even grander instrumentation, which is almost jarring at first. The impeccable arrangements and mixing, however, prevent this from seeming too gimmicky. The chorus is anthemic, while the subject matter is uncharacteristically mature. Cuomo ponders over the monotony that has taken over his life. This is something that seems increasingly poignant in the age of lockdowns and social restrictions.

Next, “Grapes of Wrath”, a relatively lighthearted tribute to Audible audiobooks, alludes to the Steinbeck novel in its chorus. The instrumentation maintains the grandiose arrangements from the previous tracks, presented with a more dramatic chord progression. This is followed by “Numbers”, an initially more stripped back and introspective ballad about feelings of personal inadequacy. As the almost Radiohead-esque chorus hits, elaborate strings emerge, and Cuomo employs his falsetto. The track builds up seemingly to an end, before a final stunning iteration of the chorus hits. 

While the remainder of the album is perhaps not as memorable as the opening tracks, there is still a consistent quality and a considerable amount of highlights. “Playing My Piano” is a dramatic ballad about immersing oneself in a passion. “Here Comes the Rain” is a motivational anthem that tributes The Beatles’ “Here Comes the Sun”. The closer, “La Brea Tar Pits” also stands out, with subtler instrumentation, and Cuomo using the California landmark to ponder mortality. Throughout OK Human, the transitions between tracks are also worth commending. 

Ultimately, the album is about the human experience: the joys and monotonies; the passions and anxieties; the connection and solitude. OK Human represents a successful foray for the band from the formula they have set for decades. The instrumentation is lush and compliments Weezer’s typical songwriting styles, as well as their occasional attempts at greater maturity. The chorus melodies are catchy as ever, and Cuomo’s vocal performances memorable. Looking forward, it is undeniably difficult to predict the quality of any releases from Weezer. However, given the precedent set here, there is reason to remain cautiously optimistic.   

 Image credit: micadrew via Flickr & Creative Commons.

“Nothing Important”? An Introduction to Richard Dawson

Oscar Jelley
-
0
“Nothing Important”? An Introduction to Richard Dawson

Richard Dawson is a singer-songwriter based in Newcastle, and if you want to know much more than that about the man himself, you’ll be hard-pressed to find it in his music. His songs are never autobiographical (or at least, not mostly), and he moves so casually between personas that you’d need to be someone with an almost intrusive level of personal acquaintance to separate fact from fiction. The music itself is idiosyncratic enough: he plays guitar with a harpist’s fluency, his untamed voice is more beautiful for being so, and his lyrics are full of singularly strange imagery that might’ve been rustled up from the bargain-bin alternative to Yeats’ Spiritus Mundi.

And yet, in keeping with the folk tradition he draws on, Dawson employs his unique voice, not as a blunt instrument for self-expression, but rather as a tool for the imagining of other, different lives. Former Oxford Professor of Poetry Geoffrey Hill used to quote with approval a phrase from the choreographer Mark Morris: “I am not interested in self-expression. I am interested in expressiveness.” Dawson, in my view, conforms to this ideal. But what exactly does he express? Within the limits of a word count, it’d be a mild but forgivable exaggeration to throw back the question: what doesn’t he?

The issue of where to begin with Dawson’s eclectic discography isn’t easily resolved. 2011’s The Magic Bridge showcases Dawson in full Blakean visionary mode, though the narrative is always played out at a personal level: a grandfather on his deathbed, someone picking apples in a graveyard. Out of the early stuff, 2013’s The Glass Trunk is the folkiest, but not mawkishly so; ‘Poor Old Horse’ describes an instance of equine murder more barbarous than Raskolnikov’s bleakest nightmares.

His breakthrough, 2014’s Nothing Important is made up of two songs, bookended by two instrumental tracks, and provides perhaps the most direct line to Dawson’s coarse, plaintive brand of what might just fall under the rubric of ‘folk-rock’. 2017’s Peasant is set in the medieval kingdom of Bryneich in the north-east of England, exploring lives that, though sunk in ritual and superstition, don’t in some ways differ so greatly from our own. His latest album, 2019’s 2020, is heavily rock-flavoured and probably his most accessible, a collection of thumbnail sketches that takes in, among other things, a civil servant, an anxiety sufferer, a UFO-spotter and a cuckolded spouse.

Dawson’s lyrics aren’t poems; the music is too important to the cadence and stress of the lines for the words to retain their power without it. Still, they do pass that age-old test which can be used upon a line of verse to distinguish the animating spirit of poetry: they’re often almost impossible to gloss in prose. How can I hope to do justice to such a sentence as “Outside the chip shop Thaddeus Wagstaff fractures my cheekbone”, except by quoting it? How would you reconfigure the verbal economy of a statement like “I dream of bashing his skull into a brainy pulp with a Sellotape dispenser”? Faced with the quasi-Yeatsian terror of the declaration “Slow is the black dog in the sky / Who pisses and slobbers all over the world”, what more is there to say?

And yet, as I said before, the words still aren’t quite the same, mutilated and torn from their native element; if you want the full effect, you need to catch them as they’re carried by the distorting medium of Dawson’s voice. His falsetto, in particular, is a thing of beauty: on ‘Wooden Bag’, it falters into being, grows more substantial but never quite secure, until at once it fizzles out into a husky barely-croak. If you don’t like ‘bad singers’, then this probably isn’t for you. But if you can find something to like in the rough as well as the smooth, then there are few artists working today who so assuredly navigate the interplay between the two.

The only contemporary analogue I can think of is Joanna Newsom: she never borders on tunelessness quite like Dawson does, but both are fond of the same vocal one-two punch, in which a lively and somewhat precarious – often, in Dawson’s case, distinctly off-key – section gives way to a single, sustained, diatonic note: clear as a bell, certain as death and taxes. It’s enough to induce shivers.

They’re not comfortable, these songs: most of them have an uneasy, transitional quality, like milk on the turn. Dawson’s only real motive, it seems to me, is to fashion what’s mundane into a more interesting shape. He can do it with sympathy, as in his portraits of little lives which play such a large role in 2020, and he can do it with strangeness, a hallmark of his stuff from the very start. Both are usually somewhere in the mix, in truth, and the more you start to think about Dawson’s music, the more necessary they both begin to seem.

Doesn’t imaginative invention almost always begin with sympathy – even if it’s just for somebody you’ve made up? Dawson writes himself into the heads of people who aren’t exactly like him or like us, and in doing so gives us a view of life seen from multiple perspectives at once: pagan superstition, poetic transformation, grizzled cynicism, child-like wonder. Of course it’s uncomfortable. It’s meant to be. Walking a mile in someone else’s shoes, you’d expect the heels to rub a bit.

In 2020, the most plangent laments are reserved for those who have been forced by the modern world to adopt daily rhythms of life-denying drudgery. Set against our own ‘boring dystopia’, Dawson’s world is a realm with its horizons of possibility blown wide open: a place where it seems only right that the manifestation of “a horse-headed figure / holding aloft a flaming quiver of bramble silhouettes” should materialise against a backdrop of Newcastle United-themed wallpaper.

A mark of the true visionary, I think, is that they can have you questioning how far reality’s limits might extend. William Blake saw angels over Peckham Rye. In Richard Dawson’s mind’s eye, I like to think, Alan Shearer sometimes sips a pint with a pagan deity. Does the 21st century deserve a singer-songwriter so delightfully attuned to life’s weirder possibilities? It’s a question. That we might all benefit from spending a little more time in Dawsonland, though, seems as clear as day to me.

Image Credit: Paul Hudson via Flickr & Creative Commons.

Sponge Baker to Slater Creator

Grace Spencer
-
0
Sponge Baker to Slater Creator

I’ve never really understood cooking – I firmly established myself as a sponge-baker aged 11, bookmarked a veggie chilli recipe, and called it a day. Compared to the delights of leftover cake-mix or an inhalation of icing sugar, real, proper cooking seemed oniony, long-winded, and a bit unglamorous; I was happy to fill myself up with something carby and let the pudding do the talking. 

When I moved into my second year flat I suddenly had a kitchen without a resident mouse (we named the Wadham one Alan), a variety of food shops along Cowley Road, and flatmates who taught me about the wonders of gochujang (and more importantly, how to move on from my weird obsession with plain pasta and soy sauce!) I started cooking more – and enjoying it. When virhilary hit and I realised I was going to be at home for the foreseeable future, I decided to try to keep it up. I was having too much fun discovering new things with exciting, fairy princess-esque names (trofie? burrata? aquafaba?). I couldn’t stop. 

I thought that if I wanted to level up from BBC GoodFood aficionado to something a bit more sophisticated, I probably needed to take the plunge into the world of cookbooks. But browsing the Blackwells website, I was a bit overwhelmed by the sheer volume of options – an army of groomed people toting huge fish and massive leeks grinned out at me from the screen, daring me to take on their ‘plant-power prescription’ or to eat my Christmas tree (yes, a real book…). One volume stood out among all the rest – a simple, small, orange book with a big gold paint-splatter across the front. Nigel Slater’s GreenFeast: Autumn, Winter seemed much more welcoming. It had the look of a period-drama journal, and my sentimental little heart was captured (and it was on sale, which honestly cinched it for me. Why are cookbooks so expensive? A conversation for another day). 

Slater writes about food with captivating, Tennessee-Williams-style solemnity and pathos. Reading GreenFeast feels like reading confessional poetry, or having a warm bath. Slater meditates on the faintly felt slide into wintry eating in his introduction: “the change starts late on a summer’s evening when you first notice the soft, familiar scent of distant woodsmoke in the sudden chill of the evening air”. We know exactly what he means, and he suggests food is the cosseting antidote to the unsettlement of a changing season. We are instructed to “mash beans into buttery clouds’’ and “bring dishes of sweet potato to melting tenderness in spiced cream”. 

There is a marked physicality to all of this, but one very different from that of other food writers – we can’t imagine Nigella’s exciting and sensuous recommendation to “cut crosses in figs […] so that they open like bird-throated flowers”, or Meera Sodha’s quip that folding spinach into a pan is like “pushing a duvet into a magical handbag,” surfacing in GreenFeast. There is a quieter sense in Slater’s writing that he is describing things faithfully and gratefully, experimenting and unsure, but enjoying the tactile experience of cooking and eating. I think I relate to this somewhat basic response to food more than to anything more ornamented. It feels calm and encouragingly intuitive. I’ve particularly enjoyed Slater’s respect for the meditative qualities of chopping (tofu is great for this – mind-numbing) and for the rituals of the kitchen. He never suggests that his dishes should be dinner-party centrepieces, or ostentatious shows of time management, ingredient-sourcing or dexterity. Every single dish seems well-suited to the sofa. Which, in lockdown, is apt. 

The sense of achievement I’ve felt making these recipes massively outweighs my actual creations – mostly ten-seconds-in-a-blender things – but I feel great about them. Any guilt or qualification surrounding food disappears for me when I make something which I’m proud of and which I’m proud to eat. A word to the wise is that almost everything has an entire pot of double cream in it, and there’s a recipe for fried cake. So, to any fellow non-cookers, tentative-cookers, or soy sauce pasta eaters – properly cooking could be a great, caring thing to do for yourself. And I would recommend letting Slater’s dulcet tones guide you through. 

Image credit: PIXNIO

 

The Love Language of Chopsticks

Megan Chin
-
0
The Love Language of Chopsticks

I am not adept at fine dining. Even after a couple of terms of formal meals in college (albeit curtailed by the pandemic), I still haven’t quite grasped how to neatly balance a pile of peas on the back of my fork, which is apparently the European style. There seems to be such a vast grammar of cutlery knowledge, from spoons to wine glasses to napkin arrangement. 

Frankly, I think I’m much more accustomed to the simple language of chopsticks. Simple, however, is by no means straightforward. To me, the humble art of chopsticks conveys more than any elaborate silverware ever could.

My grandfather’s love language is to teach. One of my earliest memories is of him teaching me to use chopsticks, the proper way. “Only your first two fingers should be moving”, he tells me “and your two chopsticks must never cross”. He can use the chopsticks ambidextrously. He shows me chopstick tricks and we play chopstick wrestling (trying to pry a pea from the other person’s chopstick grip). In the grasp of his skilful hands, there is no need for any other cutlery. There is no need for knives at the table when even slippery noodles can be sliced clean with a pair of chopsticks.

My grandmother’s love language is food. In her hands, the wooden chopsticks are no longer just cutlery, but a vehicle of her concern: “Come, eat more. I cooked this especially for you”. She teaches me not to waste food, to 省, to save. Though she knows little of the origin of chopsticks, they were invented for this very reason — to scrape the leftovers from the bottom of the cooking pot. Leftovers do not exist, however, in this household. For in spite of all the nagging that she gives my grandfather, when he comes home from a long day’s work, what really matters is how my grandmother gently places the best ingredients onto his plate with her chopsticks, and takes the remainders for herself. There is no need for grand gestures, when the simplest emotion of all can be expressed with a pair of chopsticks.

There are all sorts of ways you can use a pair of chopsticks. The custom of using chopsticks differs across cultures, across countries, even across households. But wherever you are, using chopsticks takes practice, patience and perseverance. After more than fifty years of marriage, my grandparents are still figuring it out, with every meal and every mouthful. Deciphering the code of chopsticks takes work, and perhaps nobody is ever really an expert — but isn’t that the beauty of it? That though our chopsticks may cross from time to time and we might drop the food on the table, we can always pick it up and try again.

Artwork by Rachel Jung

What in the World isn’t ‘Global’? A Look at the Causes and Silencing of Ethiopia’s Tigray Crisis

Josh Self
-
0
What in the World isn’t ‘Global’? A Look at the Causes and Silencing of Ethiopia’s Tigray Crisis

CW: violence, sexual violence, descriptions of mass killing.

In a ‘global’ world, national conflicts reflect international trends—or so the argument goes. Our ‘global’ orthodoxy assures us that we live in a world where everything and everyone is interconnected, where patterns of causation extend over the furthest reaches of the Earth. And perhaps the COVID-19 pandemic—literally a disease of ‘all people’—vindicates this worldview. But to this flawed weltanschauung, I present Ethiopia’s Tigray Crisis. 

With ‘global’ discourse dominated by Trump, Brexit and COVID, the Tigray Conflict has been pushed to the periphery and isolated. In the hierarchy of what is important in the world right now, the Tigray Crisis ranks very low indeed. For us, this Western-imposed isolation of the Tigray Crisis exposes the asymmetric power structures and false promises of the ‘international’ age. This incomplete coverage exposes where the power is in our world and where the ‘global’ is not.

If the Tigray Crisis remains almost unknown in the ‘Western’ public consciousness, it is first worth trying to correct this injustice. In April 2018, Abiy Ahmed became Prime Minister of Ethiopia and he quickly took steps to liberalise his country. He ended a decades-long standoff with Eritrea, freed political prisoners, welcomed rebels back from exile, and appointed reformers to key positions. In doing this, he even won ‘global’ accolades, including the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize. However, the pace and scale of these reforms unsettled key players in Abiy Ahmed’s ruling ‘Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front’ (EPRDF) coalition. The hitherto dominant ‘Tigray People’s Liberation Front’ (TPLF) fiercely criticised these measures, with its most fervent objections centring around the apparent end of ‘ethnic federalism’—a fixture of Ethiopian politics since 1995. In short, Ethiopia’s ethno-federal arrangements allow for the devolution of political power to Ethiopia’s ethnically fragmented population. The system aims to establish equality between ethnic groups, but its success is fiercely debated.

For those opposed to the constitutional provision, ethnic federalism undermines national unity and promotes ethnic antagonisms. Ethiopian academic, Menychle Meseret, argues that ethnic federalism ‘has made ethnic groups believe that they have their own areas, and if you come from a different ethnic group … You are chased out, burnt, killed’. However, according to ethnic federalism’s proponents in the TPLF, the provision ensures against the forced-assimilation methods practised under former emperors from Menelik II (1889-1913) to Haile Selaisse (1930-1974). In this view, ethnic federalism acts as a bulwark against coercive centralism. 

As Ahmed Soliman, a fellow at the think-tank Chatham House, alerted to in 2019, ‘Abiy’s aggressive reform agenda has won praise, but shaking up Ethiopia’s government risks exacerbating several long-simmering ethnic rivalries’. Abiy can hardly have been surprised that centralising reforms which redistributed power from the TPLF brought with it significant backlash. And it is in this backlash that we find the origins of Ethiopia’s present crisis.

On 21st November 2019, Abiy Ahmed formed the ‘Prosperity Party’ by merging three of the four parties that made up the EPRDF with five other affiliate parties. Before this move, the EPRDF only governed four of Ethiopia’s ten regions; by creating a new party, Abiy extended control over the whole country except Tigray. Ethiopia’s PM is driving the country’s transition from the centre and the TPLF argue that their concerns are unheard. Undoubtedly, Abiy’s agenda has exposed the taut ethnic fault-lines that have long-bedevilled Ethiopian society.

With the Prosperity Party formed, Ethiopia was due to hold general elections on 29th August 2020. However, Abiy rescheduled the elections for an undetermined date in 2021 citing the threat of COVID-19. At this juncture, the long-running tensions between Abiy and the TPLF hit a new low. The TPLF accused Abiy of using COVID to illegally extend his time in power and they pressed ahead with their local elections in September. These elections were declared illegal by the federal government, which responded by cutting all funding to the Tigray region. For the TPLF, this response amounted to a ‘declaration of war’. Finally, the situation turned to violence on November 4th with a TPLF attack on a Government defence base. The TPLF cited pre-emptive self-defence—but, whatever the case, there was no doubt Ethiopia’s conflict had begun.

In November 2020, following a month-long ‘law enforcement’ campaign that included airstrikes and ground troops, Abiy declared victory over the TPLF. This ‘victory’ came following the shelling of Mekelle, Tigray, a city with a population numbering 500,000. Abiy insists there were no civilian casualties, but witness reports attest differently. Further, Abiy’s pronouncement of victory was manifestly premature. ‘Almost all the Tigrayan forces are outside the big towns and cities’, related one TPLF intelligence officer. Al Jazeera observed ‘that the large numbers of fighters and substantial military hardware that the TPLF is widely believed to control had … already been tactically retreated into the nearby mountains’. And on November 12th, the now-fugitive TPLF Chairman Debretsion Gebremichael denied that the conflict had ended: ‘we are still holding. These people cannot defeat us. We cannot be beaten’.

With Tigray cut off from the world and journalists blocked from entering, much remains unclear about the conflict. But what we do know is incredibly worrying. According to a report released on November 17th by the UN Refugee Agency, the fighting has erupted into a ‘full-scale humanitarian crisis’. A TPLF-led, 24-hour-long massacre in Mai Kadra, Tigray on November 9th saw reasonable coverage in Western media. A preliminary investigation revealed that as many as 600 innocent victims—all labourers not subject to the conflict—died at the hands of TPLF forces. According to one witness, ‘those wounded told me they were attacked with machetes, axes and knives. You can also tell from the wounds that those who died were attacked by sharp objects’. ‘Police and TPLF youth militias went all over town searching for non-Tigrayans to kill’, attested another onlooker, ‘at around 3pm, police and the youths with machetes came to the home we were hiding in’. 

This is one of many shadowy crimes against humanity reportedly committed in Ethiopia over the past six months. In February 2021, The Associated Press exposed the killing of an estimated 800 people in the city of Axum, Tigray; government-backed Eritrean forces are blamed. Further mass killings will likely come to light as further investigations are conducted. There are also disturbing accounts of sexual violence and abuse, fears of mass starvation and reports of ‘fires burning and other fresh signs of destruction’ all occurring at Tigrayan refugee camps hosting nearly 100,000 people.

*

In September 2020, the Trump administration suspended $130 million worth of aid to Ethiopia because of ‘a lack of progress’ on negotiations pertaining to the construction of a dam on the Blue River Nile. According to state department officials, this decision came directly from the President. This was an unusual intervention in African affairs for a President who never visited the continent and rarely commented on it publicly. Trump’s reference to African countries as ‘shithole[s]’ epitomises the former-‘leader of the free world’s’ total bankruptcy of sense regarding the diverse African continent. 

Donald Trump’s ignorance, although singularly damning, is not unique. Centuries of suppression and neglect have created an unconscious mental block that disallows the global north from viewing Africa on its own terms. I fear that if the Tigray Crisis ever earns its due coverage in ‘western’ media, it will be used to buttress age-old representations of Africa as a ‘dark continent’ defined by anarchy, poverty and peril. In the eyes of the wilfully uninformed, the Tigray Crisis might prove Trump’s ‘shithole’ remark. Ultimately, this familiar but false imagery the global north uses to ‘imagine’ Africa needs immediate and complete revision. For in such a continent of ‘darkness’, crises like that in Ethiopia appear ‘normal’—and they are not.

The silencing of the Tigray Crisis is but another chapter within a narrative of Western global domination. And, unfortunately, we are not even close to the fundamental reconsideration of global affairs needed to correct this injustice. While Brexit and Trumpism saw pundits decry ‘the end of the global world’, it is important to recall that which was never ‘global’ at all. It is still customary—if not encouraged—to consider ‘global’ relations as the varying interactions between China, Russia and the US. And with this narrow geopolitical gaze, it is scarcely believable that nations outside of the ‘big three’ and their influence do anything at all. A quick check of BBC News’ ‘World’ page will underline how unimportant ‘other’ nations are. 

As is dictated by centuries of Western thinking, the Tigray Crisis is culturally destined to remain quiet.

Image via Paul Kagame on flickr.

An Ode to the Zoom Dinner Date

Ellie-Jai Williams
-
0
An Ode to the Zoom Dinner Date

I’m a big believer that what you eat and how you feel are intrinsically linked. But often there’s another element to sharing a meal that makes you feel good – company. There’s something about sharing good food together that is not only relaxing and nourishing but intimate, helping to foster a sense of closeness and a bond created through a shared experience. But, as with pretty much everything right now, what happens when couples are separated, restaurants are closed, and morale and motivation are at an all-time-low?

Something my girlfriend and I have found helps both allow us to spend quality time together and give us both the boost we need after a long (and in these times, emotionally draining) week is eating dinner together via zoom. It seems simple, but putting the effort in really helps to bring both a sense of normality and a bit of excitement to your week. We make sure to wear something nice, put on some makeup and treat ourselves to a glass of wine – as we would for those long forgotten dates in restaurants! I even play some jazz and light candles for myself for the added sensory experience.

This week was especially tiring for me and come Friday I was feeling pretty overwhelmed and burnt out. Whilst I was taking the time to mindfully get ready for my date by having a relaxing bath, I realised I hadn’t taken any time to just breathe for almost a whole week. Sometimes I find my productivity surges when working from home due to lack of distractions, commuting, noise, socialising – the general chaos of day-to-day life has faded into the background. But a surge in productivity, like any sense of unbalance in life, does not come without a cost. For me, that cost is that the lines between work and leisure become blurred; with not much else to do in the evening, I find myself doing another bit of an essay instead of unwinding in conversation. With no walk to the library to make, I decide there’s no point getting dressed. With no one to share breakfast ideas with, I find myself having little more than a biscuit and a cup of tea. Come Friday I wake up exhausted and unmotivated, not understanding why – until I realise I’ve spent nearly a week in pyjamas, alone most of the time, and have done little else but work. The work-from-home working week is precarious and can all-too-quickly become depressing, unless we make the active effort to do nice things for ourselves and others, no matter how small.

The night before date night, my (lovely and very thoughtful) girlfriend sent me some pasta via post from one of our favourite companies, Pasta Evangelists. As much as I love cooking an extravagant meal from scratch, the times we’re living in undoubtedly take their toll and so, we decide to treat ourselves to a bit of an indulgence that wasn’t another Chinese takeaway. We ate our pasta over Zoom together and enjoyed every second. After the call ended a few hours later, I still felt a wave of post-call loneliness coming to the realisation she wasn’t actually there physically – but I felt so much lighter, happier, and connected. I fell asleep relaxed and with a smile on my face for the first time that week.

Making the effort to get dressed up and treat yourself to some good food isn’t something we always feel like doing when we’re exhausted, but it’s something I believe we should make the effort to do more often. After living for a year with some form of lockdown restrictions, it’s easy to settle into the rhythm of doing the same thing, eating the same thing, and enjoying the worn-in comfort of wearing the same pyjamas – but in order to stay motivated and inspired, we need variety. 

So I encourage all of you to schedule a dinner date this week, and do it properly – it doesn’t need to be expensive, but making the effort to fully show up will undoubtedly give you a boost and help you say f**k you to the notorious lockdown lethargy. Even better, it will not only make you feel happy, but allows you to share that happiness with someone you love. So make the effort to share the same meal together with your girlfriend, boyfriend, best friend, mum, dad, auntie, whoever it is that makes you feel good – buy the same ingredients from the shop and send them one of your favourite recipes. Cooking and eating together is a type of love language, and there’s no reason why that can’t continue to flourish even when you can’t be physically together. 

 

Check out @spaghettiandspice on Instagram for more food related stories, recipes and inspiration.

 

Image credit: Davide Cantelli via Unsplash

 

The Pret Phenomenon

Karishma Khosla
-
0
The Pret Phenomenon

In case you’re one of the few students who hasn’t claimed their free trial, or never witnessed the never-ending queue which sprawled halfway down Cornmarket Street, let me remind you that Pret A Manger launched the UK’s first in-shop coffee subscription last September. For £20 per month, customers can claim five Pret drinks each day, including milk alternatives, additional syrups and espresso shots at no added cost. Now you may be asking: what’s the catch? Well, besides having to claim each drink at least half an hour apart, there isn’t one, yet!

Given that the average Pret drink is around £2.50, the subscription is good value. From your ninth drink, you’re saving. The real question is whether you would have bought those nine drinks prior to the subscription service. Not all of us are coffee addicts, and so, whilst it’s good value, whether we are actually saving is open to debate.

Getting your money’s worth becomes considerably more challenging when there’s no longer a Pret store around the corner, as many of us realised when we returned home at the end of Michaelmas. There are just under 400 Pret stores in the UK, but not everyone has one near them. The subscription service is quite flexible and makes it easy to cancel, providing a solution for students returning home for the vac (or longer as it transpired!) The Pret subscription caused further issues when a customer was isolating and unable to use their coffee subscription. Pret explicitly states that “the QR codes can only be used in Participating Shops and cannot be redeemed online” whilst their pausing facility only stops the subscription from the end of that month, which may be a futile solution if your isolation ends before this – something some of us might have learnt the hard way last term! 

For students who are endlessly in essay crises, balancing too many things or frankly just feeding their caffeine addiction, the subscription service was inevitably going to be a hit, particularly after months of takeaway coffee being a rare treat! It’s understandable that during a global pandemic and with various lockdown restrictions, we begin to appreciate the little things, including a hot drink and a walk in Uni Parks or Christ Church Meadows. It also offers a reason to leave college. Plus, as anyone who has a Pret subscription will probably know, it is almost impossible not to find a familiar face in the queue. (I certainly found my college wife in the Pret queue mid essay crisis more than once!)  

The subscription offers customers large savings, making us wonder whether it is profitable for Pret. Their speciality was food rather than coffee, so the subscription allows them to grow through targeting a new market and building on customer loyalty- an integral part of staying afloat for any business during the pandemic. Pret may have recognised the costly impact of these subscriptions. Students have noted that Pret is slowly restricting the number of drinks eligible to be claimed, as one affronted Oxfessor commented: “thanks for ruining my day by removing smoothies and frappes from your subscription. how am I meant to get through these times without a berry blast?”

Pret focuses on sustainability as well as location to differentiate themselves. Organic coffee, recyclable packaging and a commitment to donating all leftover food each day, combined with their dominant presence in London, distinguishes them. When the pandemic hit and the city went quiet, Pret’s customer footfall plummeted and prolonged remote working left them struggling to regain sales. 

For Pret, the free trial encourages people to visit, sometimes with friends. More importantly, there’s the possibility that they will buy additional items once they are in store. This explains why Pret subscriptions cannot be redeemed online. How many times has your barista asked if you’re “sure you don’t want a brownie bar to compliment your coffee?” A customer with a Pret subscription is unlikely to head to Costa or Starbucks. This is the level of competition the pandemic caused in the coffee industry and might well result in a price war! However, it seems only those with coffee as a secondary product of their business are engaging with these subscription services, with Leon recently following suit. The free trial lures people in, and given the addictive nature of caffeine, they may well become long-term loyal subscribers. Once you’re hooked, that’s it. It feels bizarre to pay for a coffee after cancelling your subscription. Maybe that’s the hidden catch after all- not only to coffee but to the subscription itself!  

Customers will not want to lose the subscription service any time soon and at least while Pret have lost the revenue ordinarily generated by commuters, it is relatively safe to assume the subscription is here to stay. However, should the vaccine be successful, there will likely be a price hike as economic stability is slowly restored. So, be sure to make the most of the subscription when we do return to Oxford – you’ll definitely find me somewhere in the queue! 

Image Credit: Marco Verch via Flickr

1...333334335...2,486Page 334 of 2,486

Support Student Journalism

Cherwell is Oxford’s oldest independent newspaper, established in 1920. We are entirely student-run. By supporting us, you will contribute to keeping our paper in print and online. Every donation makes a difference.

Donate

Explore

Follow us

More

Oxford Student Publications Limited © 2025 - All Rights Reserved | Privacy Policy

Website by James Ashley