Friday 1st August 2025
Blog Page 783

Oxford SU votes to support UCU strike

Greg Ritchie
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Oxford SU votes to support UCU strike

Oxford SU will stand with academic staff in their upcoming pensions strikes, following an ‘Extraordinary Council’ meeting last night.

Delegates passed a motion by 56 votes to 13, mandating Oxford SU’s sabbatical officers to issue a statement in full support of the University and College Union’s (UCU) strike action. It also called on the University to oppose the impending pension reforms which will impact thousands of University employees.

However, while passing with a large majority, several students expressed concern at the impact on teaching. One student told Cherwell that the SU “now supports finalists being left with potentially no teaching whatsoever for three weeks”.

The emergency meeting, held at St Catherine’s College, was called after a failure to pass an acceptable motion regarding the University and College Union’s (UCU) strike last week.

The SU had previously faced widespread criticism for their initial statement, which said it was “regrettable” that the proposed strike could adversely affect students’ education.

In contrast, last night’s motion offered a far stronger support for the academics’ industrial action.

It called on students to support their lecturers and tutors, even if that means not attending classes, with an exemption being made for compulsory assessments.

It also mandated the vice president for graduates, Marianne Melsen, to contact all graduate students and encourage them to join the UCU.

However, despite the amendment excluding compulsory examinations, concerns were still raised at impact the strikes will have on students.

One fourth year told Cherwell: “Tutors and academic staff are absolutely justified in being aggrieved by changes to their pensions.

“But, it’s also important that our student union supports the interests of students. Despite claims made about solidarity and long-term effects, the motion Oxford SU passed today – encouraging students not to attend classes, and offering support to strikers – means that the SU now supports finalists being left with potentially no teaching whatsoever for three weeks, which is deeply worrying.

“Oxford SU is there to represent students, and while we should show our support to tutors in other ways, we should not be supporting the strike.”

UCU’s planned walk-outs are a response to proposed reforms of the Universities Superannuation Scheme, the fund which provides the pensions to academic staff at universities such as Oxford.

Independent estimates suggest that the changes would cause a typical lecturer to lose £200,000 in pension contributions by the time of their retirement.SU votes to support UCU strike

Raise and Give falls short

Ethan Croft
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Raise and Give falls short

Oxford SU’s charity fundraising organisation Raise and Give (RAG) made just £800 at their annual 2016 ball, compared to an average fundraising total of £3,633 over the past five years.

RAG also raised an overall net total of £35,000 for all of their events in 2016/17, compared witha £59,910.62 average over the past five years.

At RAG’s central fundraising event of 2016, The Mad Hatter ball, student organisers raised
£37,885.63, but spent £37,085.16, bringing the net total of money raised for charity that evening to £800.47.

In the academic year 2016/17, RAG raised £106,806.78, and spent £72,177.14.
The net money raised that year stood at £34,629.64.

This compares to an average net figure of £ 59,910.62 going back to 2012.
Oxford SU’s Head of Student Engagement and Communications, Emily Beardsmore, told Cherwell: “RAG is a Student led group any one can get involved and run for the committee.

“The Committee changes each year and each committee has different priorities.

“Oxford SU will continue to support students to raise money for charity.”

Victory preview – ‘a truly fantastical world’

Charles Pidgeon
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Victory preview – ‘a truly fantastical world’

Lusciously dark is the only way to describe Carnival Theatre’s take on Howard Barker’s Victory. Taking place in an absurd and fictionalised version of Charles II’s Restoration, the play centres on Susan Bradshaw (played by Bea Udale-Smith) as she journeys through a world in upheaval to find the scattered pieces of her husband’s corpse… It is as bizarre and grotesque as it sounds – featuring dismembered limbs as props, vile language, and sumptuous costumes. The scenes I saw combined a frenetic, animal energy with royal pompousness – the result is a world that is overflowing in excess, both of charm as well as brutality. Director Julia Pilkington says she was attracted to Barker’s unique use of language which clashes rich poetics against coarseness and vulgarity. I was struck by how darkly compelling the scenes I saw were: grief, sarcasm, animality, and hilarity bubble through the language and physicality of the cast. I witnessed Bradshaw and Scrope (Alex Rugman) crawling like dogs and climbing out windows, King “Charlie” (Adam Diaper) throw a tantrum and take his trousers off during his coronation, and royal mistress Devonshire (Rosa Garland) describe the colour of a baboon’s bum whilst trying to seduce the King. The cast’s dexterity in moving through abrupt tonal shifts was impressive; balancing the absurd against moments of tenderness and humour. Udale-Smith in particular was terrifyingly compelling as she portrayed Bradshaw’s grief with something that is perhaps best described as pathetic desperation.

To match this rich script, Carnival Theatre have created a sumptuous aesthetic. Mia Parnall’s costumes should be applauded for their debaucherous magnificence. Marie-Antoinette style wigs, embroidered bloomers, billowing dresses, and capes help embody the bacchic moment of the Restoration. When I asked about the sound design, I was told that Nathan Geyer’s compositions feature ‘jangly, abrasive, warped harpsichords’ to match the historical dissonance of the setting. It is clear that the cast and creatives are highly invested in matching the text’s excess as they build a truly fantastical world. Pilkington’s passion for the project is infectious. She described how the cast channel various animals in rehearsals to spice up the many minor characters. She comments that even smaller characters have fantastically poetic lines, and that she wants to do them justice by giving them ‘a smack of colour’.

In this riotous production, my only worry is that the excess of character, language, costume, and sound might overwhelm, preventing some of the emotional impact from landing. I’m reassured by comments from the cast, such as when Garland spoke about the work they had done on deciding when to invest characters with depth and when to render them as comic grotesques. The luxuriousness of the spectacle is strikingly ambitious in scope, but I have faith in the team’s execution (pun intended) of this vision. Overall, Carnival Theatre’s production promises to be one hell of a romp, and should not be missed. The dedication of the cast and crew to creating this succulent and brutal world is truly exciting, and I wish them all the best.

Joe Inwood elected new SU President

Greg Ritchie
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Joe Inwood elected new SU President

Joe Inwood has been elected SU President, winning with 1114 of first-choice votes.

He narrowly beat rivals Hannah Taylor and Ellie Dibben, who secured 1091 and 1025 votes respectively. A total of 234 students voted to reopen nominations.

Overall turnout for the elections was 17.6 per cent – a decrease from last year’s figure of 19 per cent.

Inwood will start his term on 24 June and serve for the 2018-19 academic year. Alongside the rest of the sabbatical team, he will work full-time and receive a salary.

The six students elected as sabbatical officers, alongside the National Union of Students (NUS) delegates and student trustees, are as follows:

President – Joe Inwood

VP Access and Academic Affairs  – Lucas Bertholdi-Saad

VP Charities and Community – Rosanna Greenwood

VP Graduates – Alison D’Ambrosia

VP Welfare and Equal Opportunities – Ellie Macdonald

VP Women – Katt Walton

NUS Delegates – Niamh White, Rida Vaquas, Mercy Haggerty, Samuel Dunnett, Alexander Curtis and Hugo Raine

Student Trustees – Ivy Manning, Atticus Stonestrom, Jack Wands

The Kite Runner review – ‘a choreographed exuberance prose cannot achieve’

Izzy Troth
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The Kite Runner review – ‘a choreographed exuberance prose cannot achieve’

Transferring a novel to the stage, particularly one as distinguished and beloved and as Khaled Hosseini’s ‘The Kite Runner’, requires sensitivity and an authoritative creative vision. Matthew Spangler’s timely production, under the direction of Giles Croft, excels in exploiting the opportunities of the stage, stripping Hosseini’s tale of friendship, fatherhood, and redemption to the essentials, with invigorating results.

A play will not have the subtle, cumulative effect of hundreds of pages of prose consumed over several days. Spangler accepts this, but the decision to have Amir (Raj Ghatak) present onstage, narrating his life throughout, and reflecting retrospectively on the characters who shaped him, efficiently conveys the idea threading Hosseini’s novel together: that a person is formed by his experiences, and must be judged by his relations to others. This sense is also rapidly transmitted within the first seconds, with Spangler’s placing of Hassan (Jo Ben Ayed), Baba (Gary Pillai) and Soraya (Ameira Darwish) onstage as Amir begins his monologue recounting his ‘formative’ years.

One initially jarring aspect is the way in which Amir, meant to be a boy enacting Westerns in his garden in Kabul, is wearing the stubbornly middle-aged combination of a white shirt tucked into trousers favoured by off-duty solicitors. But perhaps this is the point; the audience must consider the professional, Californian Amir of the present day as the child dragged from innocence by the abuse of his closest friend, racial intolerance, and war. Amir’s San Francisco drawl switches to Farsi in the initial scenes depicting the fiercely loyal friendship between himself and Hassan, the latter played with a haunting, almost ethereal innocence by Jo Ben Ayed. Leaping between languages like this reminds us of the layers of Amir’s cultural identity, an element very well suited to theatrical interpretation. The character of Baba, interpreted by Pillai in a stand-out performance, is similarly enhanced by stagecraft. The shock of Baba’s transition from the distant, irritable entrepreneur to a man reduced to ‘two suitcases and one disappointing son’, ultimately emerging as a father so devoted that his last act is to cling to life long enough to see the marriage of his son, is effectively compressed into two hours.

Perhaps why this production works so well is because of Spangler’s observation that in the novel, Amir’s first-person narrative is a cathartic, confessional process. It is one that, in retrospect, cries out for dramatization, the result of which is Amir’s unifying monologue. There is a greater sense that the character reaches maturity by articulating his guilt than in the novel, and his elation in redeeming himself, finding the ‘way to be good again’, has a choreographed exuberance prose cannot achieve.

There are elements of the plot that would have no doubt posed initial concerns for Spangler and Croft: the rape of Hassan, his murder, the staging of the kite runners of Kabul. The first two of these elicited the revulsion, then seething outrage, of every audience member. Transmitted through disturbing silhouette, these scenes illustrated the essential inhumanity of such atrocities: the attackers are devoid of character, reduced to sociopathic phantoms.

Whilst successfully tackling the upsetting material, Croft’s production has a lightness that saves the audience from complete despair. Ghatak’s delivery of the monologue is sensitive to the gentle humour which hallmarks Hosseini’s fiction: describing Baba’s slavish devotion to Reagan, and his pleasure at finding an English term to describe Assef (Soroosh Lavasini): ‘sociopath’, are examples of this and act as respite to the unashamedly disquieting moments. The joy of the wedding scene, set to the Afghan song Ahesta Boro, similarly elevates the mood and offers a sense of spectacle that a novel could not achieve. Most uplifting, and most masterfully staged, is the depiction of the freedom that Amir attains in shedding his psychological burden in rescuing Hassan’s son. In the closing scene of eponymous kite running, the sound effects, generated by cast members spinning schwirrbogen, a rattle-shaped instrument that whistles like the wind, were absorbing and successful in mirroring Amir’s frenzied joy. Composer Jonathan Girling described the onstage tabla player, the musician Hanif Khan, as the ‘next most important person’ in ‘The Kite Runner’. Khan’s performance, which begins as the audience enters the theatre and ends only at the curtain, the man sitting onstage for the full two and a half hours, gives the tale cohesion and the emotions an urgency.

One flaw in the production is its time constraints. In the novel, for example, the shock of the news that Hassan is Amir’s brother, and the distress produced by Zorab’s suicide attempt, build up over several paragraphs, and readers can flick back to alter their interpretations and refresh themselves of foreshadowing events. Compressing such revelations into seconds, regardless of characters’ outraged dialogue, does lose this effect, and it may be that the audience does not receive sufficient time to process such information; but there is little a dramatist can do to alter this. Spangler’s stage adaptation is unashamedly that: it stands alone as drama– myself and a friend who had never read the novel were equally engrossed – offering a fresh and timely revision of Hosseini’s classic.

Brasenose grad’s attempt to sue Oxford dismissed

Libby Cherry
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Brasenose grad’s attempt to sue Oxford dismissed

The High Court has dismissed Oxford graduate Faiz Siddiqui’s case against Oxford University. Siddiqui had sought damages of £1m after receiving a low 2:1 instead of the first he expected.

The History student, who graduated from Brasenose College in 2000, claimed his academic disappointment had been due to poor teaching in his Indian Special Subject.

The University said in a statement: “History has been studied and taught with distinction at Oxford for longer than at almost any other university and the quality and range of its History teaching and examining across the collegiate University has long been widely recognised.”

According to the court summary, Siddiqui claimed his exam performance had prevented him from gaining a position at a top American Law college and had given him a “shattering blow” that had precipitated serious mental health issues.

Siddiqui achieved his poorest marks in the History ‘gobbets’ paper.

Siddiqui claimed that he had only been taught enough material to answer “5% of the gobbets”.

However, it was suggested that Siddiqui’s poor performance could have been explained by a number of factors, including “a severe episode of hay fever.”

A subject ambassador for History at Corpus Christi College, Emily Foster, said: “It is definitely possible to do all the work in the world and still have a terrible paper – not everything comes up every year.

“Generally the teaching can vary a lot depending on the tutor’s interests but we have so few contact hours (typically no more than 3-4 a week) that I really couldn’t see that affecting his degree substantially.

“Most of our work is pretty self-guided. As you can probably tell whilst I sympathise with Siddiqui I can’t really imagine any degree of bad teaching setting him that far back given how much work we do ourselves.”

The court concluded: “When students are incurring substantial debts to pursue their university education, the quality of the education delivered will undoubtedly come under even greater scrutiny than it did in the past.

“There may be some rare cases where some claim for compensation for the inadequacy of the tuition provided may succeed, but it is hardly the ideal way of achieving redress.

“Litigation is costly, time and emotion consuming and runs the significant risk of failure, particularly in this area where establishing a causative link between the quality of teaching and any alleged “injury” is fraught with difficulty.

“There must be a better way of dealing with this kind of issue if it cannot be resolved by the individual concerned simply accepting what has happened and finding a positive way forward.”

It Happened One Night – merely antiquated, or timelessly great?

Marina Hou
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It Happened One Night – merely antiquated, or timelessly great?

With Valentine’s Day fast approaching, the peak season for romantic comedies has finally arrived. If you are finding it difficult to choose which film to watch, I invite you to join me on my annual pilgrimage into the world of Frank Capra.

Known for being the first film to win all five major Academy Awards, Capra’s It Happened One Night stars a pre-Gone with the Wind Clark Gable and a winsome Claudette Colbert as a delightfully mismatched pair.

The film follows a spoiled socialite, Ellie Andrews, who flees from her millionaire father to be with her new husband, a fortune hunter of the worst kind.

However, on her way to New York, Ellie has all her money stolen, and so is thrust together, in classic rom-com fashion, with unemployed reporter, Peter Warne, who promises to help her get to her husband in exchange for an exclusive once she arrives.

As they travel cross-country, their initial dislike for one another slowly thaws and their relationship begins to develop.

As one would expect from a film that was made more than eighty years ago, there are several aspects that feel antiquated to a modern audience, perhaps most notably in the film’s portrayal of Ellie.

Throughout the movie, Ellie is very much characterised as a damsel in distress. She requires Peter’s help in almost every aspect of the journey, and has little common sense when it comes to managing her own life. For instance, Peter carries her across a river, prepares her bed, and manages the logistics of the trip.

Surprisingly, even with this dated portrayal of the female main character, the film remains appealing to modern audiences. There is just enough defiance in Ellie to make her an engaging lead. This is perhaps most aptly demonstrated through the famous hitchhiking scene, as she shows Peter once and for all that ‘the limb is mightier than the thumb’, at least when it comes to picking up a ride.

The power of a romantic comedy comes from its characters and its ability to keep the audience invested in the core relationship. The bare synopsis of It Happened One Night does it no justice, as it is the witty dialogue between the two characters that cements this film as a fantastic romantic comedy.

Somehow, through the clever quips and incessant banter, you are left feeling that these two characters will only be able to find their equal in each other.

But perhaps instead of asking ‘What makes It Happened One Night the ideal romantic-comedy?’ you should ask ‘Why you would watch anything other than the original?’

Although it’s by no means the first romantic comedy, almost all subsequent attempts can find some of their ingredients within Capra’s masterpiece. Indeed, the film has been described as a ‘howto guide for countless imitators’ by Criterion.

Regardless, the combination of the striking chemistry between Gable and Colbert, with Frank Capra’s beautiful direction, results in a film beyond compare, full of charm and full of life.

Rarely does a film utilise so perfectly the chemistry of its stars and pair it with an almost flawlessly fitting script, producing something completely enchanting. Whilst there have been a number of fantastic romantic comedies since, there is simply something that sets this one apart.

From legendary camera shots of the bride running away from her wedding to a remarkably Seinfeldian discussion about dunking a donut, everything about the film is just a little bit ahead of its time, a rare creative venture where each element seems to have clicked into place.

Chainsmokers, Özil cancel Oxford Union visits

Matthew Roller
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Chainsmokers, Özil cancel Oxford Union visits

DJ duo The Chainsmokers and German footballer Mesut Özil have pulled out of their scheduled appearances at the Oxford Union.

The pair had been two of the highest-profile speakers due to speak this term.

In an email sent to members yesterday, the Union said that The Chainsmokers’ event next Tuesday had been cancelled “due to illness”.

In the same email, it was announced that Özil’s visit, scheduled for 20 February, had been cancelled for “reasons beyond our control”.

A third speaker, actor, writer and director David Cross, has also pulled out of his appearance. Cross, known for his stand-up comedy as well as performances in Mr Show and Arrested Development, was due to visit on 21 February.

A statement offered by the Oxford Union said: “The reasons for all three of these cancellations are factors beyond our control.

“The schedules of these high-profile individuals, are as you can imagine, incredibly subject to change. Whilst the Union committee work hard to ensure that cancellations are minimal, it’s sometimes just beyond our control.

“The Chainsmokers have both fallen ill, and needed to cancel as they really can’t take on any other commitments with an incredibly hectic tour schedule.

“The other two speakers’ cancellations were also factors for scheduling reasons that were simply beyond our control. It’s a shame that there’s been three in such short succession, but again, it really is down to random chance.”

The Chainsmokers, listed by Forbes as the third-highest paid DJs worldwide, were due to speak on the same evening as singer Paloma Faith.

The New York-based pair, who shot to fame in 2013 following their viral hit ‘#Selfie’, became the first artist to spend 26 weeks in the top five of the US Billboard Hot 100 chart last year with their song ‘Closer’.

Özil, whose Arsenal team-mate Héctor Bellerín became the first active Premier League footballer to appear at the Union on Monday, was due to visit just two days before his side’s Europa League Last-32 game at home to Östersunds.

The 29-year-old, who joined the North London club in 2013, recently signed a new, £350,000-a-week contract, making him the Premier League’s second highest-paid player.

The Union also said it hoped that their appearances could be rearranged.

It said: “Hopefully we’ll be able to rearrange these visits for a later date – I understand it’s disappointing for members to hear, but they should know that we really are doing that we can to secure their visits.

“It’s also worth adding that just as speakers cancel, we’ve also had several additions – busy schedules of course mean that events are sometimes cancelled, but equally means that sometimes things can’t be arranged unless at short notice, which leads to new additions!”

An updated version of the Union’s term card can be found here.

A slow descent to hell

Becky Cook
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A slow descent to hell

Flying has undoubtedly made our lives a lot simpler. You can pack your bags, book a flight and be there in a day. While it has made the world seem smaller and more accessible, it has also introduced a swathe of potential annoyances to our travelling experience. There is not only the disturbing possibility that you could be making Richard Branson or Michael O’Leary even richer, but the whole experience is an obstacle course of lengthy lines, sullen adults, blubbering babies and cramped seating which will combine to test your resilience, character and sense of humour. Taking this into account, I was surprised to find that customer satisfaction is somehow on the rise for the fifth consecutive year, according to the J.D Power 2017 North America Airline Satisfaction Study. It measured the satisfaction of travellers at a high of 756 points out of 1000. Yet when the topic of international air travel arises, it only ever seems to elicit grumbles and horror stories. It was only last summer that a United Airlines passenger was violently dragged off a plane after refusing to give up his seat, sparking a media firestorm for the airline. The passenger, Dr. David Dao, sustained a concussion, broke his nose and lost teeth in the process of being flung out.

It is a far cry from the time when air travel was a privilege and a luxury. The current exercise in discomfort feels akin to conveying cattle; this is only being made worse by the increase in air passenger misbehaviour. Perhaps, in-flight inebriation is becoming a somewhat understandable way to ease the affliction of flying. I can’t help but dread walking through the airport’s sliding doors, longing for the comparable tranquillity of a train ride. The cinematic wonders of Brief Encounter and Before Sunrise would hardly have worked on a Ryanair flight to Ibiza. If there are two things that airlines are expertly capable of, they are getting you where to need to go and making you miserable on the way.

I distinctly remember the unabated joy with which I used to look forward to going home to England for the summer holidays. It wasn’t the destination that I anticipated, but the journey itself. Flying, now widely considered a slow descent to hell, was something myself and my younger siblings all relished. Hours of lounging with newish films and food brought to you by saccharine sweet flight attendants. Suffice to say I have since morphed into the embittered archetypal flyer than makes up the majority of the populace. The destination is now the only reason I can endure the chronic discomfort of the journey: enjoyment became inurement. What was the source of my epiphany? One long and arduous journey home to Shanghai for Christmas.

My sister Katie and I were travelling with Scandinavian Airlines for what was
our inaugural and conclusive flight with the commercial airline. Our Mum had left booking the flight too late and had to scrape the proverbial barrel. At check-in, we saw the SAS logo and felt reassured: we were in good hands. However, it turned out that, in this case, those who dare do not win. We went through the obligatory dehumanising security check. You should only have to wait in such mammoth queues for a rollercoaster ride or film tickets, not for an order to take off your watch and a once over from a burly woman with a truncheon in her belt. At this point you are forced to accept the fact that the airport will fleece you as you wind through a maze of duty-free shops, complete with various shop assistants spraying you unsolicited with some tween popstar’s new fragrance. In this case it was having to pay an astronomical sum for a bottle of water which, considering the price, should have been water distilled from the fountain of youth, filtered through sheets of gold and infused with Densuke watermelon.

We made it onto the plane; a dystopian place where all people are large and all seats are small. Airlines are increasingly enthusiastic to shovel as many passengers into their aluminium tubes as possible, a move which has to account for the astonishing shrinking act the plane seat has performed in recent years, shifting from nine abreast to ten. Once the clamouring for locker space had died down, we were left to our own devices for two hours while the ineffably useless pilot acted contrite over the fact that Air Traffic Control was facing a cataclysmic crash of their systems. At one stage, the air hostesses considered a mass disembark. Sense boarded and that was abandoned. We eventually pulled away from our gate and lethargically made our way to the runway for a take-off that was three hours overdue. The short flight was spent in a cloud of heavily salted savouries and a good book. By the time we were drawing close to Copenhagen Airport our giddiness at having finished another stressful term at Wellington had dulled and irritation was leaking into its place. We were pretty sure we had missed our connection.

Our first visit to Scandinavia got off to a literal shaky start. The aforementioned pilot of questionable ability announced this cracker over the intercom: “Ladies and gentlemen, the storm on the ground is very bad but I will try my best to land the plane”. I shall omit the expletives which were the sole words that could express our utter disbelief at the situation. I comforted myself with the knowledge that when a plane is about to crash the crew turn down the cabin pressure, so everyone is unconscious when it makes its final touchdown. Incredulity abounded, but despite the fierce turbulence, which was probably exacerbated by the pilot’s sweaty grip on the ludicrously named joystick, we touched the tarmac with all engines functioning and a consistent life count.

Then the fun and games really began: we were told to go to the Transit Help desk as we had missed our connection to Shanghai. We disembarked and had only made it off the gangway when Katie turned to me with a face resembling Edvard Munch’s masterpiece. At the best of times my sister is a haphazard, chaotic mess of disorganisation and always
picks opportune moments to express this muddled side of her character. She dropped her bags and, in a deadpan voice, told me she had left her passport on the plane before plunging back into the streaming multitudes getting off the plane. It was only when she returned empty handed that I could fully appreciate her imbecility. Her passport was in the bag she had left with me.

The atmosphere became strained as we sprinted to the Transit desk, and it was intensified by the circuitous queue of the fellow passengers we were confronted with once there. At this stage Katie and I were not on speaking terms, and so stood and silently waited as the line crept forward. Finally at the front, we were told that there were no flights to Shanghai until the following evening, so we would instead be put on one to Beijing in a couple of hours, with a subsequent connection to Shanghai. Too weary to object, we took it lying down and walked to our gate, eventually boarding in abject silence. The incompetence of SAS knew no bounds: our seats were not next to each other. We sat and waited for the vacant space in between us to be filled, hoping it wouldn’t. Luckily one woman walked past us; unluckily a six foot man indicated the seat was his. He was a curious creature, as every time the seatbelt sign lit up he would either not make any move to buckle his or he would actually undo it. This led to the tiring process of the flight attendant having to constantly come back and tell him to fasten his seatbelt.

I spent the nine hour flight intermittently sleeping and considering how the clichéd screaming child at the front of the cabin was the best birth control out there. A new obstacle was presented by the culinary journey we were subjected to. It is commonly accepted that plane food is largely unappetising; if confronted with the task of choosing your last meal, you’re hardly going to request the miscellaneous rectangle of beige matter you were served 30,000 feet above the Atlantic that one time. It has been found that at high altitudes our nasal passages dry out and the air pressure desensitises our taste buds, accounting for the prolific use of spicy and salty inflight dishes. Gordon Ramsay recently commented to Refinery29 that “There’s no fucking way I eat on planes. I worked for airlines for ten years, so I know where this food’s been and where it goes, and
how long it took before it got on board.” When presented with our gelatinous stew I had many questions. What were the yellow bits? Why was it emanating that smell?
What had a done to deserve it?

We landed on a typical smoggy morning in Beijing and as soon as we rejoined the ground our compulsive seatbelt companion whipped out his phone to obsessively check how many likes he had on his latest inane Instagram post. Katie and I were not particularly sad to part with him. We emerged, in the wrong Chinese city, resembling something that had been dragged through thorny undergrowth; and we still had another flight to go. We went through our domestic security check in a hazy delirium of fatigue, trudging our belongings to yet another gate. “When you fly Scandinavian” Katie monotonously repeated. It seemed they called for everyone but us to board the plane first: First Class, Business Class, families with small children, the elderly, people with pets, people with an arthritic knee, and people with neck rolls. Our fellow forsaken simply hovered, waiting to charge through. We were finally allowed on by the surly attendants only to find that, in typical Chinese flying etiquette, a couple of nonplussed passengers had taken our seats. The onerous process of getting them to move ensued, and we now had the language barrier to reckon with.

The flight was mercifully the shortest, especially considering it was the one most lacking the basic amenities of personal space and clean air. We finally landed in Shanghai – the odyssey was over. We began to look forward to seeing the family, showering and being able to stretch as far as our limbs permitted on a horizontal piece of furniture. When we landed for the third time in two days all the other passengers began clapping furiously. Such an irritating habit should only be permissible in a situation reminiscent of Airplane!, where a passenger has to land the aircraft. Once the round of applause had ceased, everybody was instantly on their feet, searching for space for themselves and their luggage to assume in the aisles. The flight attendants tried in vain to seat everyone again, but the majority of the passengers insisted on standing in the aisles for fifteen minutes while we taxied and waited for the plane door to open. Katie and I sat staring at the mayhem.

You would think, like we did, that this must be the end of our strife. However, just as we had missed a connection, so had our luggage; we left Baggage Claim with no clothes other than the ones on our backs. Katie and I emerged into Pudong Arrivals a shadow of the people who had walked into Heathrow Departures. It seemed we had reverted back to a primal state, consumed with hunger, fatigue and chronic irritation. We found no waiting family members at the arrival gate, so took a seat and waited once more.

Let’s Talk About: PDA

Becky Cook
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Let’s Talk About: PDA

As someone who takes perverse pleasure in walking directly through the interlocked hands of a couple, I am not an advocate of public displays of affection (PDA).

In fact, I consider myself strongly opposed to the saccharine and at times nauseating ritual whereby unassuming onlookers can be subjected to the public exchange of saliva. Frankly, it’s something which should be confined to the privacy of four walls and a closed door, an airport arrivals gate or, at least, the shadowy corners of a crowded club.

Except, to the latter I will add the addendum that if you are a couple aggressively getting off in Bridge, try to avoid doing it in front of the narrow walkway to the toilets. You’re just in the way.

Perhaps it’s down to the four years I lived in Dubai, part of the United Arab Emirates, where public displays of affection are seen as insulting and offensive to the local customs and culture. In fact, they’re illegal.

I was told under no circumstances should I be overly affectionate in public. As teenagers, this seemed an irritating encumbrance to us all. Yet it was reinforced whenever I overheard my parents discussing the unsuspecting Western tourists that had been caught kissing on the beach or heavy petting at the mall, and who were thus met with severe penalties – from imprisonment to deportation.

I remember one flight back to the UK, looking across the aisle and seeing what I can only describe as a woman sporadically trying to fit her entire head into her partner’s mouth. I’d definitely become hyperaware of PDAs. While I understand that falling in love, or even in lust, is something special, I do think there should be a line. And, in my opinion, this etiquette boundary lies somewhere in between a subtle romantic touch and aggressive snog sessions. I have to ask why all this is necessary.

Why does every Tom, Dick and Harry need to be involved in your relationship, if only for a few moments of their day? These overt displays of affection just seem more performative than anything else; I can’t help but suspect there’s some overcompensation going on. My suspicion is reinforced by a study carried out by the University of Kansas in 2016, entitled ‘Wanting to Be Seen: Young People’s Experi- ences of Performative Making Out’. This found that one big motivation for PDA is image, with 32 per cent of female participants and 37 per cent of male participants admitting they’ve used PDA as a tool to show off their relationship to others. Obviously, I know this is not the only motivation, but whatever the incentive, thrusting private acts into the public sphere feels like a bizarre intru- sion of privacy for the onlooker. In short, it makes most people uncomfortable. But it is an inadvertent intrusion – it has become an unavoidable display, leaving the passerby feeling awkward and embarrassed.

Social media adds to the problem by providing a further outlet to the overt display of this soft porn. PDA becomes PDDA: public displays of digital affection. Again, I think this has a spectrum. Changing your relationship status is to be expected, but a barrage of sickly sweet statuses or snogging selfies are too much.

It is simply the same thing on a different public platform. These regular, gushing expressions of love are just too intimate. In an ‘Instagram age’, people have the task of discerning the reality from the fiction in what appears on their feed. The cin- ematised relationship adds another potential dimension of artifice. Scrolling through the endless posts all about how Chris owns Gemma’s heart, or how lucky Sophie is to have Ben in her life, gets old. Fast.

Ultimately, I really don’t feel I should be forced to bear witness to PDAs, or anyone else for that matter. It’s none of our busiiness, yet we can’t help getting involved, especially when it’s forcefully flouted in our faces. Exaggerated and overblown PDA simply feels constructed for appearances, even if in actuality it isn’t, and therefore utterly unnecessary.

Frankly, PDAs should be confined to weddings and similar special occasions. It might sound bitter, but beyond that, get a room.

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