Maximo Park’s Our Earthly Pleasures and Bloc Party’s A Weekend in the City are underrated gems of the 2007 post-punk revival. They are also existential guidebooks for dealing with Oxford, stuffing the spaces between their muscular guitar work with a subtly relatable lyricism.
Our Earthly Pleasures sets itself up to be a rather trite, standard break-up album: “You’ve been/ With me/ A year/ To the day”, begins album opener ‘Girls Who Play Guitar’. But Paul Smith’s lyricism is too honest to be content with cliché. Instead, he is relentless in his examination of the physical, following that lyric with the empirical coldness of “Three hundred/And sixty/ Five days/ Watching me decay”.
Inversely, ‘By the Monument’ muses: “We sleep tonight in separate towns at dusk/We see our disparate futures”. For Smith, love—or a stolen kiss on the dancefloor of Plush—is far from comforting, but rather a way to offset isolation and futility, two feelings familiar to any humanities student ploughing through an essay at 3am in a cold, empty library.
This physicality is not lost on Bloc Party, either. ‘Kreuzberg’ laments: ”After sex/ The bitter taste/ Been fooled again/ The search continues.” To anyone navigating the messy world of trying to pull in Park End, such emotional confusion is painfully recognisable.
As a makeshift solution, both albums reposition happiness away from the city they inhabit. A Weekend In The City’s title is misleading: rather than being an idyll, the city is a prison, which Kele Okereke tries to escape via the suggestion: “Let’s drive to Brighton on the weekend”.
Similarly, Our Earthly Pleasures signs off with the fragile ‘Parisian Skies’, reconfiguring the heartbreak of the album’s very loose narrative into a contemplative space to consider the past: it is under Parisian skies, not those of the band’s hometown Newcastle, that some succour is found.
Oxford feels the same: sometimes, the only way to deal with its pressure is to flee, back home or to the brighter lights of London, to drown stress and pain in either familiarity or in fluorescent neon. But, should you stay, you can’t go far wrong than to soundtrack your time with these two albums, discovering a forgotten year in music as well as a new way to view Oxford’s earthly pleasures.
Riddled with classical piano sections and mellow beats, Sampha’s Process is a quiet effort, and yet exactly what we would expect from the man who has remained in the shadows for so long. Vocally perfect and at times painfully soulful (like the heartrending build of ‘(No One Knows Me) Like the Piano’), this long-awaited debut does not disappoint.
Having collaborated behind the scenes with the likes of SBTRKT, Jessie Ware, and Drake, the singer, songwriter, keyboardist, and producer has finally come into the limelight and the applause has been deafening.
The pre-release single, ‘Blood On Me’ builds in momentum to become a track filled with fear and desperation, as Sampha pleads “I swear they smell the blood on me/ I hear them coming for me.”
‘Under’ sees Sampha the producer at his best—he manipulates beats and samples to create a hypnotically complex masterpiece.
Process mingles all of Sampha’s musical talents and spans a profusion of genres. As much as one track lets you unwind, the next promises to leave you in a lurch, breathing heavily.
England’s recent ODI series in India marked the beginning of a carefully orchestrated run of games in preparation for this year’s Champions Trophy, which will be held on home turf in early June. The next four months—with ODI series against the West Indies, Ireland, and South Africa—will see continued opportunities for experimentation and development within a young but increasingly confident squad.
With an eye on the path ahead, then, what can be taken from the series defeat in India? In the first two, morale-sapping games, a worrying pattern began to emerge: England’s bowling attack would make a promising start, blunting the Indian top order early on in the innings—taking the first three wickets for 56 and 25 runs respectively–only to let two batsmen steady the ship and ultimately take the game away from them with an imperious stand of at least 200 runs. Why the repeated slump? To Morgan’s credit, it seemed that his ever cool captaincy was not to blame. Rather, his plans in the field were inevitably hamstrung by poor execution on the part of his bowlers, and two unhelpful team selections which deprived England’s attack of depth.
Willey has further strengthened his place in the side, drawing the new ball back into the right hander, and consistently taking wickets at the top in combination with Woakes’ economical spells at the other end. Beyond the first ten overs, however, “taking wickets on flat pitches when the ball’s not moving around’ has proven to be the team’s ‘Achilles heel”, as Trevor Bayliss was quick to admit before boarding the squad’s charter to Kanpur, ahead of the first of three Twenty20 games. Stokes, Ball, and Plunkett appeared to frustrate their captain with their inability to bowl consistent lines and lengths, providing between them four of the top 30 most expensive England ODI bowling figures ever. And Moeen Ali and Adil Rashid continued to disappoint in the typically spin-friendly conditions of the sub-continent, with neither of them taking a single wicket in the entire series.
Credit, of course, must also be given to India’s middle order, who capitalised on a lacklustre bowling attack with Kohli, Jadhav, Yuvraj, and Dhoni all making impressive tons. It was their relentless ability to put runs on the board that denied England yet another chance to come home with a ODI series victory—something they have failed to do for over thirty years now—despite scoring over a thousand runs in only three matches. However, England need not be disheartened. A resurgent bowling order in the third and final match cramped the Indian middle-order and ultimately reaped a desperately needed win, with Ball’s gutsy full-length bowling keeping the batsmen to under a run a ball, and Stokes’ consistent control earning him three valuable wickets.
There were several triumphs amongst the English batsmen. Roy, averaging over 70, has had an enormously impressive series—consistently brutal at the top, he can be counted on to put a hefty dent into any daunting run chase. Morgan has reconciled effective captaincy with proficient batting, coming through with a steely century in the second game. And Stokes has continually proven himself an invaluable contributor in the back end of the innings, belting two swift half centuries.
Looking ahead, with England’s batting not posing any issues, it’s disappointing to see that the selectors have announced an unchanged squad for the upcoming series in the West Indies. Arguably, Broad or Finn’s resurgence into the team was called for, perhaps at the expense of Buttler, who has failed to excite with the bat, and whom Bairstow can aptly replace behind the stumps. And Mark Wood, now recovered from an ankle injury, would have ideally slotted in for Plunkett, bringing his extra pace into the attack. Batting firepower will no doubt pull the team through against a weak West Indian side, who currently sit at ninth place in the ICC ODI rankings, but come Summer England will no longer be able to hide behind large totals when facing the likes of Australia’s Warner and Smith. All in all, the ODI series in India – dramatic, tense, hard-fought—proved a mixed bag. A disappointing result, yes—but one from which the squad can take much encouragement.
I love brunch: unashamedly and openly, it’s the best kind of meal. The food, the company, and most importantly with a good brunch comes a good brunch cocktail. My favourite is the Bloody Mary—it has that delicious savoury flavour, with the perfect Tabasco kick. However, if you have read any of my other articles, you will know that I love gin, which is where we introduce the Red Snapper: the joys of a Bloody Mary but trading the vodka for gin. Perfection.
For this recipe you will have to select which gin carefully. Being a savoury drink, we want a gin with a corresponding botanical. I have chosen Hendricks, which obviously has cucumber as one of the main botanicals.
Ingredients:
1 part Hendrick’s Gin
2 parts Tomato Juice
Celery salt
Ice
Black pepper
Salt
Vegan Worcestershire sauce (If you can find this, if not, and you’re vegan, then leave it out as it contains anchovies)
Lemon juice
Tabasco hot sauce
Half a celery stick
Method:
1. Prepare your glass by putting lemon juice around the rim and then rimming the glass with salt and pepper.
2. Add your gin and tomato juice into a shaker with ice. I recommend a couple of pinches of pepper, salt and celery salt and two teaspoons of lemon juice and Worcestershire sauce. The Tabasco sauce can be added as to your taste, you want a good kick but obviously heat preference is personal so it’s up to you.
3. Shake the ingredients together and the strain into your glass.
To mark the centenary year of the Russian Revolution, the Royal Academy of Arts has put on an exhibition of Russian art from the years 1917 to 1932. These were the years before Stalin dissolved all artistic organisations and replaced them with the state-controlled Union of Soviet Artists, banning all visual art which did not conform to the style of Socialist Realism. Until then, post-revolutionary Russian visual art saw the emergence of radical avant-garde styles, as well as expansive experimentation with photography and film.
The exhibition begins with the immediate artistic reactions to the success of the Revolution, with paintings like Boris Kustodiev’s Celebration on Uritsky Square, which captures a moment of euphoria for the workers of Petrograd, the square awash with banners representing the city’s individual factories. Yet responses to the political situation were not always this clear-cut, something demonstrated by the inclusion of Kliment Redko’s Insurrection, which uses traditional orthodox iconography to depict a diamond of marching workers inside a burning city, with Lenin painted Christ-like at the centre. The painting could be a portrayal of the awe-inspiring power of the Revolution, yet it could also be a reaction to the terror of violent upheaval.
The next room is entitled ‘Man and Machine’. Here the exhibition details the boom in photography, a new visual medium which was used to great effect to document—and glorify—the industrialisation and mechanisation of the Russian economy. Photographers like Arkady Shaiket produced photographs which made industrial workers seem like classical war heroes, while other artists used photography to create new styles of visual art, including what became known as Constructivist photomontage. Film, too, achieved greater prominence in the 1920s, and film-makers were also fascinated by mechanisation. Parts of Dziga Vertov’s stunning The Man with the Movie Camera suggest the aesthetic appeal of industrial processes and modern city life. Among the paintings in this room, one in particular caught my attention: Alexander Deineka’s 1927 Textile Workers was unlike the other unambiguously positive representations of industrial labour. It seemed eerily sterile, reminiscent, I felt, of scenes from Huxley’s Brave New World.
This turned out to have been a prescient thought, for the next space was called exactly that: ‘Brave New World’. This room contained works of abstract painting by Kandinsky, Filonov, and Popova, and—the most interesting exhibit—a construction of El Lissitzky’s design for an apartment in the Narkomfin Building in Moscow, a renowned example of Constructivist architecture. The painter Kazimir Malevich, to whom an entire room of the exhibition is dedicated, was a pioneer of geometric abstraction, inventing a purely abstract style in 1915 called Suprematism. Yet his style becomes most significant, or poignant, in his paintings of Russian peasants, whose faces have become merely blank ovals, evoking their lost identity under Communism’s agricultural collectivisation.
The exhibition moves through a collection of war-time documents, film documentaries of the cities and countryside of the 1920s, and the work of artists like Chagall, Shterenberg, and Petrov-Vodkin, who were troubled by the upheavals in the country they loved. There is also a space in which Vladimir Tatlin’s remarkable flying-mechanism, the Letatlin, is displayed: a giant glider or ‘flying sculpture’, hung from the roof and resembling da Vinci’s bird studies.
Finally, visitors get a glimpse into how art after 1932 was forced to conform to Socialist Realism under Stalin’s repressive regime. Sport became a particularly prevalent theme in paintings and photographs of the 1930s, and the exhibition shows how the State’s encouragement of sport was also aimed at women. The photographs in this final room of women shot-putters and footballers in fact continue a trend that can be seen throughout the exhibition. Women are present in nearly all the representations of Soviet public life: in the films of city life, in the pictures of industrial workers, and in the paintings and photographs of agricultural labourers. In this way, Soviet art and propaganda differs from that of the Nazis in Germany. Yet the exhibition ends with a reminder that the relationship between art and state under the two regimes was otherwise not all that different after 1932. In the final room stand a model of the planned Palace of the Soviets—a terrifying, bombastic piece of architecture—and a booth called the ‘Room of Memory’, in which a slide show is played: photographs of creative figures, taken after their arrest and often not long before their torture and execution.
Emergency services are currently on the scene at what is being described as a “huge explosion” involving a house boat at the Osney Boatyard area in Oxford.
Police say a number of casualties are currently being treated by emergency services. Local roads in the surrounding area have been closed.
In a statement, Thames Valley Police said they were called at 4.45pm today, “following reports of an explosion and the collapse of a property.” They are encouraging people to avoid the area.
In an updated statement, Thames Valley Police said: “Emergency services are still establishing whether there is anyone injured at the scene.”
Emergency services on scene Osney Lane and Gibbs Crescent, Oxford. Reports of explosion and collapse of a property. Pls avoid the area.
The Oxford Mail reports that a local block of flats “appears to have been completely destroyed” by the incident, which is located in the Osney Marina area, close to the Oxford train station.
One Twitter user described a “Huge explosion shook our building about an hour ago… Apparently [an] entire flat block exploded.”
When we started our investigation into racism at Oxford (see 3rd week’s issue of Cherwell), PREVENT and specifically its impact on Muslim students and students of colour was something we were certain we wanted to look into. Yet the wealth of testimonies and statements we found concerning PREVENT just proved too much to fit into the investigation, and this was certainly a topic we didn’t want to skim over. With three different testimonials from Oxford students describing their treatment under PREVENT, a statement from the Islamic Society on the specific ties between Islamophobia and PREVENT, and an interview with Sandy Downs, OUSU’s VP for Welfare and Equal Opportunities, this investigation may be published a little unconventionally but certainly has plenty of important content for considering one of the most controversial pieces of legislation concerning education in our lifetime.
Testimonial 1
In last year’s political climate, I thought it would be pertinent to organise an event on religion and religious discrimination. The event was supposed to invoke an open discussion, and involved a panel of speakers providing information on the topic. I’d booked lots of rooms in college before, and had never had any issues. This event involved a brief discussion of religious ideology, centring around Islam. The event title immediately caught the attention of staff in the administrative office. I was called in to meet with college staff to discuss the event for two reasons: I had to provide a list of the speakers I was inviting, for risk assessment reasons. But I was also questioned on the speakers’ and on my own beliefs, to find out whether I followed a ‘certain line’. This was a bizarre experience, and made me feel like an outsider in my own university – and this was before PREVENT had even been officially implemented. The rhetoric surrounding the PREVENT duty had only served to reinforce the implicit biases of those in the University. It continues to particularly discriminate against students who are already from marginalised communities, stopping their complete engagement in political and religious discourse.
Testimonial 2
I was working on the committee of a large student society at Oxford, which represents and holds events for a minority group. I looked forward to hosting some of our events at my college, expecting that they would be supportive of my efforts to bring authentic diversity to the space. I attempted to book a room for a Freshers’ Meet and Greet, but was told that the society needed to provide a full guest list 24 hours in advance. Of course it’s almost impossible to guest list many social events, let alone ones where new members will be invited for the first time. Many reasonable suggestions made by me and a friendly member of college staff — including having an agreeing member of staff supervise the door and throughout the event — fell on deaf ears. I eventually received an email telling me “the event was impossible without a guest list because of our legal duty to abide by PREVENT. All Colleges across the University must screen guest lists before they offer an event for security purposes”, and there was nothing they could do: they said, “our hands are simply tied on this one”. Being denied the ability to host at the space for Prevent reasons felt bad enough, especially with our events now almost jeopardised for this lack of cooperation. It was yet more disappointing to realise that this was also in fact a misinterpretation of what authorities are really obligated to do, but this incident showed me how much over-reach there is with PREVENT.
Testimonial 3
At the end of my working day, upon returning to my flat, I was told by a flatmate that after the normal cleaning hours the housekeeper and two scouts had entered my room, and spent approximately 25 minutes opening and closing various cupboards and drawers, presumably inspecting the room. I was also informed that the scouts were given specific instructions on ‘signs to look out for’, in relation solely to my room, and that you did not enter any of the other rooms of the flat. I believe it is well within my rights to understand why there has been a sudden and particular interest in me, my belongings, and my room. I am very concerned that this sudden inspection of my room and invasion of my privacy happened as a result of the scouts overhearing my prayers, which I read in Punjabi (since I have been raise Sikh), and therefore profiling me based on my race and religion. If this inspection is in any way related to the PREVENT strategy, it is my legal right to demand to be informed of this.
Yet my college is giving me conflicting accounts of what happened and is above all refusing to identify this as happening under the PREVENT strategy. I have been told in person that the scouts are PREVENT trained, whereas this was denied by the college. I was shown CCTV of who went in and out of the building that day, but it didn’t feature things I definitely know happened such as scouts leaving later in the afternoon when I’d got back and saw them cleaning the flat next door. Therefore I think the CCTV footage I was shown was edited, but I didn’t say this because I didn’t want to sound like a conspiracy theorist, so I just dropped it. My college chaplain and senior subject tutor have both assured me this is not related to PREVENT, which is very confusing. As a survivor of sexual assault, it is particularly unsettling to feel as though my personal space is completely disrespected by the college and I do not feel safe. Yet despite me informing the college of this, my room seems to have been searched again this term (3 months after the original incident), since my diary and literature on Islamic feminism had been disrupted and my door was locked although I had left it open.
This is in a broader context of staff acting differently this year. My boyfriend is always asked for his Bod Card when he comes to visit, and when two Muslim friends (who are people of colour) came to visit the porters made them register their names, addresses and phone numbers. I feel unsafe in college but I am unable to speak up about what is happening.
Interview with Sandy Downs OUSU VP WEO
What is happening with PREVENT at Oxford Uni?
The university is bound to comply with the PREVENT duty, but they are doing the bare minimum in order to limit its impact on the freedoms of students and staff. Consequently, PREVENT has only resulted in two policy changes. One is to the code of practice for meetings and events, although actually this needed to be updated anyway. PREVENT only comes into it quite vaguely, in stating that rooms or events in the university cannot be intended to draw people into terrorism. The other is to the IT policy. There had been a suggestion from HEFCE [the Higher Education Funding Council for England, who oversee prevent] that this should involve monitoring of emails and searches online, but the university has absolutely refused on that front. Once again, the only change is a specific reference to not allowing people to use university platforms to draw others into terrorism.
HEFCE has been in charge of checking up on policy at a college level, so each college has its own policy which it gave to HEFCE. We don’t have an overview of college policy, and are often told colleges don’t have a PREVENT policy, because people aren’t aware of it. The university policy is about as good as it can be, but there is an issue with what different colleges may be implementing.
What impact does PREVENT have on the welfare of students?
What’s really scary is the atmosphere created by PREVENT. It feeds into the growing Islamophobia which is having a huge impact on the welfare of Muslim students, as well as specifically feeding into the insidious tradition of Islamophobic legislation in this country.
What’s really scary is the atmosphere created by PREVENT
Hypothetically, there would be huge welfare concerns if PREVENT were being fully implemented and people were being referred. But this looks very unlikely to happen in Oxford in the current climate. A more specific worry is regarding the counselling service, and that PREVENT could mean any “signs of radicalisation” were a reason to break confidentiality. Although once again this is being mitigated in Oxford, it still impacts the likelihood of Muslim students accessing counselling if they are concerned that they might get reported.
What have OUSU and the university been doing to look after the welfare of students and staff?
The main thing has been developing training on PREVENT for staff which emphasises the risks of implementing the duty. So the training focuses on the human rights, education and freedom of speech legislation which PREVENT contradicts, and why they are more important to the university than PREVENT. The point of this is basically to inform staff abut PREVENT so that they won’t use it. I sit on the PREVENT steering group, so have been developing and delivering this training along with staff.
OUSU has been supporting the Preventing PREVENT campaign, so we have been working on an educational video for students about their rights and including some case studies about incidents in Oxford. We’ve been trying to get people to report incidents of PREVENT being used against them, either to the Preventing PREVENT Gmail account or directly to me, and we encourage that in any situation which could be vaguely linked to PREVENT.
I would stress that the university are doing quite well on this, and are very open to being contacted by anyone about PREVENT because they are incredibly concerned about how this is affecting students.
Statement from ISoc, Oxford University Islamic Society
PREVENT is legislation designed to guide bodies such as schools and universities to forestall ‘extremism’ and ‘radicalisation’ of people in its care. In its implementation, however, it is a mandate for educational institutions to surveil and monitor its Muslim students. Some of the extremist warning signs that PREVENT advises teachers and lecturers to watch out for are sudden changes in clothing, hobbies, or friendship groups. But there is a sinister side.
We’ve all heard the reports- the 14-year-old interrogated for mentioning the word ‘eco-terrorism’ in a discussion on environmental activism; the calling of anti-terror police to question a schoolboy wearing a ‘Free Palestine’ badge; the student of terrorism studies at Nottingham University arrested for studying books on terrorism. All of them involve the abuse of the arbitrary power PREVENT gives educational institutions.
We in the Islamic Society recognise that for all the talk of rights and free speech, affecting every student, the Muslim Community is the principal target for the legislation. It has been introduced to arbitrarily police the boundaries of our free speech, and demobilise our political voices. It has aimed to raise the costs of Muslim activism and engagement, and increase the precariousness of our place in British society.
In Oxford, the current implementation of PREVENT is having exactly these effects. We’ve already received reports of Muslim students not being able to hold events to talk about Islamophobia, of being interrogated by porters about the kind of Islam they believe in when booking rooms, of the refusal of College deans to allow Muslim students to host events on Palestine. However, again, the individual cases shouldn’t mask the overall, macro-effects: We have seen first-hand how the atmosphere amongst Muslim students seeking to get involved in political activism has shifted towards extreme precaution and fear – the so-called ‘chilling-effect’ of the legislation.
Students from abroad, already having had to register with the police, are particularly reluctant to demonstrate or organize, or be visibly involved in contentious issues. But even UK Muslims have intimated or demonstrated their desire to keep their heads down and concentrate on their degree, rather than involve themselves in debates over Palestine or the bombing of Syria.
PREVENT is useful for the government. It creates a sense of precarity amongst UK Muslims
PREVENT is useful for the government. It creates a sense of precarity amongst UK Muslims, and obstructs the mobilisation and organisation of a constituency which not only frequently contests British foreign policy, but commonly the neoliberal ethic too. PREVENT ensures that the boundaries of acceptable Muslim discourse on foreign policy are constricted, carefully monitored, shifting and arbitrary. It is little wonder that many Muslims, even at a place like Oxford, decide that the perceived costs of political activism are simply too high.
Thus, naturally, we are disappointed that the University, in implementing PREVENT, did not go far enough to safeguard its Muslim students under the Human Rights Act, Equalities Act, and Education Act. In our view, it has not done enough to consult its Muslim students on the impact of its implementation of PREVENT. We disagree with the attitude that this new law ‘won’t change very much’ because, for us, it already has.
At a time of increased Islamophobia, of a Muslim Ban and post-Brexit surges in hate crimes, a world-class University seeking to attract international talent, advocating free speech, and valuing the welfare of all students and staff has the responsibility to do everything it can to allow Muslim students to express themselves and feel secure by not compromising their welfare and legal rights
We need to fight back and allow all of our students to contribute to the critical debates our country faces, by pressuring our Colleges to uphold the relevant Equality Acts. All of these are law, and any College which implements PREVENT against these acts is acting illegally. We need to monitor closely the uses of PREVENT in Oxford and highlight where it is abused. We need to (at the College and University level) demand non-compliance with this discriminatory legislation, and lobby nationally for its repeal. Muslim students have a wide, rich tradition to draw on and contribute to the discussion. We cannot allow PREVENT to impose a climate of fear on an entire community.
The Prophet Muhammad (Peace Be Upon Him) famously issued the Constitution of Medina, guaranteeing equal rights to minorities, over 1400 years ago. Perhaps the University could evoke the spirit of that document, and assert positively the rights of all students to free speech and inquiry; refuse to implement PREVENT, treat it as a hollow, empty legislation, in name only, and instead make sure that all staff and administrators know that rigid adherence to equality (as prescribed by law) takes precedence. The Oxford community proudly and unconditionally stood with the Muslim community in a recent demonstration –we urge the University to do the same by increasing its resistance to PREVENT.
To report an incident which you think may have involved PREVENT, you can email[email protected] or contact Sandy Downs at OUSU. To find out more about PREVENT, like Preventing PREVENT Oxford on Facebook, look out for the soon to be released OUSU video and attend the panel event in 5th week. The NUS have a hotline for concerns about PREVENT on 07741264037 which you can ring at any time.
My phone says it’s 4am, and the sun is definitely right over my head. It’s 37 degrees outside: the horizon a blurred band of heat haze and smog. The roads have ten lanes, yet the taxi driver treats his rear-view mirror like the evil queen in Snow White: glancing at it, but not really getting what it’s all about.
“Where are you going?”, he asks with a strong Beijing accent, through a mouthful of orange peel and cigarette smoke. I was already asking myself a different question: “Where the hell am I?”
The first couple of weeks were a bog of bureaucracy as I trudged around this new and impossibly vast city I had to call home. I collected countless tissue-paper thin documents, concluding with my ‘Residence Permit for Foreigner in the PRC’. This turned out to be nothing more than a big blue sticker in my passport—what was all the fuss about? With the ‘abroad’ half of my year away signed, sealed, and collected from the Aliens’ Exit and Entry Administration Office, all that was left was that other bit: the year.
Full of optimism, I started looking for a place to live. Walking into every new apartment I asked the same carefully pronounced questions: Do we have to pay for the gas ourselves? Is there internet access? Are kitchen utensils provided? Textbook.
“Yes…” a string of potential landlords answered, patiently, but nevertheless completely baffled. I soon found out our role-play material was aimed at students going to Taiwan in the ‘90s. Apparently, Beijing estate agents use a different set of jargon in 2017.
Outside of lessons, everyday chats with the family who run the local dumpling stand, old men drinking tea in bookshops, and total strangers in elevators are constant reminders of how friendly and interested people can be.
December came quickly, and I was having a rough day. My 9am class had been a waste of time and my Chinese seemed as stilted and laboured as ever. A bitter wind ripped through the frozen, grey city, pressing my uncomfortable pollution mask up into my eyes. I missed my friends and family, and the VPN wasn’t working—I couldn’t even look at the Facebook post my twin had tagged me in. I got in the elevator, grouchy, joining a little boy and his mother, who crouched down beside him.
“Look,” she said, “a foreign uncle!”
“Uncle!” He cried gleefully, staring at me.
I knelt down, “Look,” I said, “my Chinese friend!”
He did the ‘a foreigner just attempted to speak my language!’ double-take before bursting into a fit of giggles.
“You look like that… what’s he called? Harry Potter?”
She was right, I did need a haircut.
“He does!” He gasped.
And with that, my love for Beijing was back again.
Whilst visiting Mongolia for a week, the family I stayed with invited me to lunch. I accepted, albeit nervously, knowing that ‘vegetarian’ is a loosely-defined concept in China. However, an uncomfortable encounter with a ceremonial chicken foot was surpassed by drinking distinctly petrol-scented spirits with an old Mongolian man, and getting uncomfortably sozzled for a Tuesday lunchtime. But, it was all laughed away during an authentic and delicious meal, and I boarded the 15-hour train home in high spirits.
A few hours in, I was bored senseless and got my phone out to watch the episode of The Great British Bake Off that I had downloaded. After a few minutes, I realised the people around me were all craning their necks to see what it was all about. I unplugged my headphones and leant the small screen up against the window. My neighbours loved it, and bombarded me with questions. Unfortunately, my cake and baking related vocab was (and remains) rather limited. Describing Candice’s Danish pastry croque monsieur kites as “a bread, a sandwich really” made me feel rather incompetent.
I’ve travelled 5,000 miles, and whilst Oxford can feel more distant than just a plane ride away, I’ve rarely found myself lonely. I’ve arrived in a vibrant city full of friends and found places that I love.
With 5th Week Blues nearly behind us, Pandora (Cherwell Life’s omniscient cat) decides to give her own advice on how to deal with the pressures Oxford may still bring…
My tutor still says my collection was poor.
But I had a nice holiday.
Conclusion: he is a fool.
I have a tutorial to prepare for.
But I am awfully stressed.
Conclusion: take nap.
I should probably read some books.
But the bar is open.
Conclusion: wine.
I hear people chat shit about me in the bar.
But I do not care for these people.
Conclusion: do not care.
The tomcat behind the bar winks. He says I should go to Cellar.
Dying Light is a beautiful production of a beautifully bittersweet play. As soon as the audience walked into the BT Studio to be greeted by a dimly lit stage, sparsely clad in the paraphernalia of a hospital waiting room, we knew the types of emotions we were about to be confronted by. Set in America, Dying Light tells the story of two teenage terminal cancer patients who meet in a cancer ward and fall in love, and explores the ways that hope and faith fill up the cracks in pain. “You always have to believe you’re gonna get better”, Jenny tells Tom, and the story’s arc explores how that strength of faith can tangibly play out in the face of extreme hardship
Both Charithra Chandran and Chris Dodsworth gave stunning performances as Jenny and Tom—Charithra’s consistent tears-on-cue were an impressive touch and were placed at key moments that allowed the play to feel continually raw, real and painful. With the production’s intimate and minimal stage setting, it was important for the actors to address the issue of maintaining the fourth wall and they achieved this expertly. The director, Lara Marks, did a wonderful job—and her choice of music was perfect for the atmosphere, as a few well-placed songs gave the play time to pause and space to breathe in such a heart-wrenching storyline.
The only noticeable first night hiccoughs were due to the Burton Taylor’s impressive blackout system, which left a few of the actors tripping over props during exits and entrances. Saying this, however, there was a gorgeous transition conducted in low light that saw Charithra and Chris change the set together—the audience watched as they built a home over hospital waiting room chairs and clinical hand sanitiser—and followed their attempt to build beauty out of their forced abrupt transition from childhood to adulthood.
In the end, this was a play about hope and faith, and both main characters enacted this necessary warmth beautifully. Their chemistry was lovely throughout, and the slow unravelling of their love story was poignantly demonstrated throughout the minutiae of Marks’ direction; the audience was warmly invited into their intimacy. The transition between emotionally draining monologues and witty quick-fire dialogue was tackled expertly—reminding the audience of the polyphonic way in which grief and love criss-cross over daily reality. The production placed an emphasis on the childish innocence present within both of the main characters, using tactful costumes and light-hearted interactions which resonated in the gravity of the story’s circumstances.
The tense-and-release aspect of the play was impressive, as the script moved from jokes about science fiction films to doubts about faith and the value of life with dizzying speed. The entire production felt like a collaborative project between the creative team and audience to navigate these questions, and the audience left having confronted the full range of emotions they conjure. This production is intimate, warm, and touching, and handled the huge topics it grappled with extreme sensitivity. “I love it all”, says Jenny, as she imagines the vastness of humanity and the miscellany of experience we call life—and I did. I loved it all.
