Monday 9th June 2025
Blog Page 917

Tute sheets and Teletubbies: the life of a student parent in Oxford

Emily Beater
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Tute sheets and Teletubbies: the life of a student parent in Oxford

I wake to a soup grey sky and I think great, I’ve beaten them, sleep, the alarm and my daughter’s morning cry. I’ll do some work.

Then, of course, she stirs and I think, “crap”, and then, “crap”, you’re not meant to think “crap”, and she rolls over and despair curdles my stomach because today is the day that I’m meant to grab an edge, an hour, get ahead of the constant behind.

“Mama” she announces “Peppa Pig“.

Resigned, we waddle into the bathroom. I jam contact lenses into my eyes because my glasses fell behind the cot a week ago and extracting them requires an elusive amount of energy and initiative. Beth peers over the tub, examines her bath toys, takes an itinerary of the room.

“Tap. Tap. Bubble”.

Peppa Pig jumps up from a minimized tab. This is the last time, though. After I get this essay done, I’ll organize our time and at five am we’ll do like … painting or something. I’ll get a box of feely things. We’ll cook.

Books jumble the space between us. Overheard by God, Allegorical Poets & the Epic, Well-Weighed Syllables. I’d been so full of hope, cycling the mile to the Faculty, gasping up to the desk and having the smiley man scan the volumes. I’d borrowed them with so much confidence but now they’d go the route of the others, patching holes in my essay or cannon fodder for a questing tutor. I pick one.

“Medieval Biblical hermeneutics were neither uniform nor simplistic … biblical scholars find that exegetes were on the whole …”

“I’m Peppa Pig!”, the pink cartoon announces, “This is my brother George …”

“… Sensible and discriminating, and that there were many understood qualifications…”

“This is Daddy Pig”

“… as to legitimate…”

“And this is Mummy Pig!”

“Mammy Peeg” says Beth. I kiss her, and then remember we’re meant to do interactive watching, to point out things on the screen. The Peppa Pig landscape has freakish slopes and single houses perched on top. “Oh look, flowers”, I mutter. “Hua Hua” nods Beth, and I turn back to my book. But actually, Peppa Pig is quite engaging. Miss Rabbit is getting an award from the Queen.

There’s something fearful about Oxford. I like my college and chunk of accommodation, but the city itself is an alien thing. Memories of my matriculation are vague: sickness, the Sheldonian and thinking I’d faint in my flappy gown. Gargantuan heads topped gates and stone-eyed statues dizzied me. My friend snapped a candid shot of us all and in the centre is my face, stretched in an early pregnancy yawn.

It didn’t get easier. Around third week, I reached my sickliest stage. The amusing thing about an unexpected pregnancy at Oxford is that the term still marches to its eight week beat, and you don’t stop worrying about work. Yes, you’ve been shattered to the core and your life radically altered, but you don’t want to miss that nine am deadline or they might think you’re not serious . J and I were keeping the baby, and my tutor, in her marvellously assured manner, convinced me that, with a tweak here and there (like telling my mum), I could do it. Now, my life was a pattern of work, venturing out for quick food to avoid the kitchen and an excess of sleep which mangled most of the day. I wrote my essays at night, scrambling what information I could from the Internet.

My daughter certainly outperformed me in those first months. While I lay in bed gulping ginger ale and starting and discarding phone calls to my parents, Beth was passing stage after stage of embryonic development, sprouting arm buds and a C shaped spine, graduating from to pea to kidney bean to kumquat. We told family and after a mixture of calm from J’s mum and flurry from mine, things settled into a shaky structure. I would do my first year pregnant and take Prelims in September, after the June birth. My tutors were kind and accommodating. Everything would work.

Except for me. I couldn’t work. Academically, I kept it together. That was the one frayed band that hadn’t snapped. My aggressive perfectionism was hardly softened by the stereotype of failure surrounding young mothers. But the adrenaline that had filled me from the moment those two pink lines appeared, began to fade. I stopped taking antidepressants due to the pregnancy, and a cocktail of anxiety and exhaustion turned my mood dark. I stuck to my room, leaving only for classes or to curdle eggs on the stove. I took long trips home in J’s rickety car, sobbing when I had to return on a Sunday night.

I wish I could say, “And then I came back”, because that’s what I thought would happen. That once the baby was born and the strange hormones stopped, I would go back to normal. It’s an understandable mistake. Until your every motion is tied to the needs of another, how can you but assume that your life is your own? The prams which blur into the background, the cries in the café which are nothing to do with you, the child who shrieks down the supermarket aisle comprise an adjacent realm so removed that when it meets you, you are shocked. So yes, after suspending for a year, I came back. But not before my body was stretched apart in labour, not before I knew a baby’s cry could cut sharper than a knife, not before I saw my daughter’s cupped hands and closed eyes and knew at last that she was real and not a dream.

We were lucky. By the skin of our teeth, Beth got a nursery place. My search for “Oxford undergraduates with kids” yielded little official content. I found a pro-life website, psychological research and a page for graduate students. Eventually, I discovered a clause allowing Undergraduate parents to live in Graduate Accommodation. In my time as a student parent, I have experienced both great support and great erasure. My tutors are supportive and flexible, but official channels are blind to parenthood as an extenuating circumstance. There is little in place to accommodate child related issues, and, although I have been fortunate to receive help, it’s always been more experimental than inherent. When requesting an extension for my Prelims coursework, I was asked to submit evidence from a ‘childcare provider’ to prove I was unable to obtain childcare over a weekend. But what happens when – as in mine and most cases – you, the mum, are the ‘weekend childcare provider’? What happens when your extenuating circumstance is not a flu which can be proven with a doctor’s note, but an ongoing fact of your life? Yes, undergraduates with children are unusual at Oxford. But we do exist, and our absence from all but the vaguest official acknowledgement gives us no certain place to stand.

The fifth of October was everyone’s first day. J’s at his hospital job, mine at college, and Beth’s in childcare. She had had short visits to the nursery before, hour stays where she gurgled in a half moon cushion while toddlers gaped. But now, I was leaving her for the day. I’d be more than a few feet away. I wept. I checked my phone continually. I imagined her every move and the sweet scent of her head.

Yet when I arrived, college distracted me. I was back to where I started, red shirted student guides, Freshers, and coffee blooming from an urn. Laughing with my friends from my (first) first year, I was suddenly cleaner and newer than the woman who had spent the last four months with a baby attached to her breast, unable to shower for more than five seconds. I could shape my experiences and laugh at the hours of labour which had caused me such fear. I relaxed. I knew what to do. If I read books they stayed read, if emails dinged, I soothed them to sleep with a few keypad clicks. But it didn’t last long. Nursery called, and I was hit with the recollection of my other world.

This double life unhinged my fantasy of being both perfect student and perfect mother. For starters, it wasn’t really “double” at all. The one interspersed continually with the other. In my first terms back I tried endlessly to compensate. I tried to write essays through the night, tending intermittently to the baby’s cries. I rushed us out of the door in the morning, trying to chase an extra few minutes, hating myself before the day begun. But my exhaustion was too intense. Before Beth’s birth, I had had the stamina to pull all-nighters, but now I was simply worn out with the weight of managing motherhood and a degree. And over time, I allowed myself to feel it. By the grace of God, I learnt to acknowledge the challenges of my situation and let go of guilt. I request extensions with confidence and receive them, I spend the time with my partner and daughter that we all so need and deserve. Previously, I thought I’d shatter if I let anything ‘slide’ beyond my self-imposed perfectionism. Now, I’m growing roots and not glass houses, I know that even if I break, I will not unearth. I had seen it as something to overcome, my position as a student parent, but now I see it as something to rejoice in.

My daughter is her own person. She is my baby, my joy, my responsibility. I hope never to impose my image on her, but it is she who taught me this and I will always be grateful.

A love letter to The Gardener’s Arms

Daniel Curtis
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A love letter to The Gardener’s Arms

Should you dare venture north, past the border lands of Somerville and St Anne’s, taking a concealed left down a treacherous side street, you’ll be rewarded with the finest veggie pub in Oxford. Arguably, it’s one of the finest gastro-pubs in the city full stop.

Immediately, I was struck by The Gardener’s Arms’ thrilling choice of decoration. All along the walls is a who’s-who of music history, with vinyl sleeves from the last 50 years of music history grounding the hungry punter in a unique atmosphere. The effortless cool of an enviable music collection is warmly offset by a handy selection of Doctor Who books and assorted board games.

Blessed with a fine and, in a surprising turn of events for a small pub, well-stocked selection of ales, there’s always something new to line the stomach before tackling the reasonably priced food menu. There are calzones (something rare in an all-veggie menu given that calzone seems to be a traditionally meaty dish) as well as the airiest of all pastry parcels.

Also on offer are a range of other dishes, including burgers, Indian platters, and chilli and veggie hot dogs. The chips are also particularly worthy of a mention: perfectly crispy on the outside, soft on the inside and chunkily cut. Or there’s salad, if you hate nice things.

What sets the food at The Gardener’s Arms apart from its competitors is texture: too often vegetarian food is an unimaginative mush. Here, however, firm dough mingles with brilliantly seasoned sauce to create delicious calzone, and lemon rice offsets the dryness of the main pastry parcel to create a balanced dish. Wash all that down with a nice guest ale and you’ve got yourself a brilliant evening.

It is rare to find a pub catering solely for herbivores: vegetarian menus are often small, or simply veggified riffs on meat dishes.

As such, The Gardener’s Arms has become my refuge—and that’s not saying anything of their ability to cater for vegan diets too. It’s worth the long walk.

The Gardeners’ Arms, 39 Plantation Rd, OX26

Cecil Day-Lewis: Auden’s overlooked classmate

Theo Davies-Lewis
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Cecil Day-Lewis: Auden’s overlooked classmate

In the years since Cecil Day-Lewis’ death in 1972, the poet’s work has not received much critical attention. Instead, his name is often forgotten due to the more prolific works of W.H. Auden, with Day-Lewis’ work seen as a mere fragment of what was produced by poets during the ‘Auden generation’.

Contemporaries at Oxford, Day-Lewis and Auden went on to become joint editors of Oxford Poetry in 1927, but Auden was the dominant figure of the pair, despite the fact that Day-Lewis himself went on to become Poet Laureate from 1968 until his death in 1972. Perhaps most notably, he even had a stint writing for Cherwell.

In spite of this, Day-Lewis was not confident in his own academic ability. During his time at Wadham College, he found his focus on academic work wavering, saying later, with “A fourth in Greats—and it is a mystery to me why the examiners did not fail me altogether.”

Yet, Day-Lewis may have over-exaggerated these difficulties to mark a contrast with his eventual return to Oxford in 1951, when he was elected as Professor of Poetry. Nonetheless, it was not until he met Auden in his last year at Oxford that he could fulfil the romantic identity he had created for himself as a poet.

Alongside figures such as Louis MacNeice and Stephen Spender, Day-Lewis was intrigued by the more intelligent and energetic Auden—who led the ‘Auden Group’, known for their left-wing political views.

Day-Lewis was a member of the Communist Party from 1935 to 1938, and some of his poetry was marked by didacticism and a preoccupation with social themes. Even some of his most romantic poems are inextricable from his political views.

One of these poems is ‘Come, live with me and be my love’, which follows the speaker telling his beloved that he lacks material wealth, and even the barest essentials, evoking periods of economic depression in the twentieth century.

One cannot help but notice how this poem aligns with Day-Lewis’ personal life. After all, it may speak to his first wife Mary King—who at first found it difficult to love him.

Oxford’s influence over Day-Lewis seems clear: it was not the academic experience he benefited from. Rather, it was the friends he met that secured him a series of posts as a schoolmaster. He continued publishing collections of poems, novels and essays before, during and after the Second World War.

While students across the country may not be familiar with Day-Lewis, his link with Oxford is everlasting. As recently as 2012, papers from his archive were donated to the Bodleian Libraries by his actor son Daniel, and daughter Tamasin. Perhaps Day-Lewis needed Oxford, not for its academic excellence, but to be inspired by his poetic peers.

Harrison’s heroics bested by Balliol

Harry Griffiths
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Harrison’s heroics bested by Balliol

Hobbes states that natural law is “a precept, or general rule, found out by reason, by which a man is forbidden to do that which is destructive of his life”. Jack Harrison proved Hobbes wrong in 90 minutes of PCFC glory, willingly doing the forbidden in putting his life and, at one point, the life of a Balliol forward, at risk for the sake of keeping us lot in the game. Harrison’s extraordinary game earned him the Fuzzy Ducks player of the week award, which was followed a not so extraordinary performance in Park End VIP. Whilst Hobbes mustered 19 natural laws, today we could only muster twelve Pembrokians to the sports ground on this dark Tuesday afternoon— though not bad for post-bop. At 2.15pm, there was only half a dozen Pembrokians in the pavilion, and no kit. The odds looked stacked against us as Balliol strode in donning a kit suspiciously resembling the Croatia kits of recent years. It seemed that the afternoon might well be, to regurgitate Mr Hobbes’ famous line, “nasty, brutish, and short”. Alas, the arrival of Mohamed Eghleilib, the aforementioned Mr McShane, and the heroic Harrison provided some cause for optimism. The lineup looked surprisingly strong for a mere twelve players, and some hunting round the Pavilion established that we could throw together a kit, and summon the spirits of our PCFC forefathers who wore this random blue kit before us. A back four of myself, Ned Foulkes, Matthew Doyle, and Ed Gough complimented by the holding-midfield mettle of Ed ‘Makélélé’ Wilson looked sure enough to withstand a significant amount of Balliol pressure. Flanked by Ukaire and Eghleilib, with Gisby and McShane in support of Riccardo Casini, and Shakil donning the linesman flag with majesty, Pembroke had reason to believe they might grind out a result. A well-taken penalty meant Pembroke were a goal behind at the break, but the well-worked efforts on goal of Gisby, Eghleilib and Cassini again kept the dream of a result alive. With twenty minutes left on the clock, a striker found himself bearing down on goal, Harrison was left with no option but to handle the ball outside of his area. Balliol put an end to the game, as Balliol’s answer to Riyad Mahrez (who’d tellingly opted for a PSG shirt instead of a Croatian one) slammed a glorious left-footed free-kick into Harrison’s top right corner.

Putting policy under the microscope

Josephine Pepper
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Putting policy under the microscope

In his own words, Sir Mark Walport’s job is “to advise government on all of the sciences—on physical sciences, on engineering, on technology, and on social science as well. It’s what the Germans would call Wissenshaft.” Cherwell went to Westminster to speak with him about science advice in Parliament.

Science students can sometimes find themselves thinking that the only way to stay in science after university is with research or academia. What would you say to this?

I’m quite often asked if it’s a problem being a Chief Scientific Advisor when there are so few scientists in parliament and in government. The point I always make in return is that you can’t blame the people that are in parliament because they stood for election, you can only blame the people that aren’t [in parliament]. Scientists, engineers, technologists tend not to stand for elected positions.

I think it reflects a rather broader educational issue. Let’s say you’re going to university to read history, no one tells you that you are going to be a historian, whereas if you go to Oxford to read chemistry then everyone says, ‘Ah, you’re going to be a chemist, you’re going to be a scientist’. While we insist on thinking of the sciences as a vocational training then we are going to have a continuing problem.

Do you personally find it more challenging to communicate some topics than others as a result of your background training in the medical sciences?

It’s inevitable you feel at home in the areas of science that you’ve worked in more than in other areas, but in a funny kind of way in my job. My job is not to know the whole of science, engineering and technology—you couldn’t possibly—it’s to act as a transmission mechanism. My job is to find the best advice wherever it is, be it in academia, be it in industry, be it amongst government scientists and then to communicate it effectively. So, actually, not being an expert myself in areas of climate, for example, or physics is a benefit in some ways because it means that I have to learn to understand it in a way that I can communicate it effectively. I tend to see where the jargon is much more easily.

Do you find that once you’re in a position [of responsibility] it’s easier to encompass multiple roles than having many dispirit people to do separate roles?

It’s an important tool for providing scientific input to government. The other way to look at it is to see it as one of three broad areas where I provide advice. One is around national resilience and emergencies. I provide advice on flooding for example, or on Ebola and Zika more recently, and I chair a committee which is called SAGE (Scientific Advice Group in Emergencies), part of our national emergency response. If there’s an emergency where science is involved then we pull together a group of experts; the geometry of the people varies according to the emergency. That feeds directly into COBRA. I work on the National Risk Register and we rehearse things as well so we are prepared for emergencies, although you can never predict the next emergency. Nevertheless we think ahead wherever we can.

The second area is in evidence broadly for government policy. For example thinking about research and innovation so we can meet our initial reduction targets for carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.

The third area is broadly science and the economy. And an area which is related to that is how the UK can make the best use of technology given that we are going through an extraordinary industrial revolution at the moment driven by data, computing, and information technology. That’s important to government for three reasons really. It’s important because modern technology collects large amounts of data and that can be used, if used wisely, to make better policy. Secondly technology enables delivery of services in ways that weren’t possible before, and thirdly technology is important for the economy because that’s where the new businesses are being developed.

When you were speaking in Oxford in February 2016 you said that science was an international collaboration. Do you think this is going to change post Brexit?

No. Scientists have always found ways to collaborate internationally. It’s always claimed, though it’s not actually quite true, that the Royal Society appointed a foreign secretary before the British government did. In fact what the Royal Society appointed was a secretary for scientific correspondence—more of a secretary with a small ‘s’ rather than with a big ‘S’, as it were—in the 18th century. But the serious point is that the Royal Society corresponded internationally long before others did. Science is international, it is global, … [it] does transcend politics of a traditional variety. Scientists have always collaborated and I’m confident scientists will continue to do so.

With all the talk of ‘post-truth’, do you find that populism often ‘trumps’ scientific evidence?

[It was] Daniel Moynihan who said you can have your own opinions but you can’t have your own truths. When it comes to physical and biological sciences there are right answers to a lot of the questions we are talking about. You can have any opinion you like about climate change, but at the end of the day there is actually a right answer.

Does it affect the topics you are asked to advise on? Or which are prioritised?

I often make the point that policy makers look through three lenses: the lens of what do I know about ‘x’—that’s the evidence lens, where I come into play—, the lens of policy deliverability, because you can have a great idea for a policy but if it can’t be delivered then it’s no policy at all, and the third is the lens of their human values, their personal values, their political values, their social values, the values of their electorate. The [scientific] evidence is a variable part of the policy. If the question is, can I fly jet engines through a cloud of volcanic ash then it is quite likely that the science and engineering evidence will trump other considerations, but in other cases it may well be that emotional, value issues trump the science, [like] in policy over drugs.

The best part of your job?

Finding things out and being able to communicate them in a way that influences policy in a beneficial way. Doing a job and having a worthwhile impact.

University isn’t for everyone: stop pretending it is

Sophie Burdge
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University isn’t for everyone: stop pretending it is

There’s nothing quite like the joy of receiving a university offer. It’s a feeling of validation which few other experiences in life can provide; the knowledge that after a calculated appraisal of your strengths and weaknesses, someone in an office somewhere has clicked the relevant button, or maybe put a little tick by your name if they’re particularly old school, and said yes, we want you.

But what if, after all that, you get there and it’s not quite what you thought it would be? Maybe the man in the dreary little office put a tick next to the wrong name after all. As quickly as the pride sets in when you first see that “something has changed on your UCAS track,” it bleeds away again, replaced instead with the niggling sense that you’re only just keeping your head above water.

It’s a feeling familiar to many of us, I’m sure. But for those who actually choose to leave university, it’s usually due to more than just the unpleasant shock of realising that uni isn’t quite like school.

The expectation placed on university as a logical next step from school has increased exponentially in recent decades. Rather than being something bright-eyed youngsters dream of, for many people a degree has become about as optional as school itself. The increasing numbers of school leavers going to uni is of course far from a bad thing, especially given the growing success of students from disadvantaged backgrounds. What the rising number of applicants does do however, is make it increasingly harder for individuals who don’t think higher education is for them, to fight a system which is continually pushing them towards it.

Fintan followed the conventional path, going straight from school to uni in September of 2014. He admits that he always had doubts, but the academic environment of his school made it almost impossible to break away from the rigid yellow brick road which led all the way to the Russell Group. This pressure is likely familiar to anyone who attended a school with a strong emphasis on academics.

Personally, I didn’t apply to uni until a year after I left school, being unsure of what I wanted to do, and wanting to take some time to nd myself on a beach in Thailand before resigning myself to three more years hard slog. But even this raised a few eyebrows from my teachers, despite my assurances that I fully intended to apply the following year. My head of sixth form made me ll out my entire UCAS form anyway, “just in case,” standing over me as I selected entirely arbitrary degree choices. It was clear that she would be signi cantly happier if I simply clicked ‘accept’ and sent o my application to these randomly chosen institutions, rather than taking some time to consider what was actually right for me.

Fintan was under even greater scrutiny during his application. He tells me how, “I attended a public school which gave me a scholarship, and I was expected to show the effectiveness of the scholarship in applying to a challenging subject at a Russell Group university.” In treating his degree choice as a barometer of his worthiness of a scholarship, his school placed an almost unbearable amount of pressure on him. Fintan ultimately left his history course at Glasgow University after less than a term, realising that, under the pressure to get into a suitably prestigious course, he had taken little time to really consider the ins and outs of university life, and the reality of devoting four years to a course largely composed of independent inquiry, as opposed to the heavily guided school experience.

The reality is that few people have a strong grasp of their sense of self at the age of 17. I certainly didn’t, and it’s become abundantly clear to me that simply picking your “best” subject in school and sticking it on your UCAS form is not always for the best. I’ve been lucky, I love my course and frankly I can’t imagine studying anything else, but the same can’t be said for everyone.

Eva, a former E&M student at Oxford, admits that she had her doubts about her subject choice throughout the application process, but was comforted by the fact the Economics is considered a “better” degree.

She says that a major part of the problem was the attitude of her school, where “there was more emphasis on the perceived employment value of your degree, rather than the fact that you’d actually have to study it from 9-5 for three years.”

This is perhaps not an unreasonable outlook taken by teachers and parents, wanting to give the younger generation the best possible start in a market increasingly saturated by graduates. However, the employability of any degree counts for nothing if that degree is never finished.

The commonly held belief that more traditionally academic degrees carry more weight is a tricky one. On the one hand, we all want to believe that we should follow our dreams and do whatever feels right for us, perhaps singing a Disney song along the way. But when degrees are increasingly becoming the norm, how are we supposed to make ourselves stand out from the crowd?

According to UCAS, young people are now 27 per cent more likely to enter higher education than they were ten years ago, an increase which shows no signs of slowing down. I can’t help but wondering, whether sucking it up and applying for a more “prestigious” degree, might actually do you better in the long run.

For some students, like Eva, taking time to reflect and determine upon the right path can make all the difference. Eva considers it “far more inspiring to speak to someone who is genuinely interested in what they do.” Having successfully changed courses, it is clear that for Eva, it was not university it- self that was the problem, but the pressure to apply before being truly prepared. It’s a fine line to tread—keeping the balance between happiness and employability. It’s an equilibrium that Jess struggled to attain in the years following her departure from school. Encouraged by teachers, she applied to St Andrews to study Art History, repressing her desire to go to do a more practical art and design course.

Despite achieving an A* in her art A-Level, Jess was worried that she wouldn’t be able to keep up if she went to art school, and “had very little positive encouragement from teachers to change my mind on this.” This seems shocking that the very people supposedly employed to “mould young minds” would discourage a talented pupil in such a way, but the reality is that many schools are more concerned with statistics than the individual. What is particularly notable about Jess’s story however, is that she says she was worried about missing out on the “university experience.”

This myth of the university experience is drummed into us from a young age, with popular culture perpetuating the idea that uni will be a non-stop dance party with all the greatest people you’ll ever meet. I think we can all agree that the reality is somewhat different. Jess
realised this by her second semester at university, when she was left feeling “unfulfilled by my course and […] like I was there to party and conform to expectations.”

Fearing that she had missed the opportunity to do what she really wanted, Jess left St Andrews and is now studying Art in Edinburgh.

Such a decision is admirable, but also leaves me wondering how many students there are, trapped in institutions up and down the country, who are desperate to make just such a leap of faith? University should be a privi- lege, not a punishment, but the increasingly unbearable pressure placed on young people to get a “good” degree, means that the reverse is often becoming true.

For our parent’s generation, a degree from a respected university offered an almost guaranteed fairy tale path to a bright future. Graduate unemployment figures prove that this is no longer the case. So why do “grown-ups” continue heaping pressure on our generation to follow the same join-the-dots route to happiness that they did?

While university works for many, it just doesn’t for others, and the presumption that higher education is the only indicator of intellectual success only serves to make those with legitimate reasons for not going to university feel like failures.

All in all, I think perhaps an easing up of pressure in school environments could do a lot of good, not only for students themselves, but for a society which is clearly vying for its own sense of intellectual validation.

Food diary: confessions of an Oxford food blogger

Naomi Bradshaw
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Food diary: confessions of an Oxford food blogger

If you’re worried about where you can find gluten-free food in Oxford, don’t be. There are many delicious cafes and restaurants around that will keep you fuelled on wholesome, delicious food. I’ll take you through some of my favourite places.

Breakfast: The Handle Bar Cafe is a long-standing favourite of mine. While they don’t serve gluten-free bread to go with your Full English (or the Vegetarian English, in which you get served plantain chips), even more importantly they serve gluten-free coconut pancakes! These are absolutely divine, and if you haven’t tried them yet, I wholly recommend you go and do so straight away—even if you’re not gluten-free. If you eat meat, definitely opt to have bacon with them! Because everyone knows that maple syrup and bacon is the actual dream combination.

Lunch: When Gloucester Green Market is open on Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, this would always be my top pick for lunch. Plenty of the stands are marked as gluten free, and often dairy-free or vegetarian or vegan too. Authentic Spanish paella, arepas, and cuisine from all around the world is just waiting for you—always fresh, delicious, and affordable. I also love Alpha Bar in the Covered Market, with its awesome selection of salads, vegetables, pulses, meat/fish and the all-important dips (hummus with everything, please).

Afternoon Tea: The Organic Deli always has its fridge chock full of appetising cakes, many of which are gluten-free and several of which are also vegan. I am obsessed with their chocolate cake with its rich, indulgent ganache icing and the fudgy brownies. They also have fancy drinks like matcha lattes, and it’s a lovely cosy spot for a catch up with a cuppa. If you dare to brave the trip to Summertown, I would also highly recommend Modern Baker, who bake fresh, delicious cakes and brownies—if you need tempting, have a look at their Instagram account. They always have several gluten-free options, and have a shop section packed with gluten-free and vegan snacks.

Dinner: One of my favourite things about Turl Street Kitchen is how it changes its menu daily to reflect what food is in abundance, so that you can always be sure you’re eating the freshest produce. The meals are based around vegetables and high-quality meat and gluten doesn’t come into the equation—just check with your server to make sure. I’m also a sucker for ordering a bunless sweet potato burger at the Handle Bar. They also run monthly yoga dinners, where you’ll do a yoga session and then feast on an amazing gluten free and vegan dinner.

The gluten-free options in Oxford are really much more extensive than you might think, and I have found that restaurants are always happy to adapt to what you need, so long as you ask them politely.

Check out my blog at www.nomsbynaomi.com for healthy recipe ideas, all of which are gluten-free!

A melting pot of nature enthusiasts

Natalia Bus
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A melting pot of nature enthusiasts

A little over a decade ago, in an unassuming parent’s garage in Oxford, Stornoway was born. Today, the internationally acclaimed folk four-piece have three albums under their belt and their journey together is slowly coming to an end with the announcement of their Farewell Tour in the spring of this year.

Despite the band’s formation seeming so long ago now, speaking to Oli Steadman, Stornoway’s bassist, I still get the sense that Oxford will forever hold a special place in his heart, with the first musical experiences of his youth directly tethered to the town and its strangely wonderful qualities.

Whilst Brian Briggs (vocals) and Jon Ouin (keys) met during freshers’ week, sowing the first seeds of what was to become Stornoway, Oli and his brother Rob moved to Oxford from South Africa: “We’re sort of immigrants in a way, we arrived in Oxford not really knowing anybody or having any roots.” He tells me “the music scene in Oxford welcomed us in”.

Thinking back to Stornoway’s rather odd beginnings, Oli is certain that no other music scene would have tolerated the band: “We were a band who for the first few years would wear dressing gowns on stage, we’d get strange sort of acrobatic routines going within our sets and … we were just a really ramshackle group. But it was the nature of Oxford’s scene, on both the town side and the gown side…that made it possible for a band like ours to form.”

Curious about the strong themes of the natural world running throughout Stornoway’s body of work, I ask whether this was mainly a result of Briggs’ background in ornithology. Oli explains that the band is primarily “in love with the poetic and storytelling side of nature…We’re convinced that the way in which to draw inspiration is just looking and appreciating.” The vivid imagery and lush instrumentation carrying many of Stornoway’s songs certainly attests to this focus on observation.

‘Lost Youth’, a track from their latest album Bonxie, samples bird song in an especially playful way, contrasting the heavier undertones of the lyrics, which describe a state of uncertainty in growing up and moving on.

Oli tells me this focus on nature is another way in which the band manage to harmoniously channel their differences as people: “All the members of the band have that obsession with nature but from so many different backgrounds, so while Oxford is a melting pot of people, the band is a melting pot of nature enthusiasts and pretty much bird geeks.”

The intense joy and emotional range of Stornoway translates especially well to live shows, where wild instrumentals are married together with stripped back moments of acoustic intimacy.

I ask what is most appealing about live shows. “The audience, if anything, is a centre of gravity in the musical relationship. The audience is where the emotion happens and where things are sort of authenticated.”

As a band with “some notoriety for obsessing over the small venues”, their last ever show at the Oxford New Theatre with a capacity of 1,800 is less a challenge and more an opportunity to truly leave their mark on the town which gave them life. Oli is excited to play to as many fans as possible, telling me that “[The New Theatre] is ten times the size of people we’d play to in our ideal gig but hopefully that will just make it more magical in some way.”

Stornoway’s down-to-earth, uplifting, and beautifully engaging sound will undoubtedly leave a yearning in the hearts of many. Promising to go out with an emotionally charged bang, Oli assures me that the Farewell Tour will be a celebration of Stornoway’s achievement: “We’re gonna want to do ourselves proud and put on an entertaining show for people.” I, for one, cannot wait.

Readers’ Photo Competition: deadline approaching!

Cherwell Visuals
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Readers’ Photo Competition: deadline approaching!

Calling all photographers, ‘grammers and anyone who has ever seen a pretty face!

Cherwell Visuals launches its second competition. The theme this time is portrait photography, and we’re accepting submissions of all types and levels, whether touched up or the original thing, a high-quality selfie or a group photo, whether your subject is formal or just buddies stumbling out a bop. Play around, discover some exciting light settings, choose between focusing on mise en scene or effects, find an old favourite: think about conventional portrait photography, about modern developments and everything that has to do with the creation of a person’s image, and send it all over with a two-line explanation to [email protected] !

The Visuals team will select the 5 best photos to publish in Cherwell‘s week 6 issue.

Submissions until fifth week, Wednesday 15 February.

Old&New: Turl Street’s tradition

TSAF
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Old&New: Turl Street’s tradition

For twenty years, the Turl Street Arts Festival has challenged creatives to abandon traditional collegiate division and unite for a week-long showcase of the arts. Year on year, the festival has provided a platform for the leading literary, artistic and dramatic talent from Exeter, Jesus and Lincoln to celebrate and explore the exceptional fruits of their extra-curricular labour.

From Tolkien to le Carre, Alan Bennett to Dr. Seuss, the three colleges boast a peerless heritage. This is a sphere in which Turl Street stands alone; OX1’s central thoroughfare has hosted an incomparable embarrassment of creative riches.

The festival’s origins, however, were not found amongst these shining literary lights. In fact, for much of the mid-to- late 20th century, any notion of harmonious co-existence was undermined; an intense sense of rivalry gripped the participating colleges. The ‘Turl Street Dash’, a somewhat tribal pre-cursor to today’s artistic co-operation, saw each JCR invade, steal and vandalise their neighbouring adversaries. When the ‘dash’ descended into the infliction of injury and genuinely costly damage, the colleges came together to galvanise this destructive energy into an autumnal week of art and creativity.

In the twenty years since, this now-annual celebration has called for abstract exploration, with thematic threads spinning from ‘Pastoral’ to ‘Love’ across two decades of existence. This year’s conception, the ‘Zodiac’, is fittingly esoteric.

Whilst modernisation is undoubtedly on the cards, tradition has its place. So, as ever, one college will lead the event and the curation of its poetry, fiction, art and spoken word. For 2017, the baton falls to Exeter, the street’s oldest college, and this year’s copresidents Ed Wignall and Eleanor Begley.

For the festival’s anniversary offering, the committee have promised ‘concerts, workshops, exhibitions, plays, rehearsed readings, poetry. Wignall, a fourth-year classicist, encourages potential festival-goers to ‘witness for yourselves what’s possible when students stop grinding axes and start speaking the language of the arts’.

So it appears that Hilary will see this Turl Street institution come alive and perhaps, with its extensive budget and ambition, come of age.

The 20th anniversary Turl Street Arts Festival is running throughout fifth week, including an ambitious opening ceremony, writing and art workshops, a Cellar night and street fair. Like Turl Street Arts Festival 2017 on Facebook for more information on this fantastic programme of events.

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