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From Dante to jewellery: The Divine Comedy in gold

Rosie Gaunt
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From Dante to jewellery: The Divine Comedy in gold

You might not notice amongst the hubbub of hundreds of freshers starting their Oxford journey, but every Michaelmas term, a small group of Italian finalists back from their year abroad on the boot embark on an equally exciting and daunting journey through Hell, Purgatory and Heaven with Dante as their guide as they dedicate themselves to The Divine Comedy. Some may joke that it is like Hell; many will admit to feeling as lost in the text as Dante does at times. But most will say, at least by now in Hilary, that it is a special experience.

For Rosh Mahtani, New College grad in French and Italian and Dante student of Michaelmas 2011, it was life-changing. Her study of The Divine Comedy at Oxford not only influenced her jewellery brand Alighieri in name, but also in design, as each piece corresponds to one of the 100 cantos of the poem. It is an idea that came to Rosh through inspired reading. “It is just so visual,” she says. “As I was reading Canto 9, for example, with Medusa, I just couldn’t not see snakes wrapping themselves around my fingers.”

Of course Rosh is not the first to feel driven to turn the vivid imagery of the text into visual works of art, and Alighieri jewellery really is art. She follows in the footsteps of Botticelli, Blake and Dalì, to name but a few. This is something she has long been aware of, having first come across Dante in her studies of Art History at the British Institute in Florence during her gap year, even if she laughs “I thought I knew about him then, but I don’t think I really did.” She returned to Dante’s native city on her year abroad to remedy that. “I didn’t know anyone who was living there anymore, I just took Dante and made my notes canto by canto. It was quite a strange way to spend so much time on my own and at that age, but I really enjoyed it.” The connection she felt with the text was immediate, not only for how visual it is, but how universal too, from the very beginning when Dante is lost – “that struck a tone with me immediately.”

Lost is exactly how Rosh felt on graduating. Not, she says, because Oxford was her whole world, but because she didn’t know what was next for her. “I didn’t know what was going to happen, I didn’t know where I wanted to live, I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life, but I knew this one text, The Divine Comedy. I took my copy with all my notes in everywhere… it was like a Bible, a safety blanket.” She pauses. “There was a boy too, and I was a little bit heart broken. I didn’t physically know what to do with my hands so I took a one day wax carving course and started making things.”

And she hasn’t stopped since. Officially founding Alighieri in 2014, now with a small London studio selling online and stocked internationally, she is already a firm fashion editorial favourite and has just been chosen as one of 2017’s 3 Future British Designers by Boden and the British Fashion Council.

Those unfamiliar with The Divine Comedy though often ask her how many pieces and collections she’ll be able to make inspired by just one, albeit long, poem. Indeed, seldom do brands in the fashion industry take such singular and unwavering inspiration for just one collection let alone the entire brand. Rosh agrees: “there’s something quite nice about it, especially in an industry where it is all about newness.” And she is not worried about inspiration drying up: “I could make a whole collection inspired by one word in The Comedy. The problem for me is that I have too many ideas from it.”

Rosh feels equally free in her medium as in her inspiration. She doesn’t just make jewellery but also hair accessories, men’s jewellery, bookmarks that can be worn on chains and even a capsule collection in collaboration with Australian designer Anna Quan of classic pieces like black palazzo trousers and white shirts punctuated with gold Alighieri buttons and cufflinks. Rosh is certainly not just a jewellery designer. “I didn’t train as one so I don’t have that voice in my head that says I am one.” In fact, she finds it hard to say she is at all, when she knows people who have studied jewellery for a really long time. That’s not to say that she didn’t try jewellery courses herself; she only found that she hated them. “It was very methodical and precise,” she explains. “Finicky precision is everything in the jewellery industry.” It’s a world obsessed by perfection, something that Rosh used to be worried about at school and then at Oxford where she never felt as perfect as she thought everyone else was, before she decided that “it’s boring being perfect.” Rosh prefers to make jewellery that is as “imperfect” as Dante and his subjects, bearing the marks of his journey and his story.

It is, as Rosh says, a universal story that we can all relate to. On the morning of our interview Rosh received an email from a customer who wanted to buy a necklace for her daughter, that Rosh describes on her website as being inspired by Dante who sometimes knows exactly what he wants and sometimes is terribly conflicted. The customer felt it described her daughter to a T and wanted to make sure the description came with the necklace in the box. “It’s really magical that people relate to it like that,” Rosh says, almost surprised. Of course, she knows from her own experience how impossible it is not to relate to the story told in Dante’s words, but she can’t quite seem to believe that her telling of it in gold, just as she had imagined it when she was studying it here at Oxford, has the same effect on people.

Fifty Shades of Pink

Jasmin Yang-Spooner
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Fifty Shades of Pink

The weird, the wacky and the wonderful walked down the Gucci runway at the fashion house’s Spring/Summer 2017 Ready-To-Wear (RTW) Collection. Pink curtains, pink smoke and a pink runway created a vibrant haze through which only chunky jewelled embellishments and shiny satin structured silhouettes shone through with any clarity.

This conceptual and sensually over-empowering performance was the brainchild of Gucci’s Creative Director Alessandro Michele, who was appointed to his position at Gucci in 2015. Michele’s influence on Gucci cannot be understated, with the move towards eclectic arrangements of brocade flowers, metallic pleated fabrics and stiff jacquard collars, flowing Edwardian ruffles, pussy bow details and clear silk references to the Far East. All these features were seen, and he is known for his bold colour choices, playing with shades of pink and red in his ball gowns and pantsuits alike.

According to his press notes, the primary vision behind this beautiful (although at times somewhat costume-y) display was not to create something ‘iconic’ or ‘unique’; he specifically chose the term phantasmagorical to accentuate the dreaminess of the headline ‘Magic Lanterns’. And a phantasmagorical display he achieved – the dreamlike state that the pink haze enshrouded the models and the audience with, could only be cut through by camera flashes that documented every step of the runway show. But why would Gucci’s mastermind choose the enveloping embrace of pink for the show?

Pink is an incredibly versatile colour, and in the setting of beaded curtains and lounge seating, it’s one that conjures up a somewhat synthetic dreamlike world – red would be too strong, yet yellow or orange would not be bold enough of a statement colour. Nevertheless, in this context, pink in no way denotes a garishly girly fashion line. The connotation of pink in modern fashion and culture as symbol of femininity is a relatively new concept, and the androgyny of so many of Michele’s looks on the models demonstrates this.

Pink has had a long and varied history in fashion. Far from being a historically universal symbol of femininity, in Biblical art the Virgin Mary herself is portrayed in blue, whereas men wore pink as it was a shade of red, the colour of blood and war and masculine passions. It wasn’t until the 1950s that the colours pink and blue became associated with binary gender identification. As late as 1920, Jay Gatsby is depicted in his iconic pink striped suit. To a context-less modern audience, it is as though Fitzgerald is picturing Gatsby as a dandy, a man in touch with his feminine touch, but Tom Buchanan’s scoff at the choice of pink wasn’t aimed at it’s unmanly connotations but at it’s association with Oxford and the working-classes.

According to Jo Paoletti, professor at the University of Maryland, it was particularly during the 90s and 00s – our generation – that gendered clothing became the norm. The children of the 70s had been brought up in the unisex clothing that was all the rage at the time, but her studies suggested that the introduction of so heavily gendered clothing for their children was largely a reaction against their own upbringing. The beginning of the century saw babies dressed in white so as to prevent the identification with gender. Franklin Roosevelt himself was dressed in white dresses as a child in the 1880s, as was the fashion at the time. But today, Barbie dolls, power puff girls and other big brand children’s toys only perpetuate and reinforce the boy/blue – girl/pink visual on future generations.

Nevertheless, high fashion is seen to be veering away from this gendered colour trend, with unisex collections coming out from Alexander Wang’s SS17 runways, more gender neutral lines appearing in high street labels as well such as American Apparel and the influence of Yeezy’s nude/beige palette on major fashion houses and cheap online stores alike. Gender and fashion are intrinsically linked, and the rise of transgender or gender neutral models is making a profound impact on this colour assumption. Pink is a powerful colour which should be used wisely, and always with passion.

Spring/Summer 2017 – Top 10 Runway Collections, ranked

Lara Drew
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Spring/Summer 2017 – Top 10 Runway Collections, ranked
  1. Dior

As Dior’s first female creative director, Maria Grazia Churi had the models dramatically tightly laced and buckled up in whiter-than-white fencing jackets, black leather body armour and corseted bustiers. Logo straps and slogan tees proclaiming ‘Dio(R)evolution’ and ‘We should all be feminists’ created a bold, progressive statement – yet a softer side was brought out in acres of tulle, chiffon textures and corseted Victorian silhouettes. Dior’s new head is definitely one to watch.

  1. Alexander Mcqueen

Packed off to the northernmost tip of the British Isles to prepare for this season’s collection, research was the aim for McQueen’s creative team. Sharp tartan tailoring and chunky knitwear in eclectic patterns marked a homage to the brand’s Scottish roots, while diaphanous chiffon, shaped to evoke cascading waves, and embroidery echoing the Shetland Islands’ wildflowers clashed with black leather jackets, bralets and knee-high studded boots; an epic battle between barely-there and most-definitely-there.

  1. Moschino

Inspired by the 1967 film Valley of the Dolls, creative director Jeremy Scott emphasised its themes of voracious addiction, immediate gratification and yes, dolls, in a highly unusual offering of pill-printed rucksacks and t-shirts printed with the slogan: ‘just say Moschi-NO.’ Nevertheless, the most striking feature was the trompe-l’oeil prints of outfits on his clothes, the wigs and folding white card tabs rendering the models two-dimensional paper dolls, an extremely effective and ingenious illusion.

  1. Chanel

The brand’s last show was set in a mock atelier, and showcased seamstresses painstakingly stitching and embroidering in celebration of the hand-made artistry for which Chanel is renowned. In a dramatic show forecasting fashion in the digital age, the latest collection featured artificial lighting, cables, wiring, geometric stitching, and even robots. Complete with lacquer full-face helmets and Stormtrooper-esque gloves and boots, the model-robots were dressed in elegant bouclé tweed suits.

  1. Alexander Wang

Beachy hair and tanned skin lent a casual, surfer vibe to Spring/Summer ’17 Alexander Wang collection. Crisp white and pinstriped shirting came undone in the form of cropped hemlines, cami tops, and floaty shorts, while pyjama style silk edged with lace featured in eye-catching shades of acid yellow and pastel pinks and purples. Male and female models walked indiscriminately in this unisex collection.

  1. Versace

Citing sportswear as ‘the future of fashion’, Donatella Versace explored athletic silhouettes and functional fabric in an eighties colour palette of black, purple, lilac and green artfully swirled together. While form-fitting lycra jumpsuits, zip-up sports tops and waterproof trousers abounded, an element of luxury still shone through in billowy anoraks, while nylon was reworked into expensive-looking ruched mini dresses.

  1. Louis Vuitton

Louis Vuitton led the charge for the long, flouncy, elongated silhouette, complete with asymmetric hemlines that also featured on catwalks such as Victoria Beckham and Valentino. Fluid draped jersey, fastened with thick black straps and peppered with cut outs, was designed to echo the free, easy movement of French women and effortlessly elegant Parisian style.

  1. Marc Jacobs

High-octane nineties nightclub glamour showed itself in all its many forms at Marc Jacobs, where silver snakeskin, shiny plastic dresses, day-glo shirts, hotpants and tiny suede skirts were mixed together atop skyscraper platform boots. The clothes were, however, overshadowed by the controversy provoked by the multi-coloured dreadlocks piled up on the heads of predominantly white models, raising questions about cultural appropriation and the lack of diversity in the line-up.

  1. Dolce and Gabbana

More of the same came in the Italian fashion house’s latest offering, featuring the rich embroidery and embellishments in jewel tones synonymous with the name of the brand. Only by looking closely could one see the kitschy, updated symbols were in fact adorning low-slung denim and oversized hoodies as well as the Mediterranean glamour of black lace and full-skirted prints, a breath of fresh air in an otherwise predictable offering.

  1. Givenchy

Fittingly set in the grounds of Paris’ Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle, the exhibits seemed to walk straight off the walls onto the mirrored runway in the form of kaleidoscope gemstone print slip dresses and metallic foils. Oversized jewel pendants and jagged tailoring embellished with mirrored shards and precious stones then highlighted the continuation of a theme that, while eye-catching and unusual, seemed a little simple and one-dimensional.

Profile: Gina Miller

Marianna Spring
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Profile: Gina Miller

Gina Miller has every reason to be fearful. Over the festive period, rather than Christmas cards and messages from well-wishers, the 51-year-old investment manager received a barrage of abuse on social media, from news outlets and even delivered to her doorstep following her decision to challenge Theresa May’s right to trigger Brexit. Yet, in spite of this, she is anything but frightened.

“You should always be intellectually and morally curious. People seemed to have stopped exercising their right to challenge. You need to be the solution. It’s all about action. There is a fear of speaking descending on our society. We can’t be frightened. Fear is a way of controlling people.”

It is unlikely that you would have heard of Miller before October. However, since launching her bid to stop the triggering of Article 50 without MPs’ approval, she has found herself engulfed in the Brexit storm, which rages on into 2017.

The self-proclaimed “nosey-parker” won her initial case against the government last year. Now, as she awaits the result of the Government’s appeal to the Supreme Court against the initial ruling, Miller finds herself the prime target of media. She is bombarded with accusations that she seeks to thwart the will of the people. Rumours swirl that the Supreme court judges will rule in her favour, but she still has little idea as to what will happen. Miller has repeatedly stressed that her bid has never been an attempt to overturn the referendum, but rather that the action to trigger Brexit legally requires a vote in parliament.

“When the judges come to a verdict, the Government will have a few hours more notice

than I will. I will hear the verdict at the same time as everyone else in court and then have to issue a very short statement. The media wants everything immediately. Contrary to others’ beliefs, I have no other agenda. I am passionate and my agenda is ensuring is to ensure that we have a constitution.”

Gina Miller is no stranger to holding the powerful to account and the inevitable criticism that comes with doing so. She cofounded the firm SCM Private in 2014 and she also set up the True and Fair Campaign in 2012 with her hedge-fund manager husband, Alan, calling for more transparency in the City of London’s fund management industry.

“I’m not incredibly intelligent but I have a lot of common sense. I’ve never done anything to make friends. If you really know your information and your data you can challenge anyone.

“I am a mental and physical fidget. I dip in and explore. If you’re going to put your head above the parapet you need to know what you are talking about.

“People are quite lazy once they find themselves in a position of power. I aim to challenge not only the sector but the ethics too and a lack of moral leadership, which caused the financial crisis.

“Industry hasn’t reformed, but the global economy has. For instance, the whole pension sector needs to be reformed. About 80 per cent of the product is not fit for purpose. I adopt the motto ‘people, profit, planet’. A lack of moral leadership and framework is to some extent what caused the financial crisis.

“I have found my work in the charities sector especially challenging. We want to know what happens to our money, to our tax, so I have been pushing boundaries there.

“Before the court case, people were willing to have debates with me. Since, I have been exposed to the most vicious and personal attacks from charities. They are the sector of angels, so to speak, so they can’t bare anyone asking questions. They do not want to be criticised—it makes them look bad.

“People have threatened to sue me for my work and petitioned to close us down. If that’s the reaction, then I know that I’m doing something right.”

Despite her courage both professionally and with regards to the case, she admits that it has nonetheless proved to be a “lonely path”.

“When it came to the court case, I spoke to anyone I could get hold of to find support. The answer was the same every time—we support you, but we can’t be seen to support you.”

Not just lonely, however, but a path weathered with abuse which Miller, who was born in Guyana and grew up in Britain, believes to be especially scathing because of her gender and ethnicity.

“If I was a white male, I would not be suffering in the way I am. Whilst the case was on-going, I tried not to read all of the articles and messages on social media, which are shocking and absolutely disgusting. The idea that a woman cannot be bright enough to do it on her own is absolute nonsense. The idea that as a woman of colour I can only be one of these three jobs—a prostitute, a cleaner or a mother—is even more awful.

“My husband more so than me is infuriated by this idea that a man married to an ambitious woman must be down-trodden, under the thumb.

“We are taught you must not be successful and try your best or you are no longer worthy of being part of normal society. Success is used as a weapon against us.”

Abuse from certain media outlets became so bad, Miller felt compelled to enquire as to why she was suffering so badly.

“They are trying to dig up stories in whatever way possible, so I was speaking to the editor of a right-wing paper about why the press are so obsessed with me, trying to dig up stories in whatever way possible.

“He told me I am an enigma, because no one does things for the right reasons. I told him that nothing could be so revealing of the mind-set and agenda of his paper than that statement. It shows their detachment from society, for they do not realise that every single people go out and do things for the right reasons.”

It is not just Miller, but the Supreme Judges presiding over the case, who have been targeted with abuse. The Daily Mail ran a front page in November declaring the judges “Enemies of the people”, echoing the dangerous language of Hitler’s Nazi Germany.

“The Daily Mail are b reaking the law in inciting hatred and anti-Semitism against these judges. We being bullied and spat at from all angles. They are trying to dig up stories in whatever way possible.”

Miller is keen to point out, however, that it has not all been bad.

“Along with this abuse, I have also received beautiful letters from people affected by the Brexit vote, those from other countries who are incredibly upset with the way the entire thing has been handled.”

Regardless of the ruling, Miller hopes that she has inspired some to stand up for their beliefs and to challenge figures of authority.

“When you leave university, harness that sense of fearlessness, which will create a better society, with better hearts, heads and minds.”

0th Week News Summary – HT17

Theo Davies-Lewis
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0th Week News Summary – HT17

Cherwell Broadcasting is back to deliver the latest news from in and around Oxford in 2017. 0th week has been surprisingly eventful compared to recent terms, with the Iffley Open House debacle, the Vice-Chancellor’s pay and Hertford College’s admissions blunder and much more included in our summary this week.

Writing winter from Shakespeare to Selvon

Ellie Duncan
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Writing winter from Shakespeare to Selvon

All the good bits of winter seem to wilt away with the Christmas tree. As the New Year springs up, the cold drags on. Festive images of snuggling up by the fire with a good book give way to the inevitability of frantically reading Paradise Lost with a dose of self-loathing and two days to spare before term starts. As Shakespeare might describe it, there’s a feeling of “sap cheque’d with frost and lusty leaves quite gone, beauty o’ersnow’d and bareness everywhere.”

Sonnet 5 continues a motif as old as literature itself: winter wrapping itself around words, denoting sadness, loss, stasis, broken and abandoned ideas. But it is one that has been returned to again and again through the ages, from the fragile eeriness of the ancient poem ‘The Wanderer’ to the cruelty of perhaps the most famous of literary winters, in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Narnia is a land at the mercy of winter, a beauty o’ersnowed, whose true character is a flourishing summer. The two seasons’ typical symbolisms are set up as the most obvious of polar (sorry) opposites.

Yet as with many fictional explorations of grief, loss, or sadness, metaphors like that of the winter weather become cathartic too. Take Christina Rossetti, whose poems convey bleak emotion through the metaphor of winter primarily as an emotional state. In ‘Winter: My Secret’, the speaker justifies her self-isolation: “I wear my mask for warmth: who ever shows/ his nose to Russian snows/ to be pecked at by every wind that blows?” The motif may be familiar, but it is used playfully and personally, focusing on a lonely individual voice that matches the loneliness of the season.

Yet some of the best uses of winter in literature change up the familiar metaphor of hostility. In Haruki Murakami’s haunting short story ‘The Ice Man’, a nameless speaker falls in love with an Ice Man, describing how “we tried and failed to have a baby, perhaps because of a genetic difference between humans and Ice Men that made having children difficult”. The story fuses an eerie impression of a literally frozen,supernatural man with his wife’s struggle to compute his coldness, inverting and distort- ing a simple metaphor of emotional stasis. Murakami radicalises common tropes, and the result succeeds in being both introspective and powerfully evocative.

Profound bleakness is replaced with humour in The Lonely Londoners by Sam Selvon, which treats winter as a wholly practical issue. The novel opens on a “grim winter evening” in Lon- don, as Henry, an immigrant from Trinidad in the 1950s, first disembarks. He is met by Moses, a “veteran, who living in this country for a long time never thought the day would come when a fellar would land up from the sunny tropics on a powerful winter evening wearing a tropical suit.” Their contrast in perspectives on the cold weather hilariously sets the scene for Moses’ cherished role as helpful advisor and friend, as Henry navigates both the weather and the city. This brilliant novel ripples with a seasonal rhythm as the characters go about their daily lives, settling into London life in their own way.

For those feeling despondent about the end of the Christmas holidays, take heart. At the same time as tracking the world coming to a halt, writing winter seems to be an immensely dynamic and original process. The winter outside your Oxford window might lack the nostalgia of the one you left behind at home, but who knows, it could prove inspirational.

Sturgeon attempts to sell favourite horse

Tony Campbell
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Sturgeon attempts to sell favourite horse

It is understood by Cherwell that Nicola Sturgeon has attempted to sell a dead horse, savagely flogged since the September 18 2014, to Theresa May in exchange for a softer saddle on the back of the Government’s red, white, and blue horse as it gallops wildly into what politicians agree is either ‘a glorious sunset’ or ‘a gigantic ball of fire that will kill literally all of us.’

She told Cherwell: “It was tough deciding whether to sell my dead horse to May, or continue to flog it in front of an apathetic nation for nothing other than my own voyeuristic pleasure, but ultimately politics is about compromise.” Nicola Sturgeon denied any suggestions that this offer was being made entirely because only 45.5 per cent of Scots wanted to ride her dead horse—the same proportion that wanted to ride it when she wanted to go galloping in September of 2014. At the time, she had promised that the horse would produce oil to the tune of $115 a barrel. The price of oil subsequently dropped to $75 a barrel.

“Am I going to stop arguing for flogging my dead horse? Am I going to stop believing that Scotland is on a course to ride my dead, flogged horse?” Sturgeon asked. “No, but we are talking about the context and timescale of riding a frenzied and potentially feral red, white, and blue horse across the landscape of post-war integrated Europe,” she said as a solitary tear ran down her cheek, smudging her William Wallaceesque war paint.

Scottish Lib Dem leader Willie Rennie said Ms Sturgeon was “in danger of inflicting considerable and damaging economic uncertainty on Scotland” by attempting to sell the horse Sturgeon has flogged for so long, seemingly under the delusion that a party whose nine constituencies are all thoroughly English may be at all relevant.

It is reported that when Theresa May received this offer, the Prime Minister replied “go boil your head,” marking a notable shift towards reconciliation since assuming powe

 

Through the Looking Glass: The ‘modesty’ of Alan Bennett’s Oxford

Susie Finlay
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Through the Looking Glass: The ‘modesty’ of Alan Bennett’s Oxford

Across a series of radio shows and TV programmes over the last few months, some corners of the BBC appear to have become transformed into a veritable shrine to Alan Bennett, their long-time champion and literary poster boy.

Amid Bennett’s characteristically bumbling moments of self-deprecation—“I’m sure you’ve heard all these stories before, I’ve such a limited repertoire”—there appears to be a recurring sense of gratitude towards the alma-mater of the essayist and playwright. Fundamentally, Bennett is grateful that he was offered the opportunity to study here in the first place.

In typically unassuming style, Bennett applied to Exeter College because he had thought it to be “quite a modest place”, and was accepted to read Modern History, matriculating in 1954. It was at university that Bennett began to hone his theatrical talent, writing sketches, skits, and performing with the Oxford Revue.

However, Bennett, and others of his generation, were born at a particular moment in history. Throughout the 1950s, the heyday of grammar school education and the ready availability of university scholarships combined to form a brief, passing interlude in which the stars seemed to align in the favour of the education of working class boys like him. As the son of a butcher, without the free education which had been made available to him, attending university would not merely have been expensive, but would have been totally unthinkable. This situation is echoed in Bennett’s play The History Boys, which explores the Oxbridge application process from the point of view of a motley group of Yorkshire grammar schoolboys. The political message is never far from the heart of the work. In the introduction, Bennett mourns the inequity of the English education system, at Oxford above all.

It is this educational disparity which has encouraged Bennett to become a vocal critic of the Tory government of recent years, which, in his words “gets away with doing as little as possible”. Instead, he favours what some might disparagingly dub to be a ‘nanny state’. But Bennett flips the negative connotations of this term, bitingly reminding his audience that “I was nannied, in the sense that everything was paid for; and if that’s nannying, then I’m all for it”.

It is partly as tribute to the welfare state of his youth that Bennett decided in 2008 to donate the entirety of his archive to the Bodleian Library, or the ‘Bodley’, as he aff ectionately describes it. It is humbling that despite the numerous accolades he has received throughout his lifetime, including Tony and BAFTA awards, Bennett has maintained a sense of gratitude towards the golden period of education with which he was blessed.

PTSD rewrote me

Izzy Smith
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PTSD rewrote me

TW: This article includes references to suicide, emotional trauma and PTSD.

It is scrawling fragmented, panicked punctuation across the comfortable, rounded phrases in which my personality was inscribed, pouring ink across the chapter headings of who I am, and how I feel, and how I respond to everyday, ordinary challenges.

I incurred my illness by supporting a suicidal friend: walking on eggshells, on landmines, on his fragile, extinguishable life. I learnt to be cautious, to live in suspense. I learnt not to breathe. I had to be perfect, I have to be perfect.

I forget two items on a trip to the launderette, and cry and have to lie down.

The worst night, he said he’d definitely end it, definitely that time, this time he’d keep trying until it worked. His face as he told me “it’s okay”, the moon fracturing, silver, broken by tears, the cold, my hands numb, my feet numb, my mind numb, lungs heaving. “Please no, no, stay for me if not for you.”

Driving home from school after working late, the tears and scary fast breathing overwhelm me, and it’s not safe to go any further. Ending up stranded alone, my parents have to come and pick me up several times. I feel myself become a burden.

For months, my promise of confidentiality went unbroken. My friend, my first priority. My friend, my only concern. I hid myself from him, hid myself from everyone, like I hid the scars in which I exclusively confided some genuine emotion.

A year or more on, I cannot be alone. I cannot engage with my own thoughts. I cling to my friends to try and stop myself being dragged back into the past.

My therapist said EMDR and bioacoustic feedback therapy should help to “scrub out” trauma networks that have built up in my brain. I feel some improvement—perhaps the process has begun of refiling my traumatic memories to the past where they belong. But the first panic attack since therapy tasted of bitter disappointment. I am not yet healed. My pages are not yet clean of vandalism.

C-PTSD rewrote me. If some of the scrawls have been scrubbed out, they haven’t left the original neat text of whom I am untouched beneath them.

The reduced presence of panic, flashbacks, and catastrophising, feels like an absence. I have to get to know myself again. I need to remember: I have learnt from this. I am wiser, and stronger, and better equipped. I have constructive experience, my compassion is better directed, more practically applied, and applied to myself as well. I am an unfamiliar draft, but I am an improved copy.

Sport Science: Is Protein good or bad for you?

Andy Frey
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Sport Science: Is Protein good or bad for you?

Protein is an important part of your body. It helps repair and build tissue in bones, blood and skin, but here we are focussing on the muscles.

After working out, our body repairs damaged muscle fibres by fusing them together in cells, forming new muscle protein strands. These repaired strands or myofibrils increase in number and thickness to create muscle hypertrophy. Muscle growth can only occur if the rate of protein synthesis is greater than the rate of muscle protein breakdown. This is achieved by forcing our muscles to adapt, by generating stress that is more intense than the one our body was previously used to. Muscle growth occurs while resting after workout. For this process to work successfully we need enough protein to sustain the cells, and that is when our protein shakes may come in, after the workout.

Protein, unlike carbohydrates and fat, cannot be stored. Proteins are ultimately digested to form ammonia. This ammonia is broken down into urea in the urea cycle. Left over carbon skeletons are converted into glucose, which can be used by our bodies to generate energy (in the form of ATP) through respiration. If our cells have enough glucose, and there is no space left to store it as glycogen, the excess glucose is converted into fat and stored. Our fat storage is pretty much endless and thus excess protein intake will result in weight gain in the form of fat. It is very easy to overshoot the intake, as one serving of protein contributes to about one third of the recommended daily intake.

Protein supplements can be healthy, but they have to be taken with caution and always as a supplement, never as a dietary substitute. Some people cut down their carbohydrate intakes when they start to use protein, however this can lead to a state of ketosis (dehydration, vomiting and confusion). My recommendation is to adhere to a balanced diet of fish, lean meat, fruit, vegetables, whole grain and carbohydrates, and supplement it with protein shakes if necessary.

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