Features - The Cambridge Student

Transcription

The Cambridge Student
Volume 8 Issue 4
Image by Patrik Nyman
October 19, 2006
Sanskrit and Hindi scrapped
“We are just the first casualty” predicts Sanskrit scholar
PHOTO: JIMMY APPLETON
Dr John Smith
Meghan Graham
ACADEMICS HAVE been left
outraged by the decision of the
Centre for South Asian Studies to drop its undergraduate
courses in Sanskrit and Hindi.
Dr John Smith, reader in
Sanskrit at the Faculty of
Oriental Studies, told The
Cambridge
Student
that
there was “no logical reason” for the University to
stop teaching the subjects,
and that “no explanation has
been given” for the decision.
He described the consultation process as “notional”
rather than meaningful, constituting of a single all-day
open meeting, which Smith
was unable to attend because
he was on sabbatical leave at
the time. Smith, who has been
teaching undergraduates for
22 years, said, “I assumed that
there would be an opportunity
to submit more detailed opinions, but there was not. There
is a notional structure which
we are bypassing. We are
asked to comment and then
everything we say is ignored.”
The report by the Committee of the Faculty of Oriental
Studies was sent to members
of the Arts and Humanities
Council along with a “draft
response”, which Smith said
“struck me as a pretty good
illustration of where we have
got to”. He added that the
Council “which when I chaired
it some 10 years ago was both
intelligent and vibrant, now
seems to function as a rubber
stamp. I don’t know anyone
who isn’t seriously pissed off.”
In an interview with
the Times of India (TOI),
Smith acknowledged that
Sanskrit is a special-interest subject, adding however,
“We are not here to sell ourselves, but to be scholars.
“There are some subjects
simply worth doing. This is a
language that has been going
3,000 years and hasn’t stopped
yet. You cannot understand the
culture of the Indian sub-continent and the world outside
it without learning Sanskrit.”
Dr Smith, one of the University’s two readers in Sanskrit, told The Cambridge
Student that there is a wider
problem in the way in which
resources are allocated: “We
now have a mechanical system
from the centre to the various
schools, which makes it impossible for Cambridge to have an
academic strategy. You cannot allocate resources when
you do not have a strategy.”
No undergraduates in this
year’s intake are studying
Sanskrit; last year, there were
four first-year students studying either Sanskrit or Hindi.
There have been discussions
for some time, as part of what
Smith describes as the “interminably long” process of
deciding the subjects’ future.
When asked whether he
thought the decision was linked
to the introduction of top-up
fees, Smith acknowledged that
the marketisation of education had “probably played a
role”, but stressed that, “It is
the University itself which has
chosen to go down this road.
“Market forces may be powerful, but they are not the be
all and end all of everything.”
His words echoed his comment, in the TOI interview,
that the matter was “not a
trivial decision about letting
the subject wither on the
vine. It is an administrative
decision but should actually
have been an academic one.”
Smith also hit out at members from other University
Departments anticipating a
free-for-all. “We are just the
first casualty. People who think
that there may be rich pickings
to be had are going to get a
shock.” He pointed out that few
Departments can afford complacency as the popularity of a
course – and thus its economic
viability - is always relative.
Sanskrit has been studied by undergraduates at the
University of Cambridge for
nearly 150 years; according
to Indologists, the earliest
courses were viewed as an important part of the imperial
project, though its study soon
enlarged beyond these utilitarian origins. Sanskrit is the
liturgical language of Hinduism, Buddhism and Janinism.
continued on page 3
UPDATE: Ewings
served CUSU “with
distinction”
Features: CUSU Services
Officer Ashley Aarons reflects
on a long summer with and a
short week without Dave Ewings, as the CUSU Executive
prepare to replace him.
Editorial: Regret after a
manic week at CUSU HQ after Dave’s departure
A student takes part in CU Amnesty International’s
termly “cage” demonstration on King’s lawn last weekend.
The demonstration was marred by news of the death of
CU Amnesty’s prisoner of conscience,Thet Win Aung, in
prison. Madeleine Jones examines his life on page 4.
INSIDE: TRAVEL - THE BEAUTY OF WALES p29 / FASHION - CAR PARK CHIC p26 / INTERVIEW - RICHARD DAWKINS p8
The Cambridge Student October 19, 2006
2
News
In Brief
Hairdressers infiltrate Jesus
Tom Hensby
Darwin on your iPod.
Safe.
The University of Cambridge
is to make the complete works
of Charles Darwin available for
free online. The site, which is to
be unveiled on October 19, will
enable users to download audio
versions of works like the Origin
Of Species on to a computer, which can then be transferred to a CD or iPod.
Diversity challenge
The University of Cambridge
is attempting to unify research
into how to halt declining biological diversity. The Moran
Professorship of Conservation
and Development will synthesise the work of world-leading academics from both the
social and natural sciences.
James Wilson, who set up
the professorship in honour of his father and conservationist, Lord Moran, said:
“Environmental challenges call
for innovative and intelligent
solutions. Cambridge provides
this creativity and excellence.”
Tit Hall transformed
Trinity Hall is set for a £1 million
refurbishment. Two staircase
blocks and the porters’ lodge
are to be revamped by the construction company Bluestone.
David Hurricks, Bluestone’s
area director, said: “We are
delighted to be working with
Trinity Hall on their sensitive
refurbishment of an important Grade-I listed building.”
Lobbying lucidity
David Howarth, MP for
Cambridge, has launched a campaign to make political lobbying
more transparent. Mr. Howarth
is introducing a new clause
against lobbying in the Report
Stage of the Companies Bill
which, if passed, would ensure
that companies report expenditure on lobbying and gain the
permission of their shareholders. Mr. Howarth commented:
“Government should not simply mediate between the interests of different industries and
it is important that the public is
aware when this is happening.”
PHOTO:JIMMY APPLETON
COLLEGE SECURITY was
breached again last week
- by a pair of hairdressers.
Students at Jesus College
were surprised on Thursday to find two canvassers knocking on their doors
and offering them a choice
of haircuts from a folder.
They were eventually led out of
the college by a student, and the
Head Porter has since tracked
down the salon responsible,
and reprimanded the owner.
The intrepid pair were let
into the North Court buildings
by a student in the early afternoon of the 12th, and managed
to travel through the North
Court and the Chapel Court
in their quest for hair to cut.
Finally,
a
student
told
them
to
leave.
The porters have since urged
students at Jesus to be careful. “If you do not know
who is buzzing you, do not
let them in,” said the email
which was issued on Friday.
Graham
Appleby,
Head Porter of Jesus, said:
“It’s fine if they want to pigeonhole the students. But college policy is: no canvassers.”
Uni exam reports unhelpful
Ben Sillis
A NEW report has criticized universities for failing to publish examiners’ concerns over courses.
The Review of aspects of
Teaching Quality Information in England, published by
the Quality Assurance Agency
(QAA) for Higher Education last week, expresses
concern that universities are
removing examiners’ critical
comments on exam papers.
As part of a government
drive for accountability, universities are required to publish summaries of external
examiners’ reports in order
to help prospective students
choose where to study, but
the QAA fears that these are
being censored to prevent any
criticism of course quality.
In a sample survey of higher education institutions, the
QAA found that while all met
the requirement to publish
examiners’ answers to basic
yes/no questions on course
quality, few went beyond this
and provided additional comments made by examiners.
The report states; “Although this does not mean
that the examiners’ report
summaries were inaccurate,
it made it impossible to assess their integrity or frankness...and severely reduced
the level of useful information
available to the TQI user.”
Moreover, where commentary was included, the QAA
concluded that it was “almost
solely” used to underline areas
of achievement, and “hardly
ever” to criticise course quality or make recommendations
for improvement that had been
suggested by external examiners’ in the original report. This
“meant that it was hard for
the reader to gain a balanced
impression of the examiners’
overall view of what they were
examining,” says the QAA.
The QAA was also concerned, as in many cases it was
unclear who the author of the
summaries of examiners reports was, which raised the issue of reliability. “In some instances, the external examiners
themselves took direct responsibility for writing the summary... In contrast, there were
also examples where the summary was written by the institution itself,” the report says.
The problems were high-
lighted this week in The Times
Higher Education Supplement. External examiners for
the pharmacy course at De
Montfort University had said
in a letter obtained by The
Times Higher Education Supplement they “deplored” an
“inappropriate and improper”
decision in 2004 to upgrade
pharmacy degree students’
results after too many failed.
But the summary published
by the TQI website contained
no negative comments at all.
“
it was impossible to
assess their integrity
or frankness...and
severely reduced
the level of useful
information
available
”
A spokesperson for the University of Cambridge denied
that any censoring of reports
occurred. He said; “External
Examiners are asked to report
Words and graphic by Tom Hensby
Heir of Cambridge
Prince
William
will
become the
Duke
of
Cambridge when he marries, Buckingham Palace has
announced. The dukedom
will be an interim title for
William while he waits to
inherit “the Prince of Wales”
upon Charles becoming King.
contacted the SanRizz Salon, of 8 Sussex St, to ask
them about their innovative marketing strategy, and
whether they had thought
about changing it. They were
unrepentant: “Canvassing is
still going on in the centre of
town,” one of the staff told us.
sent out those members of
its reporting team most in
need of a haircut to walk the
streets of Cambridge as bait.
However the canvassers could
not be lured out of their hiding-place.
Bruce Kent, Keith Taylor, Kate Hudson, Col Tim Collins, Mark Pritchard MP and Julian
Lewis MP are kept in order by Luke Pearce, the President of the Cambridge Union.
on standards relating to the
quality of the course and the
marks given to students, and
to indicate whether they accord with awards given elsewhere. External Examiners
provide this information forpublic record, and these summaries form the content of the
reports that are published on
the CamDATA site. The University permits External Examiners to state as little or as
much as they would like, and
the University does not edit
or otherwise censor the comments made in those reports.”
He also said that as well
as the external examiners’
summaries for prospective
students,
examiners
also
provided faculties and departments with confidential
reports, “which provide comments, advice and points of
reflection for Faculties and
Departments. The purpose of
these reports is not to make
public statements, but to aid
the University in its ongoing
development and enhancement of teaching. Generally,
the comments made by External Examiners are positive,
with comments for minor improvements in a lot of cases.”
The stakes were high last
Thursday as the Cambridge
Union chamber devated
the motion “This House
would scrap Britain’s Nuclear Weapons”. On the
one side, the doves had to
try and convince us that
nuclear destruction is best
avoided by getting rid of
nuclear weapons. On the
other side, the hawks had
to try and keep a straight
face whilst telling us that
the best way to avoid being
atomised was to have a
huge stockpile of nuclear
weapons. In the end, the
Opposition carried it, with
176 Noes, 111 Ayes, and
29 Abstentions. Tonight’s
motion is “Religion is The
Opiate of The Masses”.
Look
who’s
Hawking
now
Jack Schennum
EVERYONE’S
favourite
theoretical physicist, Professor Stephen Hawking, is set
to star in a film based on his
theories for the origins of the
universe. The film, “Beyond
the Horizon” will feature,
the Gonville and Caius fellow as narrator and guide to
the mysteries of the universe.
This is not Hawking’s first
foray into the world of popular culture; in 1988 he wrote
“A Brief History of Time”,
which stayed in the Sunday
Times bestseller list for a
record breaking 237 weeks.
Since then he has become familiar to many of us thorough
his frequent cameo appearances on television shows such
as ‘The Simpsons’, ‘Futurama’
and ‘Star Trek’. It should perhaps come as no surprise then
that he is now making the
transition to the golden screen.
The IMAX film will feature cutting edge special effects which will hope to
bring the giant screen to life
and help to illustrate Hawking’s theories of astrophysics, including his theory as
to the cause of the big bang.
In the film, Professor
Hawking will be interviewed
by a reporter writing about
the meaning of existence.
The interview will take on
the form of a whirlwind journey through time and space.
Hawking will write the script
along with other scientists and
former Star Trek scriptwriter,
Leonard Mlodinow, who said,
“It will be like ‘Groundhog
Day’ meets ‘Star Trek’”. It
will feature dramatised interviews with Albert Einstein
and other eminent physicists.
October 19, 2006 The Cambridge Student
3
News
Sanskrit and Hindi axed
continued
from
page
1
Asked whether he thought
Sanskrit and Hindi will continue to be studied, Smith voiced
a cautious note of optimism:
“We certainly intend to do
what we can to keep it going.
People are working constructively to keep it and keep it in a
viable form. I wish them well.”
Dr Gordon Johnson, Director of the Centre for South
Asian Studies, University of
Cambridge, said: “The University of Cambridge has
not “closed the door” on
teaching Sanskrit and Hindi within the University.
“Sanskrit will continue
to be taught to undergraduates reading Theology and to
postgraduates studying Sanskrit as one of the great classical languages of the world.
“Hindi will continue to be
offered not only to postgraduates taking cultural South Asian
studies, but also to undergraduates and postgraduates who
wish to use Hindi in pursuing
research across the Social Sciences, Science and Technology.
“The General Board of
the University of Cambridge
has endorsed a proposal to
discontinue offering Sanskrit
and Hindi to undergraduates
within the Oriental Studies
Tripos only, largely because
there is very little demand.”
Hetti Isaac, a second year
at Queens’, told The Cambridge Student: “Its been a
fairly stressful time for lecturers and students in the South
Asian Studies department.
“This ‘suspension’ of papers emerged over the summer
when everybody was away,
which seems to be the general
board’s style. We weren’t consulted about any of the decisions that have been taken ,
including the laying off our
history lecturer from next year.
“It’s more than a little depressing to have been treated
in such a heartless fashion by
the powers that be. Depressing firstly because completing my degree will now be
fraught with difficulties and
secondly, because no one else
will study South Asian Studies
at undergraduate level again.
That’s why there’s no
freshers this year - colleges
have been told not to admit
any more students for the
South Asian Studies tripos.
“I know minority sub-
jects are far from economically viable but I thought
Cambridge stood for more
than that; the value of a
subject like mine should
extend beyond numbers.
“But whatever way this
goes I’m as passionate about
my subject now as I was a year
ago and I’m intensely proud
of being a Sanskritist and
Ancient Indian Historian.”
Jacob Head, CUSU Education Officer and third-year
Orientalist,
said that he
“wasn’t surprised” by the decision, which he described as
“a real shame”. “Ever since
the Faculty review over a year
ago, it has been expected.
There has been a squeeze-out.”
He added, “It is regrettable, not just for the university, but also for the wider
academic community. When
I sat on the Faculty Board in
2005, it was emphasised that
Cambridge sets the standard
for undergraduate Sanskrit.
“As CUSU Education Officer, I want to make sure that
we don’t lose other subjects.”
Head
said that those
subjects which have fewer than 100 undergraduates are most at risk, high-
lighting
Philosophy
and
Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic as particularly vulnerable.
He also voiced concern that
Sanskrit is still listed as an
undergraduate course on the
UCAS website: “This could
result in applicants losing
out on the chance of going to
Oxbridge, if they choose not
to apply to Oxford to study
Sanskrit and then discover,
too late, that Cambridge
does not do it. However, this
could be a matter for UCAS
rather than the University.”
PHOTO: TOM RICHARDSON
The musician, poet and self-styled “punk protestor” Billy
Bragg visited the Cambridge Union on Tuesday to speak
about his new book,The Progressive Patriot, which advocates a British Bill of Rights as a means of reconciling
multiculturalism and community cohesion. He said the Bill
would create “ a sense of cohesion and belonging”.
VCs choose carrot and stick approach
Amy Blackburn
A SURVEY has revealed
the widespread introduction of performance-related pay for university staff.
The enquiry, undertaken
by the University and Colleges
Employers’ Association, shows
that 77% of the 129 institutions asked are already introducing some form of performance related pay. A total of
68% of those surveyed stated
that the changes would cover
all staff. Only 6% of institutions are currently opposed
to performance-related pay.
The schemes provide cash
bonuses, linked to performance, for high achievers, as
well as penalties for those
who do not perform as well.
Future schemes could be
similar to that used by Southampton University, which of-
Contraceptive
planning
Will Bulman
CAMBRIDGE CITY council has been accused of treating planning applications
as a form of contraception.
John Hipkin, last year’s
Mayor of Cambridge, voiced
his concerns at a Cambridge
City Council planning committee meeting: “We keep
getting developments of one
and two-bedroom houses. I
wonder whether this is putting
huge pressure of a contraceptive nature on this city.
“People presumably start
off single or young marrieds
and have children, don’t
they? Where are they going
to go? Is there going to be a
sign outside saying ‘if you
want children go elsewhereor
get a short-term tenancy?”
It is anticipated that Cambridge will greet 15,000
new homes over the next
15 years.
However there
is a major imbalance in the
type of home typically created by these developments.
Cambridge-based
property consultant Carter Jonas
warned recently that family homes in the area would
become gold dust. In August, plans for 408 one and
two-bedroom flats on the old
Cambridge University Press
site on Shaftesbury Road rejected on grounds of providing no family accommodation.
fers strong performers a oneoff cash reward worth up to
10% of salary, in addition
to a special Vice-Chancellor’s award for 10 to 12 staff.
Such a measure would require a “performance management” system to identify staff
at both ends of the performance scale. The survey revealed
that such systems are either
already in place or in development for 81% of universities.
The universities themselves are divided over the
format a performance-related
pay scheme should take. Of
those surveyed, 42% of institutions planned to offer
“off spine” bonuses, involving a one-off cash payment.
A further 48% would prefer
those selected to progress up
the pay spine as a reward,
but 16% of these would prevent the benefits from con-
tinuing after the given year.
The survey was connected to the 2004 Framework
Agreement reforms, which
were designed to modernise
pay and career structures.
The University and Colleges
Employers’ Association has
claimed that “the great majority” of higher education establishments will have some form
of performance-related pay
structure within the next year.
PHOTO: JIMMY APPLETON
Cambridge Students Against the Arms Trade demonstrated outside Mong Hall, Sidney
Sussex College, on Tuesday evening to illustrate the global impact of military parts sold
by Rolls Royce, who were hosting a careers event. The action is part of a university-wide
campaign calling on colleges to disinvest from arms companies.
Cambridge
not good
for hotels
Victoria Brudenell
CAMBRIDGE HAS been
named the country’s worst
black hole for hotels by the
new edition of the Good
Hotels Guide. It claims that
the city lacks top-class accommodation, in spite of being so popular with tourists.
Frankie McGhee of Visit
Cambridge, the local tourist board, said she was “very
disappointed and shocked”
at the suggestion. “The
Guide is totally wrong; we
have excellent hotels, each
of which has a unique selling point,” she insisted.
She emphasised the hospitality
of the residents of the city, who
willingly share their city with
thousands of tourists each year.
Next spring will see the
opening of a new Hotel du
Vin, part of a chain of luxury hotels, on Trumpington
Street, and Visit Cambridge
will no doubt hope that this
will help to alter the opinion of the influential guide.
Boffins try
to boost
brains
Rachel McLaughlin
CAMBRIDGE
scientists
are to look at ways to
boost the mental abilities
and health of the nation.
The study is to focus on a
wide range of areas, comparing the influence of environment and genetics on cerebral
ageing; examining how technology affects the learning
process, and looking at the
mechanisms brains use to deal
with stress. The ultimate aim
is to devise ways in which we
can amplify what the government has termed ‘mental capital’ and thereby bring benefit
to the individual and to society.
The initiative will be directed by the Office of Science and
Innovation’s Foresight team
at the Department of Trade
and Industry and will involve
over 300 researchers from the
fields of neuroscience, education, criminology and anthropology. Scientists will be in
direct communication with
leading figures from the world
of government, business and
science to ensure the project
has the widest possible scope.
Work on the Mental Capital and Wellbeing Project starts
immediately, and it is expected
that the results will be published in the summer of 2008.
4
News
Madeleine Jones on Thet Win Aung
“We must not, with the death of this courageous man, abandon our commitment to humanity.”
On 17 October Thet Win
Aung, CU Amnesty International’s adopted Prisoner of
Conscience died in prison,
2634 days into a 58 year sentence which he was serving
in Mandalay prison, Burma
(Myanmar). He was 34 years
old. With his death the world
loses an emblem of defiance in
the face of tyranny, and a courageous and uncompromising
man.
In 1988 Thet Win Aung
was an ordinary Burmese
teenager: good-looking, keen
on football, and following a
high school curriculum based
upon the glorification of the
repressive military regime
which had been in power
since 1962 and was ruling
with increasing brutality. He
was, like many of his contemporaries, angry at the state of
his country, at the repression
of the Burmese people and at
having to go through the motions of a sham education. In
all these respects Thet Win
Aung was typical. The decisions he made, however,
proved him extraordinary.
In a climate of fear and
uncertainty, Thet Win Aung
began to play a leading role
in organising anti-government demonstrations, including the 1988 ‘8888 uprising’,
a peaceful protest of mainly
monks and civilians upon
which the Tatmadaw, the Burmese Army, opened fire, killing thousands. The following
year he became Vice-General
Secretary of the Basic Education Student Union. His rise
to prominence speaks not
only of his personal ability,
but also of great courage at a
young age, as student unions
have been banned in Burma
since 1962, and the government had shown that it was
prepared to meet insubordination with brutal violence.
For his revolutionary action, Thet Win Aung was expelled from school in 1991,
and immediately arrested and
imprisoned for 9 months,
during which time he underwent torture. The experience
would have been enough to
crush the spirit of many, but
Thet Win Aung’s commitment
to freedom and democracy
was only strengthened.
On his release he became
a leading member of the All
Burma Federation of Student
Unions, which co-ordinated
student action across the
country, and devoted himself
to organising demonstrations
and publishing anti-government material. In 1994 he
was forced into hiding after
the authorities ordered his
arrest. Even this threat was
not enough to deter him from
his activities, and he emerged
from hiding to take part in
student demonstrations. In
October 1998, shortly after
he had organised high-profile
protests against the poor quality of education and the denial
of human rights, the authorities caught up with him. He
was arrested and sentenced to
52 years in prison, a sentence
increased to 59 after further
interrogation. This was, at
the time, the longest sentence
ever given to a human rights’
defender in Burma.
Thet Win Aung’s time in
prison was miserable and
desolate. He contracted cerebral malaria, a debilitating
disease which eventually left
him unable to walk. Following a prison visit in April
2004, his brother, Ko Pyone
Cho, spoke of his staring fixedly downwards and inability
to show emotion – the result,
he suspected, of the mental
strain of torture and solitary
confinement.
The Burmese Federation of
Student Unions has released
a statement accusing the government of his murder. His
father, U Win Maung, told the
Democratic Voice of Burma,
a pro-democracy newspaper
based in Oslo, that he suspected that the recent news
of his brother’s detention (he
was arrested last month along
with other leaders of the reactionary group 88 Generation
Students) may have contributed to his death. No post
mortem was carried out, and
his family’s pleas for a digni-
fied funeral and burial went
unheeded by the prison authorities who rushed through
a cremation. Amnesty International will be calling for a
fair and thorough investigation into the death.
Thet Win Aung was CUAI’s
Prisoner of Conscience from
2004; thousands of students
wrote to the Burmese government about his case, and
added their names to the
thousands strong petition at
our termly Cage event.
Thet Win Aung was a man
of exceptional bravery, who
dedicated, and finally sacrificed, his life to the cause
of democracy in Burma. It
would be an insult to his
memory to pretend to be able
to comprehend the magnitude
of this sacrifice, but the news
of this unworthy end of a
great man must spur us to action: we cannot tolerate such
atrocities. This is a terrible
blow to CUAI’s campaigning,
but our campaigning will continue, with renewed strength
and feeling.
In Thet Win Aung we have
seen the strength, courage and
compassion that represent the
best in humankind. We must
not, with his death, abandon
our own commitment to humanity.
Help stop human rights abuses by attending your college’s
weekly letter writing meetings;
you can find out about them by
going to http://www.cuamnesty.org.uk and signing up to the
mailing list.
5
Focus
With few ‘life’ sentences lasting for life,
what is the future of the UK justice system?
Craig Sweeney, a convicted paedophile who abused a three year-old girl, was initially jailed for life but his prison term was cut in
recognition of his guilty plea. Alan Webster, who was convicted of raping a baby girl, received a one-third discount because he
admitted the offence. Since 2000, over 53 criminals sentenced to life have been freed after serving less than six years in prison. Is the
THE PANEL
current justice system providing any justice?
“
1. Duncan Crowe,
a second-year
Philosophy student
at Sidney Sussex
College
3. Paul Powlesland,
a third-year Law
student at Peterhouse College
2. Dr. Loraine Gelsthorpe,
University Reader &
Director of Postgraduate
Programmes at the Institute of Criminology
“
“
Read the articles and identify the writers from this week’s panel… (answers at bottom of page)
little time in establishing his
credentials as a tough Home
Secretary. The police dealing
with convicted paedophile
Craig Sweeney may have come
under attack because of their
apparent tardiness in responding to a three year-old girl’s
abduction, but the real rogue
is identified by the media as
the judge who had told Mr.
Sweeney that he would be eligible for parole just five years
into a life sentence. This has led
to political knee-jerk reactions
that sentencing is too lenient.
In reality, anyone examining
Parole Board decisions might
be surprised at how few prisoners are released at the point
of eligibility, and even more
surprised at the high rate of
prisoners who are released
but then recalled to prison
not for new offences, but
for minor breaches of parole
conditions. We live in a risk
averse society and decisions
about early release are subject to an increasing number
of strictures. We could add
to these attempts to toughen
up criminal justice evidence
about the increased use of
imprisonment (with a record
80,000 people in prison at
present, a high position in the
world league tables of rates of
imprisonment compared with
population size, and a 143 per
cent increase in the number
of women in prison over a
ten-year period – unprompted
by change in the frequency or
seriousness of their crimes).
We might also note increases
in sentence lengths, more
punitive community penalties (unpaid work and so on),
and other legislative and policy changes - from a raft of
new measures to ensure early
intervention in young offenders’ lives and ways of address-
ing anti-social behaviour, to
record numbers of police being
recruited to help enforce the
new controls and measures.
So why is the new Home
Secretary still aiming to ‘rebalance justice’? We should recognize that media representations of crime and justice
have misinformed the public,
and encouraged politicians to
respond to the sense of public
anger about crime that they
have fuelled in ways designed
to attract votes. The public
tends to over-estimate the seriousness of crime problems and
underestimate the severity of
court sentences.
For sure there are many
problems in the delivery of
criminal justice, but the empirical evidence suggests that leniency is not one of these. Justicia,
sitting atop the Old Bailey is
blindfolded (justice is impartial), she holds a sword in one
hand (representing the sword
of truth and the certainty of
punishment), and scales in the
other (justice should be balanced). What counts as ‘just’
punishment will always be a
matter of philosophical, legal,
public and professional debate,
but at present penal populism appears to rule the day
(political spin in other words).
Politicians repeatedly respond
to public disquiet about crime
and justice with increasing reliance on the use of imprisonment. What is really required
is an agenda which recognizes
complexities in the quest for
justice, openness of debate,
and a commitment to evidence
about what works in reducing
crime and promoting public
safety. Criminologists face the
double challenge of tackling
public misconceptions about
crime and sentencing and
exposing the flawed proposals from politicians when they
‘talk tough’ rather than sense.
”
B.
It is due noting at
the outset that in the case of
Craig Sweeney, the judge assiduously followed the sentencing guidelines given to him by
the current-government-established Sentencing Guidelines
Council. Therefore if, like John
Reid, you object to his ruling,
your complaints would be best
directed to the minister responsible for criminal justice, John
Reid.
As for the larger issue, we
must start by asking what on
earth the reasons could be for
wanting a ‘life sentence’ to necessarily ‘last for life’? Attitudes
to this issue divide rather neatly
into two camps; those who feel
punishment serves as a form of
official retribution for criminals as a deed of justice owed to
the victims, and those who feel
society is obliged to reform the
criminal for the mutual benefit
of themselves and society. The
latter is compatible with the
kind of liberal democracy we
enjoy, the former is not.
One of the basic tenets of
liberal democracy is that society is constituted of its members for their mutual benefit.
This is profoundly distinct
from their merely aggregate
benefit, which is why liberal
democracy puts a higher premium on rights than referenda.
Upon this foundation, society
cannot infringe the rights or
liberties of a member, unless
such interference is required to
prevent harm or violation by
that member to another or to
society at large; any attempt to
do so is illegitimate and thus
tyrannical.
Of course, the best proof
that a citizen is harmful to their
fellows or society is an act of
harm itself. Upon the violation of certain rules, created to
safeguard society and its members, society reserves the right
to punish that member. The
question is whether the punishment is justified because the
violation itself demands it, on
the basis of some form of ‘cosmic justice’, or because society
needs to eliminate the disposition in the criminal which
caused the violation so that he
can live freely with his fellow
citizens, a duty it owes to him.
Let us consider a test case.
Suppose the allegations that
David Cameron possessed and
abused cocaine when at Oxford
are true. Should he be punished? In a manner of speaking
he is the same person - he has
the same name, same DNA etc.
In another he is not - namely
that he lacks those elements to
his character which led to his
law-breaking; he’s as productive a member of society as a
Tory MP can be. What would
be the point of punishing him?
What is to be gained? In the
relevant sense he is no longer
the Cameron that committed
the crime - that Cameron is
gone.
Now in reality of course
‘proof’ of rehabilitation is a
hard problem. But modern sentencing leaves that problem to
parole boards, such as those
who will review that case of
Craig Sweeney after five years.
They get it wrong sometimes,
but have a respectable track
record. That improvements
need to be made to the justice
system is undeniable; but those
are improvements to the law
and the penal system so we
only punish those who truly
harm and do our utmost to see
them genuinely rehabilitated.
This process requires thought,
research and compassion - none
of which the knee-jerk response
to ‘lock ‘em up and throw away
the key’ leaves room for. A life
sentence which lasts until death
is not a victory for justice, it is a
defeat for society.
”
C.
Not a week seems
to go by without another tabloid story detailing the failures of the criminal justice
system, usually along the lines
of ‘liberal, arrogant judges
give criminals more rights
than victims, as well as ludicrously low sentences’. This is
largely untrue and the case of
Craig Sweeney is an excellent
example of the real causes of
the problems in the criminal
justice system.
The Sweeney case demonstrates that the supposed
failings of the criminal justice system are often exaggerated, manipulated and
even made up by a cynical
and headline-hungry media.
This case caused howls of outrage from the tabloids when
it was revealed that Sweeney
had been sentenced to just
five years for kidnapping and
indecently assaulting a three
year-old girl. It also provoked
the Sun’s infamous ‘campaign
to name and shame judges
who dish out soft sentences’.
Sweeney was in fact given a
life sentence with eligibility
for parole after five years. Five
years is the minimum term
he would serve and, given the
facts, it is likely that he would
be in jail for significantly
longer. This is indicative of the
constant stream of half-truths,
or downright lies, told by the
media, fuelling the idea that
the criminal justice system is
failing and that the judges are
responsible for this.
Although they are exaggerated, some problems do,
however, exist and they are
largely caused by bad legislation. In the Sweeney case,
the judge applied the law
entirely correctly- the apparently lenient sentence resulted
from the sentencing reforms
implemented by the Criminal
Justice Act 2003. This bad
legislation is often caused by
politicians pandering to the
media’s paranoia. We live in
an age in which policies are
formulated by the content of
yesterday’s headlines. Doing
nothing or pausing for reflection is simply not an option for
politicians when it comes to
criminal justice. This leads to
the introduction of legislation
that is rushed, ill-considered
and re-written so often that
it is never given the chance to
establish itself. The judiciary
have repeatedly pleaded for
a reduction in the torrent of
legislation affecting criminal
justice. The fact that there are
now tens of Criminal Justice
Acts in force, with more constantly being produced, seems
to show that this call has gone
unheeded.
Many problems with the
criminal justice system are
also caused by the politicians’
desire for control. Unable to
leave sentencing to the impartial discretion of judiciary, they
introduce legislation to restrict
this discretion. However, the
use of guidelines, rules, mandatory sentences, minimum
sentences, time-off for good
behaviour and a third-off for
pleading guilty leads to sentencing becoming formulaic.
This in turn leads to unduly
harsh or lenient sentences, as
occurred in the Sweeney case,
as well as many others.
Therefore,
the
Lord
Chancellor was right when he
said that the judges should not
be made the ‘whipping boys’
for flaws in the criminal justice system. Any blame must
instead lie with politicians for
creating the problems and the
media for misrepresenting and
exaggerating them.
”
Article/Writer: A2, B1, C3
A. John Reid has wasted
7
Editorial
October 19, 2006
Volume 8, Issue 4
(Top-up) Money can’t buy me love (of Sanskrit)
is still goggling that university top-up fees have
actually come into force.
They are manifestly and
grossly unfair, and the
statistics are proof. UCAS
applications decreased by
nearly 4% this year - the
first decrease in six years.
The Cambridge Student is
troubled at the idea that
British higher education
could become a two-tier
system based on financial
incentive, and that this
could affect the calibre
of Cambridge applicants.
In order to take a stand
against top-up fees, please
join the Cambridge crowd
at the national demo next
Sunday.
As CUSU sabbs prepare
for a new election, and
cover the Academic Affairs
workload, there is a manic
atmosphere in the CUSU
offices which is testament to the hard work
Dave Ewings did. The
Cambridge Student would
like to express our sin-
Letters to The Cambridge Student
It makes a welcome change to
the usual worthy pretentious
nonsense that I normally have
to endure and my house mates
and I found it thoroughly
amusing. As a man who has
travelled extensively it is nice
to hear someone make some
honest observations without
bothering with being too PC!
More of the same please.
Dear Madam,
I would just like to say
how refreshing Siobhan Ni
Chonaill’s article on Tanzania
was (Thursday 12th October).
cere apologies to Dave for
expressing the view - which
after this hectic week The
Cambridge Student no
longer holds - that he took
the job in order to “booze
on the Backs”. Like most
students, The Cambridge
Student knows the temptation to spend an elegaic
extra year in this beautiful,
vibrant place, and it was
unfair to suggest that the
primary factor in Dave’s
decision to do so was
drinking. The Cambridge
Student also regrets the
implication that Ewings’
hustings comment about
drinking in Cambridge
was connected to his post,
rather than a comment on
letters@cusu.cam.ac.uk
Yours faithfully,
Jonathan Lawton
Dear Madam,
Thanks,
Jonathan.
We
hope you’re all enjoying the
expanded Travel section.
If you have any travel tales
(pretentious or otherwise!)
send them to travel@cusu.
cam.ac.uk
I’m writing in reference to
the caption accompanying a
picture of a veiled woman,
which read, “women are
expected to wear the niqab at
all times, even when tending
to their families in private”.
This statement is incorrect
- not even the strictest inter-
pretation of veiling involves
covering amongst the family.
In actual fact, it is merely
worn in front of unrelated
men, and the home is often
lit up by beautiful fabrics and
colours.
Respectfully,
Alia Azmi
the general student lifestyle.
is immensely worried that
small subjects like Sanskrit
are under threat. Classics
and ASNaC are similarly
structured examinations
of language and history, so
why are they more worthy
for undergraduate study?
Sorry about that, Alia.
Hopefully now Cambridge
will be even more informed,
after last week’s fantastic
‘Under the Veil’ article
This week, we’re rewarding Johnathan’s stunning
sucking-up masterclass with
a can of Shark energy drink.
Because we really shouldn’t
drink it any more.
Editor-in-Chief Alice Palmer editor@tcs.cam.ac.uk Photos Editor Jamie Appleton photos@tcs.cam.ac.uk News Editor Meghan Graham news@tcs.cam.ac.uk Deputy News Rich Saunders Focus Editor
Pooja Jain focus@tcs.cam.ac.uk Interviews Editor Debra Glendinning interviews@tcs.cam.ac.uk Features Editors Elly Shepherd and Jack Sommers features@tcs.cam.ac.uk Illustrations Millie Knight Food
and Drink Editor Helen Undy eating@tcs.cam.ac.uk Culture Editor Tod Hartman arts@tcs.cam.ac.uk Film Editor Josh Davis film@tcs.cam.ac.uk Deputy Film Editor Sam Law Theatre Editor Megan
Prosser theatre@tcs.cam.ac.uk Deputy Theatre Editor Aaron Safir Music Editors Hannah Nakano Stewart, Wil Mossop and Tom Higgins music@tcs.cam.ac.uk Deputy Music Editor Richard Braude
Fashion Editor Beatrice Wilford fashion@tcs.cam.ac.uk Deputy Fashion Editor Lauren Smith Sports Editor Charlotte Thomas sport@tcs.cam.ac.uk Puzzles Leah Holroyd Art Director Harriet
Bradshaw Travel Editor Tom de Fonblanque travel@tcs.cam.ac.uk Deputy Travel Editor Andrew Daynes Business Manager (CUSU) Lily Stock business@cusu.cam.ac.uk Services officer (CUSU)
Ashley Aarons services@cusu.cam.ac.uk Board of directors Ashley Aarons, Lily Stock, Alice Palmer, Ben Sillis
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Set by Leah Holroyd
ACROSS
DOWN
7 A harvest by Oliver’s citadel (9)
8 Canoe goes in both directions (5)
10 Poetry from Cambridge perhaps is
everything (8)
11 Tin monkey provides food (6)
12 Amphibian went wrong (4)
13 Taking in child is strangely apt
doing (8)
15 Cash war around automatic
cleaning (3,4)
17 Label small heart (7)
20 Swing camera (or mother!) for
great view (8)
22 Language found in Burkina (or in
Maine?) (4)
25 Nazi militia around - tell girl (6)
26 Donate it, oddly, to counteract ill
effects (8)
27 Unable to see awning (5)
28 Change natural energy into
substitute (9)
1 Part of play was watched, we hear (5)
2 Museum found first light radiation
inside ore (6)
3 Coarsest philosopher? (8)
4 Dismiss guy who works for
emergency services? (9)
5 Supernatural power surrounding
network is attractive (8)
6 Confused, crept near to woodworker (9)
9 Survive cholera inside to bounce back
(4)
14 Taunt Lara about spider (9)
16 Set down load in forest (8)
18 To graduate, digits resemble fruits
(8)
19 Terminally obese friend (7)
21 Unfortunately captured in lasso (4)
23 Rat made den in rubbish (6)
24 Both Republicans leave first course
in messy condition (5)
TCSUDOKU
Easy
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White’s attack looks dangerous; 1)e5 threatens both mate on h7 and the Knight on d6, but
1)…f5! stops the attack. So what should White play
instead?
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Posed by the CU Chess Club. Chess Club meets
every Saturday 4-6pm in Trinity Junior Parlour
http://www.srcf.ucam.org/chess
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Hard
TCSudoku is made
possible by the lovely people at http://www.sudokupuzzles.net. Go. Do some
more.
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Chess Challenge
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Solution to this week’s puzzle:
Fischer-Benko, 1963. Fischer is widely regarded as the
most naturally talented player in chess history. Here, his
celebrated 19)Rf6!! turns Black’s kingside into a traffic
jam, eg. 19)…Bxf6 20)e5 mates on h7. The actual game
finished 19)…Kg8 20)e5 h6 21)Ne2 Resigns. Black must
lose his Knight: if it moves, 22)Qf5 mates on h7, while
21)…Bxf6 22)Qxh6 again mates on h7
The Cambridge Student Crossword no.4
8
The Dawkins Delusion
When asked if we wanted to interview Richard Dawkins
himself after his talk at the Cambridge Union last week, we both
jumped at the chance. We’d heard that Dawkins was notoriously difficult to interview (well, if you’re not Jeremy Paxman).
After careful deliberation and excited research, we thought that
we had at least a couple of thought-provoking questions to put
to one of the supposed top three living intellectual figures (the
other two being Noam Chomsky and Umberto Eco). We
were still a little daunted: what could we possibly have to say that
wouldn’t be below his lofty intellectual sphere? Thankfully, after
his talk, our nerves were laid to rest to some extent. He compelled
the audience with a reading from his latest work, “The God
Delusion”, and went on to answer some challenging questions
with characteristic style and humour. He chuckled at the notion
of Ann Coulter’s challenge: “I deny any of my co-religionists to
tell me they do not laugh at the notion of Dawkins burning in
hell” in her latest book, ‘Godless’. He answered questions directly
without skirting round the bits he felt uncomfortable with.
We listened, we laughed, we pondered. Yes, we knew he was
opinionated and a force to be reckoned with. Any mention of
Dawkins in polite conversation would inform you of this fact at
least. But oh, we were foolish; lulled into a nice sense of security, or
the promise of a provoking and interesting interview at least (NB.
If you were hoping to read about our “interview” with Dawkins,
you should probably stop reading now. It lasted three minutes,
and we’re mostly going to slate him from this point onwards).
We waited politely and nervously in a parlour for him to
finish signing books. He seemed jovial enough. I believe there
was even some banter. As soon as he entered the room, however,
it was clear the Dawkins of ten minutes ago had vanished. “Oh
alright, five minutes then” he snorted angrily when reminded of
the interview. Shit, we thought collectively. It turned out he had
something against the parlour too, so we had to find somewhere
else. “Didn’t you get enough in there? What do you need an
interview for?” he questioned. We were too scared too reply,
but luckily for us, most questions that Richard Dawkins asks
don’t need an answer. Why would they, when the man thinks
he’s right about everything? So off we went, an assortment of
interviewers, photographers and Union people, united in their
terror. We peered into one room after another, each filled with
whiskey-tasters, debaters, and other depressingly, stereotypically
Cambridge things. One minute down, four to go. If any of you
meet the old fellow, for the love of God/science/whatever floats
your boat, don’t keep him waiting. Finally we found a room.
Anxiety about a Dawkins-esque rant diminished: monosyllabicity quickly became the greatest hurdle. Who would have
thought,anintellectual wholiterally can’t stop himselffromgoing
on about religion, now can hardly muster a sentence.
“Your latest book has been referred to as the ‘atheist’s bible’.
Howhappyareyouwiththisinterpretation?”Ishowwebegan.“I
would be rather happy if it were in every hotel room drawer,” Says
he. Not too bad so far, you might think. He thinks the bible is a
“great work of literature” and should be taught in schools as such,
so he seems rather chuffed with this comparison. Incidentally,
‘The God Delusion’ is shooting up the bestsellers list, so give it a
couple of thousand years and watch this space. We then ask him
about his latest television series, ‘The Root of All Evil?’, and if it is
fair to describe all religions as evil. Buddhism, for example, seems
like a lovely and peaceful religion that we both like the sound of.
Sadly, we don’t get to discuss the benefits of meditation, burning
incense, and saving ants from a squishing. We are quickly and
sternly told that was NOT his title. He disowned it. Channel 4
overruled him and he protested against it. How will we find out if
all religions are bad now Dicky won’t tell us? Then again, perhaps
Dawkins isn’t the best person to be seeking our philosophical
ponderings about religion from. I do have respect for the man as
a scientist. ‘The Selfish Gene’ just about changed my life. Neither
of us is religious, and we see valid points in a lot of what he has to
say on behalf of atheism. But will someone please tell him that
using a couple of mentally unstable people as representatives of
the three biggest religions in the world is not the best way to get
your point across. He has said that the aim of his latest book is
Interview
saddens Lianne Warr and Jack Dentith
to convert those in “the middle of the road” to atheism, because
they might not have thought about faith that much. He says
he has lost hope in trying to get through to “dyed-in-the-wool
faith heads”. He has also likened Christian rallies by Reverend
Haggard (featured in afore-mentioned television programme)
to the Nuremberg rally, and Haggard himself to Goebbels.
Surely this is a bit much. How he hopes to get these “middleof-the-roaders” to convert to atheism by mortally offending their
religious friends and family, he hasn’t quite said. He also hasn’t
allowed for the possibility that “middle-of-the-roaders” have
more than one brain cell to knock together, therefore it is quite
likely that they have considered something as big as religion all
by themselves. Alas, he’s being rather difficult, so we don’t push it.
We also only have two minutes left.
Part of “The root of all-”damn, I can’t say that, he disowned
it…er,thatprogrammewherehecalledAmericanChristiansthe
Taliban and also Nazis, um, yeah, that one…refers to the “virus
of faith” damaging children. He has underlined this as being the
worst thing about religion. We enquire as to what aspect of faith is
particularlydamaging,likeCatholicguiltetc.Hethinksthemost
damaging thing is the principle of labelling children as Muslim
or Catholic and so on before they’re even old enough to speak for
themselves or to understand that religion. This is a valid point,
and people I’ve spoken to from a number of different religious
backgrounds acknowledge this. Again, it gets me thinking that
if only he didn’t offend people so much (on purpose or not), he
might actually be on to something worthwhile here. He also
thinks that telling kids that they will be punished after their
death is wrong. Let’s face it, he’s probably right about that too. I
ask if ‘The Selfish Gene’ was generated purely through scientific
interest, or if it was borne out of a desire to provide a description of
a viable evolutionary mechanism that ruled out any possibility of a
creator God. Again, he just argues with the semantics. “I was just
expressing what was already in the air. It’s not my theory. It’s a way
of looking at neo-darwinism”. OK, my bad. Luckily, Jack has my
back and asks if atheism influenced his views on science, or vice
versa. “The latter”, he says. Three syllables. Score.
We’re told to wrap it up, and have yet to figure out whether
this is a blessing or a curse. So ends our three-minute interview
with Professor Richard Dawkins. We learned a bit about his
book, and a bit about his interview manner if you’re not Jeremy
Paxman. Most importantly, we learned that you should never
meet your idols. It’s a bit like finding out that Father Christmas
isn’t real. They’re much better off on their pedestals- in your
imaginary world of hero worship; them as a child reading “The
Origin of the Species” for the first time and getting excited; of
them writing your favourite scientific non-fiction work in a big
comfy armchair with a glass of brandy; of them in a boxing ring
with Robert Winston. I very much doubt that Dawkins will go
near a copy of The Cambridge Student, let alone read it. But if he
does, I would like him to know that he has burst our bubble, pissed on our parade, stolen sweets from our pram. Boo hoo.
9
Features
Whatever’s Left of the Left
Andy Gawthorpe on how the left went astray
I’ve just finished reading Paul Berman’s latest book,
Power and the Idealists, or, the
Passion of Joschka Fischer and
its Aftermath.
It is at once
history and prescription, leaping from the past to the present
and then on into the future - it
is, in other words, history as no
historian could ever write it in
his official capacity. Berman was
both participant and observer in
the events he describes, and no
one can ignore his forceful arguments on the basis of partisan
prejudice.
He ended his last book, Terror
and Liberalism, with an elegy to
the shattered peace of the postCold War world. We’ve got problems and we’re not facing up to
them, he was saying. And these
problems, really, are nothing particularly new (not to children of
the twentieth century, anyway)
- the incompetence of our leaders, absurd misunderstandings
across cultural barriers as well
as our own political spectrum,
and totalitarian enemies. Both
realists and isolationists have lost
their way in the modern world.
American power is seen as the
solution to every problem by the
former and its proximate cause
by the latter. What we need is a
Third Way (remember those?)
Such a way, he suggests, can
be found by examining the lives
and legacies of a few people who
partook in the global student
movement in 1968 and yet went
on to outgrow its limitations people like Bernard Kouchner,
founder of ‘Medecines sans
Frontiers’ and later ‘Medecines
du Monde’; Andre Glucksmann
and Bernard Henri-Levy, veterans of France’s New Philosophers
movement; and Joschka Fischer,
former Foreign Minister of a
united Germany.
Former Foreign Minister of
a united Germany - and former
street-fighting revolutionary.
Fischer’s journey from one to the
other serves as an example of the
generational trajectory taken by
some of the veterans of 1968.
In 2001, a series of photographs
were published in the German
magazine Stern, showing a young
Fischer savagely beating a policeman. The photos recall Fischer’s
history in the 1968 student movement. From thug on the streets to
partisan of the Kosovo war, seen
by many as imperialist aggression
by NATO. And by focusing us
on this trajectory, questions were
raised about not just him, but the
movement as a whole - who had
these people been? Who were
they now? And what lessons can
we learn from them?
Berman believes we can learn
a great deal. The mainstream left
wing in most Western countries
is presently in an absurd and
troubling situation, and when
this happens we are all in danger. Fischer’s story is a salient
example of the power of the left
to slaughter sacred cows and provide a dramatic new impulse to
political life.
After the massacre at
Srebrenica, Fischer declared
that he had learnt that ‘no more
Auschwitz’ was as important as
‘no more war’. Srebrenica was
able to happen because cynical realists and naive isolationists united in an unholy alliance
seeking the unfaithful aim of
non-intervention in a European
genocide. The realists we can
well understand, and I trust not
too many words will be needed
here to prove their lack of both
moral scruple and wisdom.
But what of the left wing, the
heirs of so many previous battles
with injustice and violence? The
anti-globalisers carried on their
march against globalization, and
the peaceniks carried on their
march against wars and rumours
of wars. And what difference did
this make to the dead in Bosnia
or the dead in Iraq later in the
decade? Not one jot. There was a
time, earlier in the decade, when
the left wing had declared itself
in solidarity with the oppressed
of the Muslim world. The New
York Review of Books used to
publish the anti-Ba’ath dissident
Kanan Makiya, and Republic of
Fear sat on many a bookshelf.
The literature and reports on
Muslim totalitarianism from the
Middle East screamed their way
north: here, they said, is evil.
Here is an evil you Europeans
have known, and conquered - at
least at home.
This point is important and
worth dwelling on. It was a central part of Terror and Liberalism.
It’s a big claim, and one many
people on the left instinctively
react against. It’s hence worth
substantiating (I never promised
this would be short; but trust
me, it is important). Anyone who
has read about the Taliban, the
Iranian regime, or the Ba’ath dictatorship is in no doubt that what
we are examining is not really
that novel to us. One must simply read My Forbidden Face by
Latifa, the Afghan woman who
bravely survived the Taliban’s
attempt to not only ban her
from the public sphere, but to
shape and ultimately destroy her
private sphere. Just like the fascists in Europe. Or Azar Nafisi,
whose Reading Lolita in Tehran
describes how she rushed back
to the glorious Iranian revolution to find only death, war and
repression. Just like under the
fascists. It need hardly be necessary to dwell on the nature of
Saddam Hussein’s rule, but if
it is, Republic of Fear has not
dulled with age.
These movements may have a
Middle Eastern mother, but they
surely have a European father.
Joschka Fischer realised that fascism was abroad in Yugoslavia
in the 1990s (alas, it still is), and
Paul Berman is hardly the first to
realise that it is now abroad in
the Middle East. Fighting against
tyranny and oppression is supposed to be what the left is all
about. In 1968, the German students believed they were fighting
against Nazism that was latent in
their society and that of the West
as a whole.
Their limitation was in identifying the West itself as the source
of all the world’s evil, and so
action against our own political
and social systems as the solution. An excellent example of this
is the way that after the Khmer
Rouge proved themselves to be
genocidal maniacs, it was argued
that this was only because the
United States had driven the people of Cambodia to madness by
their bombing: as if irrationality
and cruelty do not exist in the
world unless they are brought
here by Western-launched wars.
This was the meaning of ‘no
more war’. The achievement of
Fischer and those like him was
“Fighting
against
oppression is
what the left is
”
all about
to move beyond this simplicity,
criticising the West when it was
to blame, but also recognizing
that the bulk of the work to be
done in fighting global injustice
lies outside our borders. This
was the meaning of ‘no more
Auschwitz’.
Where have we lost our way?
In the aftermath of 9/11, George
W. Bush launched a revolution in
American foreign policy. He specifically denounced the realpolitik
of the past and claimed he was
launching a war in Afghanistan
in the name of democracy, human
rights, and women’s rights. And,
though many were incredulous,
he went on to do just that. No
tractable warlord was installed,
but Hamid Karzai was voted
into office.
And, although his goals were
surely those of any liberal-minded and compassionate-hearted
person, his procedure and his
method were all wrong, as far as
most of Europe was concerned.
He wanted to change everything
at once. His administration’s
conduct in 2001-3 was arrogant and inward-looking. They
made little effort to reach out to
the left, where they might have
found allies. They made a fetish
of unilateralism. They alienated
Joschka Fischer, who might have
been their great friend. Bush’s
goals and the goals of sophisticated leftist intellectuals and moderate Muslims were one and the
same, yet he managed to alienate
a great amount of his possible
global base of support. What
we are fighting is genocidal evil,
and yet most people aren’t on
our side. Say what you like about
principle, but this was a failure
of public relations. A failure of
politics.
This leaves us where we are
now, in an absurd situation where
everything is reduced to what
gaffe George W. Bush has made
this week or what error American
forces have made. Anything that
sounds like a call for freedom in
the Muslim world is dismissed
as crypto-neoconservatism today, a high crime! Everything
is a partisan struggle between
ourselves rather than a struggle
between fascism and the right for
Muslims to live a decent and free
life like any other human being
on the planet. Not everyone can
be expected to agree on exactly
how we face up to the challenges
of the world, but we must find
a way. “No more Auschwitz,”
said Fischer, “no more genocide,
no more fascism. All that goes
together for me.”
These are your words, heirs of
the left. Earn them back.
Paris 1968 - Some of the left’s most powerful people nearly toppled Charles De Gaulle’s government as students
Goodbye Dave
The recent resignation of Dave
Ewings, the CUSU Academic
Affairs Officer, was a real blow to
the student union, both on a work
level and a personal one. I feel
that we have handled it in a sensible way and that the hard work
that CUSU does for students has
not been significantly affected.
However, I want to emphasise
how hard-working Dave Ewings
was and that he excelled at his
job.
At an Emergency CUSU Council,
an elections committee was coopted to organise a by-election
for the post. The Elections committee opened nominations,
arranged hustings, spoke to colleges, worked out contingency
plans in case no-one ran... best
of all, someone is running for the
position. Hustings will be in the
next few days, and I urge everyone to go and vote.
In the interim, Dave Ewings
has worked in order to create an
easy handover for his successor.
Other members of the CUSU
team have also covered some of
his workload. Casework has been
taken on by Harriet Boulding,
the Women’s Officer, and Sam
Rose, the Welfare and Graduates
Officer, to provide support for
individuals who need it. Jacob
Head, the part time Education
Officer, has increased his role
within the University, and is
bringing a motion to the next
CUSU Council. A number of
valuable extra jobs that Dave was
working on, outside of his remit,
have also been temporarily covered. This may seem a long and
boring list, but it must be emphasised that Ewings’ resignation has
not significantly affected what
CUSU does for students.
More important is to stress how
good Dave Ewings was at his
job. On a personal level, his colleagues were sad to see him go.
However, it was with work that
Dave excelled. Any insinuations
otherwise are completely mistaken. All of the individuals that
Dave worked with have been very
impressed by the level of time
and consideration he gave them,
and not one person has complained following recent admissions. At general CUSU work,
no-one has done more. He was
normally the first one in at work,
and put himself fully behind any
project he committed himself
to. For instance, when it became
clear the CUSU needed a full risk
assessment, Dave put together a
comprehensive 30 page document
on the matter rather than the
expected smaller document. The
same drive went into work on
a disaffiliation document, and it
was Dave who drove to London
on both mornings of the societies
fair to pick up water, leaving at
4am. At the fair itself, he worked
non-stop for two days, far beyond
what was requested. From the
work I have seen him doing, I
don’t think any student should
feel that Dave Ewings didn’t serve
them with distinction.
10
Features
Getting ink done...
Tattoos are irrational, beautiful, terrible and wonderful. They’re
also coming into the mainstream. Elly Shepherd investigates
the painful but arresting world of tattooing. Pictures by Jimmy
Appleton.
Tattoos have been around forever, or, at
least, in the sense of forever as an unimaginably long amount of time rather than actually eternity because when you start thinking
about that it all gets a bit physics and a bit
scary. Pretty much as far in human history
as you care to go back, people have been
sticking inky needles in each other and making patterns and pictures. I have also wanted
one – well, wanted lots – as far back as I can
remember.
The recorded history of tattooing goes
back to 4000BC when many ancient Egyptian
women had tattoos on their legs, some archaeologists think to ward off death in childbirth.
(Although in my opinion that’s just because
they heard the word ‘women’ and thought
well it must be about childbirth then. I think
Egyptian women had tattoos because they
thought it was cool.)
The Inuit, in a rather original move tattooed each other by drawing thread underneath the skin. Their originality means that
practically every tattoo history you can read
will mention them. Score to the Inuit. The
real masters of tattooing, however, in the
sense that we think of tattoos – e.g. ink and
needles – are the Maori, the Japanese and
the Polynesians. The word tattoo itself comes
from a Polynesian word, and was exchanged
by Captain Cook in 1769 for smallpox and
centuries of colonialism and suffering. Good
deal for he Polynesians. That was also when
sailors started getting tattoos and brought
the idea back to Europe. Hence the whole
‘sailor’ association thing.
So Europeans have been late in the game,
but, they did invent the rather nifty electric
tattooing needle (in around 1867 – with
Samuel O’Reily producing the design still
in use on the basis of
Modern
an Edison engraver –
information courtesy tattooing,
of Mr. Alex Binnie)
that made the whole in general,
thing a lot less dangerous and painful. is safe
“
”
A Japanese tattoo artist demonstrates traditional ’chisel’ methods at the London
Tattooo Convention
Before that, the Maori method was basically
to chisel open the skin and ink in the cut,
even today that particular method is considered to be one of the most painful things
you can do to yourself. One member of the
Jackass crew even got it done, which obviously makes it hardcore.
Electric tattooing is a lot quicker, safer
and less painful. It also makes a cool humming noise that makes you feel really hardcore. This is important. Being a wussy little
European, I was never going to get tattooed
with anything other than a sterilized electric
needle – and indeed it was so.
Modern tattooing, in general, is safe. The
biggest and most interesting exception being
prison tattooing. The machines tend to be
cobbled together (often made from biros,
needles and various small electrical devices)
and not exactly what you’d call hygienic.
Prison tattoos often tend to have a bluish
tinge, particularly those made in Russian
prisons. So, as a rule, you probably shouldn’t
mess with any big Russians with bluish tattoos. Then again, I probably wouldn’t mess
with any big Russians. It’s good advice.
Tattoos and criminals have always been
linked, to varying degrees. In Japan, the full
body-suits (e.g. tattoos everywhere) worn
by Yakuza are not only testament to the
allegiances of the wearer, but also let everyone know how hard and manly he is having
subjected himself to that much pain. It’s a
similar principle the world over. On our fair
shores, many ex-cons get tattooed on the
knuckles with ACAB (either ‘All Coppers Are
Bastards’ or ‘Always Carry A Bible’ depending on whether the wearer is talking to his
mate or his mum).
I like that tattoos are controversial. It
makes me feel cool. But now they are becoming, at least in Europe and the USA, much
more accepted and mainstream. There was a
time when it really was just sailors, whores
and the odd aristocrat who had tattoos.
Those were the days.
Part of the reason for this change is the
advances that have been made in tattooing.
They look a lot better than they did, don’t
“There was a time
when it was really just
sailors, whores and
the odd aristocrat
”
who had tattoos
fade as much and tattoo artists tend to be
trained better and are almost without exception are far more safety conscious. A Harris
Poll, done in the USA in 2003 estimates that
around 16% of Americans have at least one
tattoo, and 36% of the age-group 25-29.
That’s a whole lot of people. If you’re interested, those with tattoos are more likely to
be Democrats, and the Republicans who did
have tattoos are much more likely to want
them removed. No surprises there then.
“As a rule you
shouldn’t mess with
any big Russians
with bluish tattoos.
”
It’s good advice
Continued On Page 23
play
Don’t miss out.
Image by Nicola Starr
Liz Beiswenger Shea takes a look at
the dangerous world of
Putin’s Russia. Anna Politkovskaya, translated by
Arch Tait. Haverill Press, 296 pp., £8.99
It seems that criticisms of Russian President
Vladimir Putin’s policies by Western pundits
are de rigueur these days. Any self-respecting
‘expert’ on Russia portrays Putin’s administration as more authoritarian and nationalistic
by the day and doesn’t hesitate to criticise or
mock the bungling policies of the former lowlevel bureaucrat turned President. In contrast,
when ordinary Russians give their accounts and
opinions of their President, they seem strangely
subdued, appreciative and optimistic. The journalist Anna Politkovskaya remained an exception to this latter rule, and in a sad and ironic
twist, she was assassinated as she left work
last week. Ms. Politkovskaya was well-known
throughout journalistic circles in both Russia
and the West for her absolute and total opposition to the Putin administration, the Chechen
wars and the mistreatment of Russian citizens.
She had been finishing an article for a wellknown Russian newspaper, Novaya Gazeta,
on the abuses suffered by civilians during Putin’s second Chechen war when she was shot
in the back in an elevator. This now-infamous
last article remains unfinished, but the material
used in the piece echoes the themes which run
throughout her previous work.
Her last full-length book, Putin’s Russia (2004)
is a scathing account of the politics of the Putin administration and the real-life manifestations of the former KGB agent’s activities as
President. In a memorable passage describing
the abuse, torture and detainment of Chechen
civilians, she goes so far as to compare Putin
to Stalin. Indeed, the book is a laundry list of
crimes carried out by the President and those
doing his bidding. Politkovskaya uses true
stories to illustrate the growing authoritarianism, corruption and violence perpetrated by
the current ruling elite. Her stories range from
those of victims to perpetrators and all seem to
point to President Putin as the ultimate authority figure responsible for the misery and death
spreading throughout the Russian Federation.
She details political corruption, misuse of public funds and the torture of innocent civilians.
13
Putin’s Russia
The reader has access to the stories of soldiers,
pensioners, mothers, veterans, activists, judges
and children, all adversely affected by Putin’s
political, economic and social policies. Politkovskaya is unapologetic in her bias against Putin
and her sympathies for the ‘average’ Russian.
Politkovskaya rarely delves in to the specific
political motivations of Putin’s actions in her
account, but analyses the effects of the administration on a more sociological level. The book
attempts to illustrate the social and psychological malaise spreading throughout the Russian
Federation as a consequence of Putin’s thirst
for money and political power. Putin’s Russia is
a scathing testament to the effects of bad governance on every aspect of every citizen’s life.
Politkovskaya posits that Putin and his cronies
will stop at nothing (rather ironically, she specifically mentions assassinations) to maintain
their positions as the ruling elite. As a Russian
journalist denouncing her government in print,
Politkovskaya tempted fate. While no one has
claimed responsibility for her murder, it re-
mains a given that her direct criticism of the
man she called a ‘tyrant of the worst kind’ was
ultimately to lead to her death. Putin’s Russia
is a compelling, harrowing read, and one is left
with the hope that Politkovskaya’s efforts to
expose the wrong-doings of The Kremlin were
not in vain.
New Poetry
from Arianne Shahvisi
All the hours of Sunday
Long minutes, stretched hours
Blu-tac
Until the fibres tear
Netted with sleep, pyjama shards
Of time, strewn everywhere.
And breathe the air:
Home-cooked.
Strong soft ironing board scent,
Seething steam and washing powder.
Smooth music
Plays a little louder
Than Monday morning’s call.
Nobel Prize for
Literature 2006
Announced last Thursday in Stockholm...
Who
: Orphan Pamuk, Turkish novelist (b.
1952), a versatile writer whose work spans a
diverse range of subjects, from 16th Century
Istanbul to the paradoxes of the contemporary
multicultural Turkish state. He recently courted
controversy with a statement acknowledging
the Armenian Genocide of 1915-1917, a major
taboo in Turkey, punishable under a law prohibiting ‘insulting Turkishness’. Charges were
later dropped on a technicality.
Read
: My Name is Red, an intricately-woven medieval murder mystery, overlayed with
meditations on art, religion, philosophy and
cultural clashes between Orient and Occident.
Why: The Nobel Committee said: Pamuk
is a writer, ‘who in the quest for the melancholic
soul of his native city has discovered new symbols for the clash and interlacing of cultures’.
His prize, the first in literature for Turkey,
comes at a topical moment, when human rights
record and potential European Union membership are under particular scrutiny.
And the beat of the rain
Nods out seconds on the window pane.
I saw the minute hand move,
Slip
A droplet plops glumly
Into the bucket of the week
The weak grey headache streaks
Of light: black-and-white film
Sends me to sleep.
To the clear, crisp, dulcet notes
Of a folding newspaper
An aching doze in its heady ink.
Let the background noises think,
Let the tick-tocks soothe away
All the hours of Sunday.
Putin’s Russia © 2004, Harvill Press
We are very keen to publish new poetry:
please your send work to TCS Culture Editor
Tod Hartman tgh24@cam.ac.uk
Idealised pasts and whoring songs
Beth McEvoy raises her Guinness to the graft as well as the craic
What lurks beneath the great American dream is
often swept under the carpet by exalting the history of the land of the free. All nations, in their
own way, celebrate their pasts. But celebration, all
tied up with tinsel or a yard of ale, is necessarily a
celebration of the ideal.
Every St Patrick’s Day, the streets of New York are
paved with proud parishioners of the cult that is
‘American Irish’. But attitudes were not always so
positive. Irish immigrants were, at times, viewed
as the lowest of the low. The tenements of New
York’s East Side were flooded with three million
Irish immigrants in the nineteenth century – many
of whom suffered squalid conditions, disease and
discrimination. Their predominant Catholicism
and the depths of unemployment that befell most
of them did not help assimilation into their new
Empire state. This experience is as much part of
Ireland’s history as it is of America’s.
As one culture falls, another also rises – or, to bastardise Walter Benjamin, a move into being viewed
as civilized may entail being a little bit barbarous
in the process. The Empire which Britain was
so proud of was built, to some extent, on blood.
Claims abound about how the Irish rose from the
gutter to give America one of its biggest myths
of origin. America, an infant on the world scene,
Culture.
reenacts its Gettysburg and other battles with a
fervour in which the theatre of war becomes a
game, sanctioned by its historical nature. However, Americans do not tend to re-enact the treatment of immigrants as they arrived on Ellis Island.
Instead, removing all unpleasant truths, they instead celebrate the intangible: Irishness. Maybe a
country so young will always look further afield
through the past to an older identity. But there is
something mythological about the ‘Irish’ in the
heart of the American psyche, which supersedes
many other Western cultures. Italian-American
culture has been cinematically immortalized in
a stereotype of vivacity and bloodshed by Coppola and Scorsese. But the cry to be ‘Italian’ has
never rallied anywhere near as loud as the American scream that fetishises Eire. Perhaps realizing
this, Scorsese has himself moved away from the
Sicilian-derived mobs towards Irish mafias, both
in Gangs of New York and (to devastating effect)
in The Departed. The veteran director, who last
week announced his retirement from mainstream
cinema, has left as his swansong two snapshots of
the Irish in America – one firmly in the circus and
vaudeville squalor of the past and one which is uncomfortably current.
Post-Independence America has only ever had one
royal family – and they were Irish. The Kennedys
were a tragic royal household, perhaps, but a godawful powerful one. Are they emblematic of how
anyone can make it in America? The Harvard
scholar Noel Ignatiev, in a disorderly yet fascinating book, sees the rise of the Irish as their cultural
‘whitening’: that the Irish evolved from a position
of being non-Anglo, to being a key component of
America’s white ruling class. And he sees them doing this partially by taking lower class jobs, often
from black Americans. They were, in America’s
racial hierarchy, the only other group competing
for the lowest paid work. He seethes at the Irish
for not supporting abolition, despite the fact that
Daniel O’Connoll proclaimed that Irish-Americans who did not stand up against slavery were
“Irishmen no longer”. This is a rather simplistic
view of one culture’s economic transformation
– many Irish fought on the Unionist side, and besides, many current US working class neighbourhoods are made up of Irish descendents – look at
Boston’s Southy. But it is an interesting take on
how people adapt to conditions, both culturally
and morally, in order to survive.
Adaptation is rarely easy, even for the most amoeba-like of species. Histories are rather often histories of suffering. Yet the parades must go on,
Orphan Pamuk. Copyright © The Nobel
Foundation, M. Zeininger.
with Macy’s inflatable leprechaun included. The
history of working class urban areas is as fraught
as it is fascinating. Moving across the Atlantic to
London, with its omnipresent underworlds, each
new cultural influx, each new half-century lays its
mark upon the topography. Today in Whitechapel
Ethiopian women glide peacefully along the pavements where Jack the Ripper once got at prostitutes. Shakespeare’s Globe stands, full of tourists
and school trips ‘as it was’, yet flanked by the
awe-inspiring industrialism of the Tate Modern
and the austere lines of the National Theatre. In
between these architectural landmarks, life happened. The theatres were brimming. The marketplace conferred. There is a cultural history within
economics and class.
And it is this cultural history that Borough market
celebrates this Saturday: not with a parade but with
a re-enactment.The area will be, in a non-cholera
ridden way, cleanly transported back to 1756, in
honour of the market’s inception. Unfortunately,
there probably still will be some men with pikes
instead of pints or footballs (yes, ‘duels’ are promised). But, in the spirit of an idealized celebration
of a deliciously bawdy and culturally rich eighteenth-century past, one can forget about the living
conditions for one afternoon: and instead revel in
hurdy-gurdy music and (I quote) ‘whoring songs’.
Because people still made music and went to the
theatre back then. And, just as in New York, Paris
or London, people still liked a tipple. I’m told that
there’s quite a nice pub near the Southwark Tube.
The Cambridge Student October 19 2006
14
Film.
Oxbridge Blues - Joshua Davis laments a poor screen adaptation
It would be impossible
to review Nicholas Hytner’s
screen adaptation of Alan
Bennett’s play without acknowledging the existence
of the play. Novel adaptations tend to generate more
discussion of changes and
interpretations. The format
of a book – even the most
cinematic in style - is generally assumed to be entirely
different from that of a film.
Plays are viewed differently,
the job of adapting seemingly restricted to ensuring
that the sets don’t feel like a
theatre set, cutting between
scenes more and editing the
longer speeches. Such a view
neglects the most vital difference between cinema and
theatre. Film is a medium of
visuals; dialogue is the key
aspect of a play. Plays feature a static viewing angle,
the restriction of a moving
set cutting down on changes
of scenery and the audience
held back visually from the
actors by distance. In a film
the director decides every
angle for the viewer, and
brings us close in to the action and the characters. This
crucial difference seems to
have been missed by the
production team behind this
transfer – and it really is no
more that that – from play
to screen. For those who
have seen the play the sight
of a theatre cast worn out by
years of performances – as
could also be seen in last
year’s screen transfer of The
Producers –and characters of
nearly a generation younger
than their actors will be a
disappointment. The laugh
out loud and constant humour cannot be found here.
Despite all this, the story
and the writing still shine
through. The story follows a
class of Oxbridge candidates
forced to struggle between
two ways of teaching. The
one - learning for enjoyment
and fulfilment - is taught by
old hand Hector (Richard
Griffiths). Friendly, outra-
geous and sweet, he is nonetheless captured by sexual
desire for the boys, expressing it by fondling them on
motorcycle lifts home. They,
who respect his teaching
methods if not his person,
bear this with a stoic acceptance. The contrast in educational technique comes from
Backs to the wall boys! The students see Hector approaching
Peter Fleissig takes you inside the
mind of a genius - or two
Like ‘Spartacus’ (1960),
’Woodstock’ (1970) and
‘Pretty Woman’ (1990), this
is a sensational film defining
a moment in history from the
perspective of a portrait of
our time. Using a mix of lowgrade video-editing, music by
the Glasgow band Mogwai
and very loud arena sounds,
the film is a mesmerizing
journey from the ground into
philosophical space - like
kicking a Football out of the
park and into the cosmos
- focused on the soccer star
of France and Real Madrid,
Zinedine Zidane.
Douglas Gordon’s first
epic work was ‘24-Hour
Psycho’ (1993), a version
of Alfred Hitchcock’s 1960
film ‘Psycho’ slowed down
from the original 24 frames
per second to 2 frames per
second. It was presented as
a twenty-foot wide doublesided screen in the middle of
a huge art-space at tramway
in Glasgow, an installation
that no one could actually
see as a whole work - just as
a film fragment slowed down
to nano-time. Gordon went
on to win the Turner prize in
1996.
In ‘Zidane: A 21st Century
Portrait’ the directors train
their cameras on Zidane, and
then follow him - and him
alone - for the duration of an
entire Real Madrid-Villarreal
game in real time. (The film
is 93 minutes long.) Favorite
moments are Zidane scratching the turf with the toe of his
boots, and a shot of his face,
made blurry by perspiration,
knowing that a goal has been
scored but not reacting in any
way. The final score is 2-1 to
Real Madrid and Zidane gets
sent off in an extraordinary
climax to the film, as sweat
drips from his forehead.
The film is a documentary of a slice of a day, in this
case 23 April, 2005. During
the half-time interval it segues into global events, showing, for example, a car-bomb
exploding in another part of
the world, which puts the
action taking place into the
context of real dramas that
are unfolding in peoples lives
outside the stadium. Like a
Shakespearean actor, Zidane
occupies
centre stage for
the duration of the film. He
is stoic, stern and brooding,
a new, driven teacher – Irwin
(Stephen Campbell Moore) –
who focuses their attentions
on exams, and on spinning
the best argument out of any
facts. Hector’s lessons in poetry and philosophy become
gobbets, pithy quotations to
round off a defence of Hitler,
an attack on British milita-
and carries a sense of the
lowliness of the outsider.
He only once smiles when
he shares a joke with a
teammate, sweat dripping
from his forehead.
When talking about his
work, Douglas Gordon
quotes Albert Camus: ‘I’m
interested in the problem
of the everyday.’ Phillipe
Parreno was born in Oran,
Algeria, as was Zidane and
Camus.
A major retrospective of
film and video works on
Good and Evil by Douglas
Gordon will be in Edinburgh later this month at Inverleith House, with what is
promised to be the art party
of the year on the night of
31 October, 2006 - Halloween.
Zizou’s genius was only matched by his blood-lust
rism in 1914 – History reevaluated for the sake of an
exciting argument. Irwin too
desires one of the boys, selfassured heartthrob Dakin
(Dominic Cooper), but is
less open in his feelings.
There is plenty of humour
here, and the relationships
between pupils and teachers are well brought out.
The acting is generally fine,
although Clive Merrison’s
overly exaggerated facial
gestures as the league-table
obsessed headmaster irritate
early on. Apart from him
and the superfluous addition
of a gym instructor, who is
hardly seen after a brief effort to inspire the boys religiously (with little success
in terms of conversion and
comedy), the collection of
boys work well together,
and the mainly male cast is
counter-balanced well by the
decidedly sane and non-sexual Mrs Lintott (Frances de
la Tour), a more traditional
fact-based teacher.
The dialogue is wonderful
and moving, and despite occasionally feeling unnatural
for cinema it is pleasing to
find that it has been left in.
It contrasts with the largely
clunky additions – particularly the explanation of allusions deemed too difficult
for cinema audiences. It is
particularly grating to find
the headmaster tell the boys
they will be applying for Oxford and Cambridge, “two of
the finest institutions in the
land”, and other interpellations are equally jarring.
Nevertheless, this
is an adequate adaptation
of a wonderful play, which
loses some of what was great
about the original but still
retains the charm, most of
the humour and the warmth
that lay at the heart of it.
Got film? Ellen Flint wants John’s
films to blow you away
Let’s be honest, most of
the films we are showing at
St John’s cinema this term
could be bought for under
five pounds from any sale
bin at any entertainment retailer. Classic slices of cultural commentary such as Easy
Rider, Dog Day Afternoon
and Rebel Without a Cause
alongside blistering dramas
including Amores Perros,
The Wind That Shakes the
Barley and Paradise Now are
(or soon will be) available to
view at your convenience on
your laptop. The ‘pro-cinema’ arguments are by now
very familiar. Every now and
again, we read heartfelt appeals to our sense of nostalgia for the ‘thrill of the big
screen’ in newspapers and
film magazines. However,
very few of us have experienced the kind of ‘communal
atmosphere’ at the cinema
where the audience claps at
the finale or screams at the
scary part (as depicted by
the current “no match for
the real thing” anti-piracy
cinema information film and
alluded to by most ‘save the
cinema’ articles). I know
that I for one would find
this kind of spontaneous
audience participation annoying. Even at the cinema,
film viewing is an intensely
individual experience. Noone else will interpret a film
in exactly the same way you
did. Maybe this is an attitude borne out of growing
up in the age of video and
DVD. There is no doubt that
the increasing availability of
personal entertainment has
changed our expectations of
the environment in which we
watch a movie.
So what can a college film
society contribute? St John’s
Films offers the unique opportunity to see incredible
movies such as The Godfather and Breakfast at Tiffany’s on the medium for
which they were originally
intended: 35mm film. We
also feel that cinema has an
incredible potential to inform and educate, which is
why each term will now feature a themed season: each
film approaching an issue
from different perspectives.
This term St John’s Films
offer four pictures we con-
sider to present a real and
heartbreaking picture of the
myths and realities of drug
addiction: From the disturbing surrealism of Trainspotting and grim comedy of
Spun, to the paranoid vision
of A Scanner Darkly and the
terrifyingly stark Requiem
for a Dream.
Despite the stale romanticism of the argument, I still
believe that watching films
such as these on the big
screen is an experience that
cannot easily be recreated
in any living room. A screen
which fills your field of vision makes the experience
of some of the most moving scenes in cinematic history infinitely more affecting
than on a 14” laptop screen.
I feel there is also value in
the communal experience of
cinema. Although the people
in the surrounding seats are
drawing on diverse cultural
reference points, experiencing wildly different connotations and stirring unique
personal memories whilst
watching the same film as
you, I believe that this variety in responses to the film is
valuable and adds to the experience. As the credits roll
and you sit, still staring at
the screen, resisting ripping
yourself back into the real
world, you are aware that
in the next few seconds, you
will be hit by a wall of noise,
as the rest of the room turns
to each other and says “The
ending! Oh my god! I was
like… what the hell?!”.
15
Film.
One man, his chainsaw....and quite a lot of blood.
Blood: it’s big business in Hollywood nowadays. In the past few years it appears that the
American film industry has become fixated on
producing more and more cruel and graphically
violent horror movies and pumping them out
into mainstream circulation. ‘Saw’. ‘Hostel’.
‘The Hills Have Eyes’. All of these films have
claimed to be the sickest movie you’ve ever seen.
For many, undeniably, they were. However, for
all the furore, all of the interviews with directors
soaked in fake blood and all of the outraged
Daily Mail articles, in truth, they weren’t really
that violent or unsettling at all. Effectively taking the standard horror movie clichés, painting
them red, and selling them repackaged to the
masses, these films, for all their thrills, couldn’t
help but seem like cash ins on the increasingly
lenient American censorship laws and a growing teenage audience keen to cuddle up as the
victims meet their sticky ends. Hell, for those of
us who’ve seen Sam Raimi’s ‘Evil Dead,’ Peter
Jackson’s ‘Braindead’ or the notorious ‘Cannibal Holocaust’ they seemed positively anaemic.
It was with jaded scepticism then that I approached ‘The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The
Beginning.’ An unnecassary prequel to one of
the least necessary remakes of modern times, released a few weeks before Halloween; it seemed
purpose built for the commercial kill, the rusty
old chainsaw being wheeled out one last time
for a final slice of the market.
However, it looks like someone’s jugular was
caught in the swing; what we have here is easily the most brutal mainstream release in over
a decade.
Cut by over 7 minutes in the U.S. (we in the
UK get the full 91), this is an exercise in absolute
unbridled carnage. Within the first five minutes
we get a baby being born onto an abattoir floor,
an older woman eating raw meat from a refuse
skip and a man being tortured and killed with a
sledgehammer. Pleasant stuff.
Director Jonathan Liebesman proceeds to
drag us through a further hour and a half of
this mayhem, not once coming up for air and
leaving those who haven’t walked out in disgust shocked, breathless and slightly depressed
as the credits roll. Legs, tongues, and even torsos are severed, people are blasted with a shotgun at very close range, one lucky punter has
his teeth smashed out on the edge of his porch,
another has his entire face and scalp torn off
as he breathes his last. A particularly unforgettable scene sees two lovers separated only by a
table when the eponymous chainsaw smashes
through, mangling the one on top and coating the one beneath in thick, steaming blood.
The true shock lies in the relentlessness of it all.
Once the blood starts to flow, the action only
gets more and more intense, and it really doesn’t
stop. One torture scene only ends when Leatherface’s Pa calls him upstairs...the audience sigh in
relief…then he calls again, telling him to bring
the chainsaw.
Liebesman really can’t be faulted for succeding in what he set out to do; to make a video
nasty for the new millenium. Shot through with
a dirt brown hue, the whole movie has a grittily
authentic feel, and it certainly delivers precisely
what it promises: chainsaws, blood and death.
The torture scenes are suitably unsettling, and
the sparse plot fills in all of the backstory you
could possibly want about Leatherface and his
twisted brood.
It’s unfortunate then, that he has failed to do
with his ‘nasty’ what only the original ‘…Massacre’ managed in the first bunch; to make a
genuinely good film.
For all its visceral intensity, copious bloodletting and gritty camerawork, the film just can’t
help but be horrible. It’s just too nasty. For those
who hid behind their eyes during the ‘bloody’
parts of ‘Hostel’ or ‘Saw’ this will be frankly unwatchable. Secondly, aside from R Lee Ermey’s
excellent sheriff, most of the characters are either
banal or unbelievable. The hot young cast give
it their all, but still, would having a hair lip and
no friends really drive someone to mass murder? Would a girl who’d just seen her best friend
have her throat ripped out really have the sass to
wisecrack back to a family this messed up? And
would you really rather see anyone survive than
see an even more creative way of killing them
with a chainsaw? Finally, and fatally, the whole
premise behind the film is pointless. The appeal
of ‘The Texas Chainsaw Massacre’ was that it
was an apparently motiveless crime. Giving it
reason takes away its terror. And the story they
give it here given isn’t even that good.
But seriously, come on,. What do you expect
from a film in this day and age called ‘The Texas Chainsaw Massacre?’ Of course it’s going to
be rubbish. Nonetheless, if the appeal of seeing
a true cinematic bloodbath (including 7 minutes
deemed too much for American audiences) appeals, this is curiously watchable stuff.
Sam Law
Re-Made In Hell:The
best and worst horror
remakes.
The Thing (1982)
One of the earliest, and arguably the best
horror remake of them all. John Carpenter’s
thrilling retread of the hokey 50’s ‘aliens stole
my body’ B-movie pushed the boundaries
both in terms of paranoid suspense and body
warping violence to absolutely thrilling effect.
It’s got the perfectly isolated snowbound setting. It’s got Kurt Russell with a flamethrower.
It’s got a severed head that grows spider legs.
Get it. Now.
The Hills Have Eyes (2006)
Getting French director Alexandre Aja to remake Wes Craven’s cult (but far from classic)
‘Hills…’ seemed like a reasonably rational
step. It paid off, proving Aja to be the logical
successor to Craven’s crown as the king of
slightly bizarre splatter. One of the horrors of
2006, it manages to combine chills and thrills
with its flood of mutant perpetrated spills.
The Ring (2002)
Gore Verbinski’s remake of the Japanese
classic was never going to be as good as the
original, but with strong lead performances
and an atmosphere that seems unwilling to
directly ape the original, it has a charm all of
its own. Nonetheless, if you want to be genuinely scared see ‘Ringu,’ not ‘The Ring.’
“Honey, I’m bringing home steak for dinner
again!”
The Fog (2005)
Proving resoundingly that although Carpenter may be the king of remakes he does not
fit well to being remade, ‘The Fog’ couldn’t
hide behind its fancy CG effects or photogenic
cast. Undeniably this is a mere spectre of the
1980 original. One to be mist.
Jack Sommers can’t get enough of the Wonder Boys
I’ve not seen the complete films of Michael
Douglas, Tobey Maguire and Robert Downey
Junior. This and ‘LA Confidential’ are still the
only Curtis Hanson films I know. So why am I
sure that ‘Wonder Boys’ is a career high for all
of them?
Released in 2000 to no commercial success
and massive critical acclaim, it’s a true gem. It’s a
film that doesn’t try to be simple or complex and
winds up as both, it’s a comedy that doesn’t lose
its nerve midway and stop telling jokes in favour
of patronising moral lectures and it’s full of endearing characters that are at various stages of the
career cycle of obscurity, success and eclipse.
Over a weekend, their lives are shattered. At a
writer’s convention at a university in Pittsburgh,
a city as passed as they are, novelist and teacher
Grady Tripp (Douglas) must keep his visiting editor (Downey) at bay and his promising and slightly mental protégé (Maguire) out of trouble. He’s
sure his 2,511 page novel is nearing completion.
Once published, his young wife is sure to see the
light and come back to live with him. Whether
his adulterous lover will still be pregnant with his
child is another matter.
Like all great things, I didn’t full appreciate this
film until after multiple viewings. It took quite
a few to realise how funny Robert Downey is.
His zany, if repetitive intonation has never suited
a character as well as it does here. Not that any
character is central or a particular focus. They’re
always together and, with support from Frances
McDormand and Katie Holmes, marvellously
funny in a way that isn’t nauseatingly self-congratulatory. They’re clearly each in their own personal hell, but we’re laughing all the time at what
they’re going through but not painfully conscious
of. When someone quips those
around them don’t pause for a few
seconds hoping to milk a snobbish
laugh from a cinema audience.
Personal discovery is, as usual,
the theme that circles above every
plot progression but none of the
scenes is devalued by such cliché.
Instead, each is coloured with
phenomenal acting, dialogue that
manages to be at once convincing
and entertaining and direction that
lays those bricks perfectly.
Hanson places everything – the
camera, the props and the pauses
– to hint at but not waste time
with the characters’ depth. They’re
already rich from the script but
the direction makes them interact
amazingly and a joy to watch. We
get the impression this could be a
series of vignettes, each focusing
one of the characters. But this cast
and crew are too talented to cheat
and tell a story that’s a joy on every
count.
It’s not just the cinema cognoscenti who can call up a list of obscure films with bizarre names to
show off their breadth of movie knowledge. Everyone has at least one little-heard of film that has
improved their lives immeasurably. A foreign film
that has been missed, an art-house classic that too
many dismiss - what’s yours? Email film@cusu.
cam.ac.uk and let us know.
16
Theatre.
In... your...face...
The team behind ‘Blasted’ put two fingers, as well as the more intimate parts of their anatomy,
up in the air at years of curt Kane criticism. Emily Rafferty gets her kicks at the ADC this week...
PROMOTED AS the most controversial play of
the last 20 years Osh Jones’ production of Sarah
Kane’s ‘Blasted’ certainly does not disappoint.
Throughout the entire eye-gorging, baby eating,
rape filled orgy, the production it is as repulsive
as it is compelling forcing the audience to face
the fact that “we enjoy no special historic immunity from violence, rape and the atrocities
of war” (Guardian). It was so badly received
during its first performances in 1995 that some
critics even called for the Royal Court’s government grant to be cut. Sadly it is only after the
author’s suicide in 1999 that Blasted has been
given the true credit that it deserves as a thought
provoking, issue raising and incredibly original
piece of theatre.
Blasted does have its lighter moments with
Kane injecting it with much needed doses of
gallows humour, “you can’t get tragic about
your arse” declares the soldier, played by John
Reicher, after raping Ian (Max Bennett). It is
however certainly not for the faint hearted visually leaving nothing to the imagination.
Kane shatters the barriers between the
worlds of domestic violence in England and the
atrocities committed against women during the
civil war in Bosnia in the 90s transplanting the
realities of civil war into a hotel room in Leeds.
Max Bennett provides a stunning performance as a bitter, world-weary, fascist reporter
managing to combine with apparent ease the
incredibly difficult task of juggling his characters coarseness and brutality with a childlike
need for affection and human comfort.
His performance is complemented by Alex
Clatworthy’s haunting portrayal of the stuttering, childlike Cate, unrelenting in the power
of her performance which conveys pain, horror and revulsion with an underlying current
of childlike naivety. She takes the character
expertly from innocence to a jaded acceptance
of the horrors of the world. The vegetarian Cate
who was repulsed by ham as it came from a
dead animal comes to regard cannibalising the
dead soldier as a perfectly acceptable means of
avoiding starvation.
However, the most powerful performance of
the production undoubtedly comes from John
Reicher who dominates the stage with his portrayal of a soldier on the run from a brutal civil
war. His searing, no-holds barred portrayal is
gripping in its intensity and provides many of
the most shocking moments of the play, both
within the dialogue and through the physical
portrayal of events. His presence on stage is felt
even when his character is reduced to a corpse
at the side.
This production is visually stunning as well
as superbly acted. The simple hotel room set
is converted with the use of a few props into a
microcosmic war zone complete with a grave
that Cate creates for the baby that a desperate
mother, in what has symbolically become the
war torn streets of Bosnia outside of the hotel
room, has apparently handed her. No detail has
been overlooked, even the flesh of the baby that
the character of Ian consumes glistens in the
stage light when he spits out a bit that he finds
inedible.
It is impossible to watch Blasted with detachment. The parade of atrocities played out on
stage with shockingly attentive detail seems to
defy the audience’s perception of their world
and challenges it in increasingly shocking ways.
Blasted is a prime example of what Kane called
‘experimental theatre’. It seeks to make audiences feel disturbingly connected and involved
with the actions on stage. Osh Jones’ production has captured this perfectly and I defy
anyone not to leave feeling strangely disturbed,
awed and repulsed by it at the same time.
Thursday 19th - Saturday 21st October
Tue - Thu £7/£5, Fri & Sat £8/£6
‘Listen mate...’
‘You haven’t been in therapy for 6 years to end up shooting your best friend.’ Marriage, children, death and
stationary in Yasmina Reza’s cult classic. Catherine Fenton and Jessica Summers.
The first thing that struck me about ‘Art’ was how
busy the theatre was. This massive 90’s hit obviously
still has a ‘resonance’, as one of the characters would
have it, with our generation, and it was nice to think
as we settled into our seats that the atmosphere
could not help but provide a good sheet of laughs for
the actors. It did. And then some.
We are introduced to two friends. Marc, likes his
friend Serge who’s ‘done very well for himself, he’s a
dermatologist’, and Serge, likes his friend Marc and
has always ‘valued’ the friendship as ‘he has a good
job.’ They have lots in common. Or do they…
The stasis of the actors, with their front on positions
and arms plastered to their sides, only able to express
through words, gave the production a simple and
palatable edge, as did the monochromatic costumes.
Rory Mullarkey made for a sweetly scruffy and
adorable Yvan, tear-stained and puffy-faced by the
final moments, while Dave Walton’s grimacing and
acerbic Marc was beautifully judged and Spencer
Hughes was truly believable as a suave Parisian protégée who had flown the nest. Highlights included
Yvan’s monologue about the women in his life who
have been buggering him around, which was an
absolute delight to behold and received applause, as
I’m sure many of the lines will by the end of the run,
and the fight sequence, the awkwardness of which,
all socks and flailing failing punches was akin to the
parallel scene in the first Bridget Jones film.
‘Art’ could be described as a series of variations on
nature, or rather, the nature of things: quibbles over
degrees of white, the nature of ART (the line ‘ you
can’t call it shit. You can say, I don’t get it, I don’t
grasp it’ striking a particular chord with me), the
nature of laughter, whether art can be ‘objective’,
whether anyone really knows what modernism and
deconstructivism are. However, I didn’t believe that
Serge really did love his particular piece of it, nor that
he thought he had made the best choice in buying it,
no matter how lovingly he carried it onto stage.
I don’t know how prescriptive Reza is in her directions, possibly very much so in which case we could
forgive director Yarrow’s timidity, but a bit more
bravery wouldn’t have come amiss. Music between
scene changes, although they were smooth, would
have helped the shape of the play and stopped people coughing with their fresher’s flu as soon as the
lights went down and spoiling the mood, but the
lighting was especially neat and effective. Although
the acting of all men helped bring their up their age,
the character of Marc was bound to suffer from the
lack of years despite Walton’s valiant and, for the
most part, successful efforts. But this is a perennial
student problem so is no criticism of this particular
production, which was a triumph overall. What the
production lacked in receding hair-lines they certainly made up in timing, which in scene two for
example was absolutely impeccable, although the
pace did slow a little in other parts, reminding me
that I had dozed off when I saw it in London aged 16
and the pauses at times were a bit indulgent rather
than earned.
As a trio, the men gave at times the heartbreaking sense that this is a marriage break up, replete
with sarcasm, cruelty and hurt feelings, with Yvan
the child trying to patch things up (‘I was looking
forward to spending an evening with my two best
friends) as much as it is an argument about culture.
Possessiveness between the three olive-eating men is
also rife ‘your friends must always be chaperoned.
Otherwise they get away.’ I’m glad that this production didn’t ‘steer clear of pathos’, and hope that it
plays to full houses every night. It deserves to.
‘Nothing great or beautiful in this world has even
been born out of rationalism’.
18th – 21st October
ADC theatre, 11pm
Next week, Grow Up, why don’t you?
Four Footlights stars bring their Edinburgh
Fringe sketch show back to the ADC next
Wednesday. Since its critically acclaimed
month-long run it’s been slimmed down and
spiced up, so now it’s really pretty hot stuff.
Grow Up’s like a Smoker, but better, because
it’s got a month of rehearsing and a barrel of
good reviews behind it – so the chances are
it’ll sell out quickly. Book now. It’s on next
week, from Wednesday, at the ADC Theatre.
And have a look at some of the videos on their
exciting website: www.pleaseGROWup.com.
Below you can see the cast chilling out Byker
Grove style. Then there’s a sketch about bees
and honey, so we dressed up Tom Sharpe as a
bee and had him stalk Anna O’Grady until she
got annoyed. There isn’t a sketch about pirates. Pirates don’t feature in Grow Up at all.
However, Tom Williams and Alastair Roberts
really really wanted to dress up as pirates, and
who would have the heart refuse them?
ADC Theatre, 11pm.
Wednesday 25th - Saturday 28th October
Wed & Thu £4/£3, Fri & Sat £5/£4
17
Theatre.
Improvise That!
Cat Gerrard learns that ‘err’ing on
the side of caution at the Drama Studio will only get you shouted at...
It seemed fitting, really, that Ken Campbells’s impro workshop in the depths of the English faculty
in Cambridge began with an exercise improvising
the story of Achilles on the eve of battle with the
Trojans in clever Homeric verse. It was a bit of a
shame we weren’t even inventive enough to change
the story, but the first three brave volunteers – Miss
Prosser, Miss Gwilliam and Mr Smoker – stood up
there, punching out some pretty impressive vocal
Homeric-ity. Until Ken picked on James as his sacrificial lamb: “Look at him! He’s stood there fiddling with his thumbs and looking at the floor!” In
James’ defence he was coming out with something
which sounded better than Homer. But this was
Ken’s point: it sounded better than Homer but it
didn’t look or feel better than Homer; he was concentrating on being too clever.
Keith Johnstone, whose seminal books on improvisation ‘Impro’ and ‘Impro for Storytellers’
Ken extracted from his voluminous bag with a
flourish, said that ‘inspiration isn’t intellectual’. In
Cambridge, in general, we Think – so they have
us believe – rather a lot. That’s great for correcting ‘romanes eunt domus’ or theorising the crisis of
masculinity but is it stifling our dramatic scene? Is
it inhibiting a more physical, felt approach to theatre, felt not only by the actors but by the audience,
too? Ken – a wonderful looking man, from his skin
covered and, I imagined, fur-lined boots, to his
protuberant belly behind a zip-up cardigan, to his
enormously lengthy eyebrows (which at times impeded his vision so that when he raised them you
felt you’d been let right into his face) – took us on
an incredible journey over the course of 2 hours,
frenetic, exhausting, unexpected and at times neurotic, into improvisation, into ourselves as people
and actors.
Firstly, we were introduced to the little
man/woman/devil that sits on our shoulders, the
little voice, the ‘checker’. No sooner had we become
fully acquainted but we were told to banish our
checker, to free ourselves from them so we could
do whatever we were physically and vocally able to
do. Miss Kesterton, Miss Richardson and I were
ushered forth to do some exercises. I felt my checker squeezing his legs round my shoulders but I did
my best to flick him away and began. After half an
hour I’d found myself: talking about Moby Dick
without using the letter ‘e’; talking with words only
containing the vowel ‘e’; acting out a story in the
style of Robin Soans (us three ‘A State Affair’ cast
members felt quite smug. To begin with.) with each
new sentence starting with the next letter of the
alphabet about organic vegetable addiction; and
then giving a speed-of-light paced account of the
miseries of childhood. What was incredible – and
especially in the final exercise – was how I found
my brain, mouth and body were totally disconnected. Each works independently, each slightly
out of synch; there’s just no time for thinking.
You’re pushed towards some kind of essential You,
towards the raw core stuff you have at your disposal
as an actor.
Admittedly, some of it was far from the heights
of comic impro genius (although Mr Smoker became Ken’s new rising star) and this kind of theatre
is riskier for an actor: it makes you essentially more
vulnerable but it also puts you in touch with something far deeper than the superficial intellectuality
so prevalent, I think, on the Cambridge stage. Ken
told us of the Soap-a-thon of Edmonton in Canada
where the community – including the likes of Jim
Carrey and Mike Myers - gets together in the dark
of winter (well, how do you spend your winter?) to
perform impro for 53 hours. After around 30 hours,
Campbell describes the two sides of his face, and hence the two sides of his personality as
‘Elsie, a quite middle-aged housewife’ and ‘The Spanking Squire’... this being the latter.
so Ken says, a point is reached, the checker wholly
banished, and improvisers achieve a state of ‘lizard
brain’, of total connection to themselves and to the
unfolding story. Watching Ken run his hands mysteriously over his balding, white ringed head, it’s
hard not to feel excited. He says a Soap-a-thon is
coming to London sometime next Easter and I feel
the urge to go and try it out. If Easter’s too far away
for you, try to keep your ear to the ground for Ken’s
next workshop in a week or so. Maybe, sometime
soon in a rehearsal room near you, the impro games
and exercises we experienced will slowly start to
appear and I can imagine nothing better for acting
or actors in Cambridge this year.
Ken will be back for more Theatresports on
Thursday 26th October, from 7.30pm - 9.30pm at
the Judith E.Wilson Studio at the English Faculty.
You do not have to take part (although you may
very quickly find yourself wanting to).
Johnstone’s
revolutionary book,
which
Cambpell
bases his
teachings
on.
‘It’s the end of the world as we know it’
- but will the audience be fig-rolling in the aisles? Rachel Elkin reports.
IT’S 18:15, and as humanity is gradually destroyed by
horrific meteorological warfare, Chris (Richard Stuart) and John (Nathan Bowler) watch the last train
pull away from the station. With no one else in sight,
the old friends spend their last moments together as
time, and mortal life, ebb away from them.
Perhaps, to the sceptics and critics, Oliver Evans’ original production of “Untimely Figs” may appear overly
dramatic and entirely unrealistic, but from an initial
viewing, the audience could not fail to be drawn in by
the powerful emotions on display.
Despite its somewhat slow and uncomfortable start,
the actors soon settled into their dramatic rhythm in
order to portray two very diverse and essentially lovable characters, as John attempts to make light of the
desperate situation, whilst the more pensive Chris
struggles with his confused feelings and missed opportunities. Although the opening few minutes of the
production are vital to the overall effect in their own
way, the audience did not appear to engage with the
actors and their situation until a good way through,
perhaps until the slightly over the top John had “mellowed” a little, allowing the real essence of the play to
start to shine.
In fact, for the audience, it didn’t feel as though this
turning point came until about half way through,
when a long and poignant silence followed John’s last
words of “we have accepted our fate” and “we’re ready
to die”. It is during this silence, which is actually only a
few seconds in duration, that the audience is left with
only the resonating words of John and the time to
consider the truthfulness behind them. Interestingly,
the stage is left completely devoid of any deliberate
design or artwork, which at points such as this, is a
great attribute to the production as the audience is allowed to revel in the characters and their words only,
rather than being inevitably distracted by unnecessary
aesthetics in what will also be a blank box, no matter
how much you try and hide it.
It’s from this moment of tension that the audience
is drawn into the production as the parallel between
their own life
experiences and
those of the
characters is established, as the
gamut of easily identifiable
emotions of rage,
humour and love
are
explored.
Often funny, yet
also
painfully
ironic as the end
of time draws inescapably closer,
the audience’s
laughs and appropriate silences helped create
an atmosphere
of desperate yet
realistic reflection as Chris and
John attempt to
make right their
wrongs, reaffirm their longstanding friendship, and
discover the most appropriate way to end their own
lives.
Although occasionally over acted, this is an evocative
piece which seeks to explore the real meaning of life,
without turning to horrifically romantic clichés of the
passing of human existence. Worthy of praise for both
the artistic and the moralistic challenge!
CORPUS PLAYROOM, 7pm until Sat
Opening
Applications for Lent & Easter
2007
The Fletcher Players and Corpus
Christi College are proud to announce the opening of applications
to direct/produce at the Corpus
Playroom in Lent and Easter terms
2007.
Don’t miss this opportunity to get a slot to perform at this intimate
and challenging space, which is both well-known and well-loved
by the Cambridge acting community. Whether you want to put on
new writing or old classics, the Corpus Playroom is the place to do
so! We welcome both experienced directors and those who would
like to try it for the first time. Application forms are available online
at www.corpusplayroom.co.uk or alternatively hard copies can be
collected from the Corpus Christi Porters’ Lodge. The deadline for
applications is noon Sunday 12th November, but earlier applications are welcomed. Forms should be returned to Sarah Cain, senior
treasurer, via the Corpus Christ Porters’ Lodge. Please contact the
President, Imogen Proud (irp24) with any enquiries.
19
Music:Interview.
When a Cumbrian Met Public Enemy...
Luke W. Roberts talks to music legend Chuck D about hip hop, history and Woody Guthrie
Like all the best adventure stories, I was thrown
into this pretty much by chance, with no previous experience and very little skill, armed only
with my over-enthusiasm and a malfunctioning
Dictaphone. Public Enemy, for those of you who
don’t know, were basically the black Beatles.
Only better. Go out and buy It Takes a Nation
of Millions to Hold Us Back and listen for
yourself – it’s a dense, brilliant album that
revolutionised hip hop, combining militant
political rapping with innovative sampling.
It’s one of those weird records which tips
its hat to its predecessors (soul, free
jazz, metal, a little musique concrète)
but still sounds completely original
nearly twenty years on. Since the
gig had sold out, I was faced with
the prospect of missing possibly my
last chance to see one of my favourite
bands. The only option was to beg
one of my ‘contacts’ to try and get
press tickets. Against all the odds, on
the day of the gig I ended up setting
off from Fitzwilliam to meet Chuck
D, with a spring in my step. I made
it to the hotel, where I loitered a
bit and got glared at by the receptionist, before I noticed a group of
people talking to the head of Public
Enemy’s security. His name was
Malik Farrakhan, and was possibly
the nicest person I’ve ever met. He’d
had a pretty extraordinary life – one
half of the first African American
siblings to play NFL football, a small
part in the Godfather, couple of episodes of Magnum, P.I, bodyguard for
Louis Farrakhan, and now head of the
Security of the First World, as they’re known.
After about half an hour, Chuck D came into
the lobby and I started giggling like a schoolgirl....
TCS: I heard that Fear of a Black Planet was
preserved in the American Library of Congress
last year, how much does that matter to you?
Being alongside all those Alan Lomax recordings
of work songs or Leadbelly, whoever, does it feel
like the cultural force of hip hop as an artform is
beginning to be recognised by institutions?
CD: Course it matters to me. Understand this:
I wasn’t no four year old kid banging on a tin can
trying to express myself, I was already three years
outside of college when I made my first records,
and I made intentional discourses to intellectualise
my surroundings, to politicise our involvement. If
you had to make a Leadbelly discussion, maybe
you could compare Leadbelly to DMX. But with
me, you gotta talk about Allen Ginsberg, Dylan,
and cats like Woody Guthrie. Last Poets, Gil Scott-
TCS: Do you speak any other languages?
CD: No. It’s one of my biggest
regrets. I tried to learn Dutch,
thinking from there I could get
other European languages, but I
guess I just didn’t stay on it.
But yeah, it’s very
important to have people encourage cultural exchange. You don’t
go over and say alright ‘buy my
record’. You say, ‘my record allows
me to introduce myself to you, and
support you, wherever we could go
together with this’. Public Enemy, we
never told people to buy our records.
I’m part of the downloading revolution. Get our music whatever way you
can. Get it free, whatever. The thing
that makes it more difficult to be free
is shows – security and promoters make
sure they put a price on it. We did a free
gig in the London dome, Millennium
dome, 10,000 people there. The mayor of
London booked that gig. We like doing free
shows.
Heron
type of thing.
I was evermore conscious of what I was going to
try and talk about. When I made Fear of a Black
Planet, I made art. I come from an arts background; I expect my stuff to be in a museum. I’m
not even asking, I’m demanding.
TCS: What do you think of these prominent
African American scholars like Wynton Marsalis,
who seem to think that the progression of Jazz
stopped after 1965, who doesn’t seem to acknowledge hip hop or view it as you do?
CD: The thing is, a guy like Wynton has
enough thorough research and information to
make a statement like that and back it up. The
problem is, you don’t find too many people that
could challenge Wynton that could play as well as
he can. He’s especially embedded into it, embedded into the history of it, the data and the research
is there, and the fact that he’s been playing it, and
understands - one thing you can’t knock man, the
cat is thoroughly studied on the subject, and at the
same time can play his ass off. I can’t have a jazz
discussion with him, talking about the history of it
we could come up with a difference of opinion, but
that line ends when it comes down to what you can
play, and I can’t play.
TCS: But surely he can’t freestyle?
CD: I think the art of freestyle is really overrated unless you can do it well. Anybody that
speaks the English language, they’re limited when
it comes to rap now. There are guys in different
TCS: Do you think the internet has had a levelling effect, kind of altered the power balances?
It seems like you don’t need MTV, or Radio One
anymore, has it solved some of the problems
with mainstream media?
CD: Yeah, you got myspace, youtube, it’s like,
‘Hey I make my own mini-movie, and deliver it’. I
have a digital label, slamjamz.com, you know. It’s
not the making, it’s the delivery. Problem was, if
you’re trying to get your music heard, your movie
seen, you had to go through a middle man to get
to the public. And now you can just try and find
people one by one. You can’t get to a million people unless you deal with one first.
Stage ain’t changed since Shakespeare. When
you go see an act get down, they can’t turn their
back to the audience, unless
they’re
Miles Davis, doing it intentionally. You have the stage,
and you have the audience. You have the art
and the art is supposed to
project into the audience.
It’s the same thing man.
Nothing’s changed. So
whether a person is reciting a sonnet or a person is
freestyling, rapping, they gotta go
directly to the audience and
have that exchange. We have
to learn from things before
us, life didn’t start ten
years ago, or when you
were born, like ‘oh the
world starts now.’ No,
the world starts for you
now. You gotta recognise, worlds have been
passed over, the world
has been turning for
billions of years and
that’s some of the arrogance of governments
and civilizations. Governments are the cancers
of civilization. The arrogance of western culture,
saying you can own a mountain that’s a billion
years old and the dude that makes the claim is fifty
one, well, like I say, how ridiculous of a concept is
that? Not only am I gonna take the river and own
the river, I’m gonna name the river after me, and
just beat it into everybody. Better yet, if you don’t
speak my language, I’m gonna beat it into your
head that you’re going to speak my language, and
call me Sir.
Surprisingly, Chuck seemed perfectly happy
to answer all of my stupid, pompous questions (Wynton Marsalis? What was I thinking?
Seriously?) He was clearly exhausted, although
by the time he hit the stage, you would never have
guessed it. I think he probably had a nap.
So Hannah Nakano Stewart (music editor in
chief) and I made it to the gig at about nine o’
clock, and the Junction was totally rammed. Pretty
much as I arrived they came on, and the place
went mental. Since their heyday, Terminator X
has retired, but the group now have live musicians
complimenting DJ Lord on the decks. It was all
there; black power salutes, Flava Flav’s ridiculous
clock, men on stage holding swords, the obligatory
‘Fuck George Bush’. It was perfect. The only real
hiccup was a solo slot by Flava Flav (which included some insane scratching, prompting a ridiculous
gabba freakout by the man in front of me). It’s not
that his solo stuff was bad, it’s just that hearing
him say ‘My name is Flava’ almost non-stop for
half an hour began to grate. Thankfully, the band
came back out and did very heavy versions of ‘911
is a Joke’, ‘Don’t Believe the Hype’ and ‘Bring the
Noise’. I was hoping for ‘Party for your Right to
Fight’, but alas. After the 11 o’clock curfew, Flava
stayed onstage, basking in the crowd’s attention
and gave a long speech about Peace,
Togetherness, and Power, complete with hand
signals. To quote Hannah, ‘I left with an inordinate feeling of love for the human race’. Steady,
there. I just thought they put on a great show, and
reminded me of how powerful and important their
music still is.
Images: Top - Ash Loxton,
Bottom, Adam Smith
TCS: So how long has Public Enemy been
going now?
CD: We’re the Rolling Stones of the rap game,
man. I mean, if you study other records, other genres, well, we’re twenty years on, but the Stones are
like forty years on. It’s important to make parallels
with other genres. Hip hop has been a terminology
for black culture since the middle of the seventies
and does it mean ‘oh it’s just that’? No. The thing
about culture is, it brings human beings together
for our similarities, and not society’s differences.
So culture is a universal language, and hip hop
is just one of those languages that brings people
together.
The beauty of hip hop is that it started as a
document of our environment, coming from the
underclass, the disenfranchised of New York,
where musical education in schools had been deemphasised, and out of these ashes, hip hop rose
like a phoenix, trying to make something of everything. Hip hop is culturally invigorating.
countries who can rap in three or four different
languages. You go to Senegal and you don’t know
French, how the hell you gonna command the
crowd? Like ‘everybody get up’,
and they’re looking at you like
‘well speak a little French, learn
a little patois, dialect here. This is
where English speaking hip hop cats
are arrogantly lazy in their own zone thinking that English can do it for the world.
20
Music.
Jazz, Black and Blue
Dickie Byron
Dickie Byron tells how it’s alright to be blue with the blues
Jazz and blues in Britain has
been of seminal importance.
Cats like John Dankworth,
Bruce Turner and Ronnie Scott
were right in the buzz of bebop,
trad musicians like Humphrey
Lyttleton kept alive a pre-War
style that otherwise was neglected in the US, while artists as
diverse as Brian Auger and Ian
Carr pushed jazz in new directions which have been influential in the extreme. However,
as much as I will argue against
those who swear that all good
jazz is from the US or that all
good jazz is by black musicians, there is an attitude to
jazz and the blues which seems
to exacerbate the lack of enthusiasm by the potential audience.
In Cambridge there are plenty
of diamond jazz musicians Martin Kemp, Andy Bowie,
George Crowley - who can
play a horn till it breaks, and
there’s a top gig somewhere in
Cambridge about once a week,
often from University bands.
Nevertheless, do we ever stop
and ask what ideas improvised
instrumentals can really offer
us as a community?
As soon as the concept of the
student body is mentioned there
are usually groans and sighs.
Yes, I’m from King’s, and yes
I do care about politics; but to
be fair, everyone does. One of
the misnomers of our section
of society is that the majority
are depoliticised, an intellectually inspired but overly cynical generation of apathetics.
However, perhaps if we held an
Alienation March I think we’d
get quite a volume of support we are united in our discontent.
As has been said so many times,
we need some invigoration. So,
where are the artists, the shouters, kickers and screamers who
won’t leave the room?
So what instrument do you
play? ‘Saxophone.’ Cool, cool.
Jazz or classical? ‘Jazz.’ Nice, so
what made you like jazz? (here’s
the killer answer folks) ‘Well,
you know I like the sounds it
makes and I listened to some of
Charles Mingus
my Dad’s records and yeah, I
guess I just kinda like it.’ What
one doesn’t hear is ‘because I
believe that young black people
have a great deal to say about
the state of this world and I
shall blow on my horn until the
gates of heaven open up and the
oppressors fall to their knees.’
Radical statements only fit in
a radical context, and the influence of musicians like Charlie
Mingus belongs to a certain
time and place, but wouldn’t it
be fantastic if we were that passionate sometimes? However
we cannot expect politics and
art to combine when we mock
even the most essential of emotions. So many musicians now
work only towards creativity
alone - to admit that creativity
relies on expressing emotions
and ideas outside of music is
seen as a kind of weakness.
This doesn’t just affect the arts,
it affects our relationship with
work, friends, finances - you
don’t have to bottle it up and
put on a casual front until a visit
to the University Counseling
Service.
Not that all music and emotions need be the blues, and it
should always be a joy to hear
and play, but there are beautiful
sounds we can make by being
passionate and emotional. In
Woody Allen’s Sweet and Low
Down the fictional jazz guitarist Emit Ray is always second
best to Django Reinhardt until
the mute muse Hattie leaves
and he makes the recordings
for which he is ‘remembered’.
Such epiphanies are seen now
as overly romantic, a bygone
asset of a hippy era, dead to
us the inheritors of the real
world. But if any of you want to
play or hear music with feeling,
you have to be open to feeling
things in the music you play,
and open to hearing it as well.
As Sounds of Blackness sing,
‘Everyone wants to sing the
blues / But no-one wants to live
my blues.’
How Do We Make It Die?
Shove This Down Your Noise Pipe
Juliet Mushens wants to make Coldplay history
Wil Mossop drools over DeVotchKa
Bad hair. The kind of lyrics
I wrote when I was 13 and in a
‘band’. Excruciating preachiness.
Being played on the O.C. after it
had gone shit. Giving birth to
a fruit.
Coldplay, how do I hate thee?
Let me count the ways.
Now don’t get me wrong,
when they first came around I
didn’t really have a problem with
them. Sure, their whininess grated on me, and I couldn’t really
understand the point of music
videos where it was raining and
they looked moody (Take That
had already gone down that route
in a much more satisfying way),
and yeah, it was irritating seeing lines from ‘Yellow’ adorning
every girl in my science class’s
rough book, but as yet, they
hadn’t made much of an impact
on my life.
But then they just got a bit
too wanky for my liking, and
really started to grate. The way
I see it is that if you are adored
by millions (who are these people?!), and have made billions,
then the least you can do is look
a bit happy with yourself. But
Chris Martin and the other ones
whose names I never remember
seem to make a career of walking around with a face like a
smacked arse. If I was a millionaire I wouldn’t live on a macrobiotic diet, or be more preachy than
Bono and Bob Geldof combined,
or be balding (they’re called hair
plugs, guys, they worked for Burt
Reynolds they can work for you).
And I certainly wouldn’t marry
Gwyneth Paltrow.
And, lest it be said that this
DeVotchKa somehow managed to escape my attention until
last term when they supported The
Dresden Dolls at the Junction. But
as soon as the roadies started setting up the stage, I knew I was
in love. Sousaphone, double bass,
accordion, theremin, bouzouki…
how could they not be fucking
incredible?
Already past their fourth
album, DeVotchKa are what can
only be described as an American
Eastern-European indie-folk-rock
band. That is, they are a group
of Americans who generally sing
in Indie, but their songs are primarily influenced by traditional
eastern music. As gimmicky as
this sounds, it just works fantastically well. The international inspiration doesn’t stop there though,
DeVotchKa successfully borrow
and mix musical elements from all
over the map, including managing to genuinely pull off the usually unforgivable cardinal sin of
bongos. They have been slowly
creeping into the public consciousness via high profile support slots,
including M. Ward and Regina
Spektor, and by recently recording
most of the songs for the soundtrack of ‘Little Miss Sunshine’, the
best film of the summer. Their
latest release, Curse Your Little
Heart, is an EP mainly consisting
of cover versions, and the genius that is their Gypsy-flavoured
version the Velvet Underground’s
‘Venus in Furs’ is impossible to
recommend enough.
Their last album, How It Ends,
(deservedly) began bringing the
band more widespread popularity
and critical recognition. Blending
Coldplay: Still worried about SARS
is more a character assassination than a diatribe against
their music, don’t worry, I think
that’s really shit as well. EVERY
SONG SOUNDS THE SAME.
One continuous dirge of Chris
Martin whinging in a really crap
manner. “You and me are drifting into outer space/And singing
oooh, oooh”. God, what a lyrical
genius, he’s so poetic it makes me
want to weep. I think the fact that
one of their songs was inspired
by Muse speaks for itself, really.
They might like to think their
music’s similar to the emotive
melodies of Jeff Buckley, or the
more likeable whining of Thom
Yorke (even if he is a ginger), but it
isn’t. And their holier-than-thou
attitude makes me want to eat
my own face through pure rage as
well. They wouldn’t be involved
in any product endorsements
because, ‘We wouldn’t be able to
live with ourselves if we sold the
songs’ meanings like that.’ What
meanings? “Confidence in you/
Is confidence in me/Is confidence
in high speed”. WHAT DOES
THAT EVEN MEAN?
One of their members (whose
name, ironically is Champion…
yeah, champion of being shit
perhaps), said ‘Coldplay are just
four friends trying to make great
music.’
Unfortunately for them,
they’re failing. And being damn
irritating as they do it.
indie, folk, jazz, and… um… mariachi, the album is simply stunning
in its breadth and variety, all under
a consistent theme of love and
loss which manages to avoid ever
slipping too far into despondency.
Stand out tracks include the all-out
assault of ‘Enemy Guns’, which
pulses forward with a repetitive
driving guitar riff and bass drum,
while avoiding the conventional
with a wild-west-esque whistled
melody. But their true masterpiece
is ‘How It Ends’, a slow building
epic of accordion, violin, strings
and wailing vocals. Singer Nick
Urata is the ultimate tortured soul,
and his despair filled voice blends
stunningly well with the otherwise
excitable and energetic backing,
resulting in some truly amazing
music.
Clicky:
www.devotchka.net
Download:
‘How It Ends’
‘Such a Lovely Thing’
Tonight
Stiff Record star and anarchic
song writer Wreckless Eric plays
at the Cellar Bar 8 with Mod
Housewife Amy Rigby at Cellar Bar 8. Clever and comic circus opera popsters Misty’s Big
Adventure play the APU. Emo
synth and guitars outfit Bejebus,
generic pop punk from Samsara,
Fingersmith and The Low End
Device at the Man on the Moon.
More Sheffield glory from the
wonderfully catchy Smokers
Die Younger play at The Portland Arms. The Video Club and
ARCSoc present Casiotastic
East Londoners Bolt Action Five
with trendy Trash electro DJ The
Lovely Jonjo.
Friday
Experimental classical composer
and acolyte of John Cage Christian Wolff plays at Kettle’s Yard
while Acuphuncture soulster
Pamela Givens leaves the funk
alone for a bit and guests with a
couple of jazzmen at CB2. However, the Portland Arms sees raw
and simple drum whacking
beauty from rock and roller Dan
Sartain, proving that Alabama
ain’t just about country music.
Saturday
Fresh from The Buffalo Bar, frantic Georgies Spraydog play The
Portland Arms with epic Oxford
band Fell City Girls. Put on your
glad rags and bring a date for
some 20s style dance band swirling from The Footloose Dance
Orchestra, who are playing a
charity gig at St Paul’s Church,
Hill’s Road; pick up tickets from
Miller’s Music Shop.
Sunday
Oxfam presents Oxjam at
The Soul Tree with very funk
smoothness (ew) from Mark de
Clive Lowe and latin loungester
Bembé Segue - if you must listen
to this stuff, at least do it for a
good cause!
Monday
More interesting is the mesmerising twisted folk group Tunng
with sweet ambience from
Brightblack Morning Light at
The Junction.
Tuesday
Chas and Dave, an eternal mystery to me, play at The Junction
but in support are the spot on
electric blues outift The Shivers,
who will be releasing their second album ‘It Ain’t Easy Being
The Shivers’.
Wednesday
And finally Space Rock appears
not to have died with Beagle 2
as cult band Hawkwind beam
themselves into the Junction.
My, what a big mouth you have
Picks of the Week:
Bolt Action Five (Thursday)
Dan Sartain (Friday)
The Shivers (Tuesday)
Music.
Live: The Kooks
October 13th @ The Corn Exchange
Kooks: Despite the review, they are actually shit... sorry. Image: Dave Heineman
Album:
Battle
Back to Earth
[Domino]
You know a genre and style is
saturated when bands that have
only been established for two
years are being imitated. After
all, sharp, fast, direct guitars are
all the rage at the moment aren’t
they? Since Bloc Party’s Silent
Alarm, spiky guitars, introspective lyrics and lob-sided homemade haircuts have overtook our
landscape and have (albeit unintentionally) provided a blueprint
for British bands that have arrived
in the last two years. It is with
this in mind that one can’t help
but feel disappointed with Battle’s
Back to Earth. On the surface
this album has a lot to offer, it
sounds new and edgy. Guitars,
with cyclical licks swirl around at
frenetic pace as lead singer Jason
Bavanandan yelps, “is this the
person I am?” on opener ‘Wicked
Owl’. Promising stuff, especially
as second track ‘Tendency’ does
Battle drop a contact lens
its best to create the same commercial sound as his counterparts
of Bloc Party have so successfully
cultivated.
But it is precisely here that lies
the weakness of a band coming to
terms with being outdated newcomers. In the quest for diversity
Battle simply stumble. Songs such
as ‘Beautiful Dynasty’ try to expel
some angst with Bavanandan singing “all my sorrows I give to you,
all my pain and wasted years”, but
you inevitably feel that somehow
he doesn’t mean it. These attempts
to create atmospheric epic clihes
simply leave a bitter taste in the
mouth. By seeking a new musical
path with every song, the sincerity and appeal is lost. ‘I Never
Stopped’ is bizzarely delivered in a
Doherty-esque drawl, but lacking
in any of the swagger and passion.
Worse follows with the saccharine
lament ‘Isabelle’.
Battle have been championed
in the past by the likes of Zane
Lowe, and compared favourably to Radiohead, Bloc Party
and The Cure but the truth is, is
that sounding like their esteemed
counterparts does not make them
anywhere as successful or indeed
appealing. While their contemporaries seek to cement their own
unique sound, Battle it seems are
having trouble deciding who to
sound like. It is true we live in
a musical culture where we are
constantly looking for that “new
sound”, but this is a challenge
that new bands should embrace
rather than avoid. Back to Earth
is disappointing precisely for this
reason. Its an album that is a
dilluted version of the current
art rock scene, something that it
strives so hard to be a part of. In
this instance not only is the battle
lost but also the war.
4/10
Igor Guryashkin
21
Album:
Josef K
Entomology
[Transgressive]
Josef K were a group of serious young men in suits who were
at the vanguard of the bands
of the early 1980s who picked
through the wreckage of punk
and crafted what they could salvage into innovative new shapes.
More specifically they were
bracketed as part of the ‘Sound
of Young Scotland’ along with
the likes of Orange Juice, Aztec
Camera and other bands on the
legendary Postcard Records. Like
their Scottish counterparts, Josef
K specialised in treble-heavy
guitars stretched over danceable
‘funk’ beats, helping to establish the punk-funk paradigm
that has been so much in vogue
over the past four or five years.
The Rapture, Franz Ferdinand,
Radio 4, The Futureheads and
the like all owe a debt of gratitude to Josef K.
Sooner or later someone had
to get around to compiling a
Josef K one stop shop for those
of us who have been meaning
to buy their back catalogue
for about five years but never
actually bothered. Entomology
is patchwork of singles, tracks
from their two studio albums
(the aborted Sorry For Laughing
and The Only Fun in Town)
and, perhaps inevitably, a Peel
Elegant. Sexy. Mild-mannered. These are
three things that the Kooks certainly are not.
They are, however, a dynamic quartet, who
exhibit everything that is so needed in our modern age of trashy commercial flops.
Contrary to the expectations of the TCS
music editorship, I found myself sitting in the
VIP area of the Corn Exchange on the evening
of the 13th October, anticipating that I was
about to see something special. Now, I use the
word ‘special’ in a different sense to the fundamental descriptive feature of many of those
local folk who were also inhabiting the Corn
Exchange; rather I mean that I was expecting
nothing short of true musical bliss. This was
the case, even though, as I waited for the Kooks
to emerge, all I could hear was the shrieking
of teenage boys, and could see nothing but the
silver braces of the gentleman sitting in front
of me.
Those lucky enough to get tickets to this
sold out gig were treated to a demonstration
of superb melodious talent. Lead singer, Luke
Pritchard, speaks with the sort of slur that
would make his granny rather ashamed, and yet
his voice, complemented by the expertly played
drums and guitars, served up a musical feast.
They played all of the hits from their extremely
popular album, Inside In/Inside Out, whilst the
more unfamiliar songs also got a great reception. ‘Naïve’, ‘Ooh La’, and ‘Eddie’s Gun’ were,
Session. It’s even got typically
incoherent pseudo-intellectual
liner notes from Paul ‘journalist
and broadcaster’ Morley, who is,
as ever, full of shit.
The most common modern reference point for Josef
K has been Franz Ferdinand
which is somewhat misleading.
Entomology isn’t exactly chock
full of ‘Take Me Out’ style indie
dancefloor anthems. Josef K
didn’t make much of an effort to
cultivate a pop sensibility, they
scrapped Sorry For Laughing
because they deemed it too commercial sounding and then deliberately mixed The Only Fun in
Town to make it a ‘difficult’
listen. If there is a resemblance
beyond the fact that both bands
are Scottish its in Franz’s darker moments, think ‘Auf Achse’
rather than ‘Matinee’. For large
chunks of this record Josef K
most resemble a spikier, more
frenetic Joy Division. This tendency is particularly prominent
on early single ‘Radio Drill Time’
with it’s broken metallic guitar
clanging against a metronymic
bass pulse and the paranoid
twitching of ‘Drone’ from Sorry
For Laughing. That said, there
are lighter moments, for example
the bubbling, indie pop-tastic 7”
version of ‘Sorry For Laughing’.
Likewise ‘Heart of Song’ is Josef
K’s most overtly ‘funk’ song, hitting a surprisingly fat and filthy
groove.
Josef K are a band you need
in your life, partly because they
are so damn good and partly
so you can keep up in heated
debates about the genealogy of
post-punk with your right-on
indie friends. Entomology serves
as an invaluable guide to an
essential band.
8/10
Tom Higgins
unsurprisingly, especially well greeted, and were
played with such enthusiasm that the gentleman
with the braces couldn’t help but break out
in a jive. The Kooks knew exactly how to get
the crowd going, and tracks such as ‘Seaside’
required little vocal effort from Pritchard, with
the chavtastic crowd doing most of the work.
Their fluid, feel-good songs and infectious
zest for performing led to some enthusiastic
dancing, with the first crowd surf of the night
occurring barely 4 songs in. (Please note that I
do not condone crowd surfing, nor do I condone
the public humiliation of possessed clowns or
the use of the word ‘spastic’). Despite the fact
that the set was rather simple and the Kooks
were only on stage for an hour, I left the Corn
Exchange with the feeling that I had got value
for money; admittedly I paid nothing to get in.
Although the Kooks simply got on with it,
leaving little time for idle chat with their audience, and looking like apocalyptic figures as
they hunched over their weapons of choice, you
could tell that the crowd were truly content with
what they had heard. This is down to the simple
fact that the Kooks are an exceptionally good
band. In response to those critics who find it
difficult to grasp what the purpose of this band
is, I say, in my native tongue of Essex-ish: shut
up you twats, you are wrong!
Singles Roundup
This week illustrates perfectly
the usual paradigm: most things
are shit apart from Girls Aloud.
‘Something Kinda Ooooh’ is
another piece of Xenomania
magic, with a return to lyrical
ludicrousness, and accompanied
by a very, very shit video, featuring bad hair, bluescreen and hopping. Which, I feel, makes it wonderfully British. Anyway, more
disappointing is McFly, who seem
to have followed Danny Jones’s
hair in taking a turn for the worse,
as latest post-Busted-core ‘Stargirl’
is decidedly substandard, not that
you could ever top ‘Obviously’
anyway. It’s strange to think that
a band like McFly could ever
‘lose their way’ in a VH1 Behing
The Music sort of sense, but this
single seems to suggest that this
has happened - bring on the drug
addictions and model girlfriends,
I say. In all, nice try, but it feels
wrong when a McFly single isn’t
for charity.
Rick Gal
It could keep on getting worse
from here, were it not for the Long
Blondes, whose ‘Once and Never
Again’ single prior to the release of
the album Someone to Drive You
Home next month, is really quite
good. And they’re well-dressed
too, which is always a bonus.
However, they and the GA are
having to drown in a sea of pointlessness so far as the rest of the
week’s offerings are concerned.
Fellcitygirl are inoffensively offensive, ‘February Snow’ was unbelievably without purpose, so much
so that I was forced to switch
to Moby ft. Debbie Harry and
the deplorable ‘New York, New
York’. This single has a good
video, with lots of ‘comedy’, (people dancing) but somehow it must
have been forgotten down the line
that Moby has always been shit
and that you can practically hear
Debbie’s face falling off.
We also have Dorp, with
the fully bollocks ‘London Out
There’, which makes you wish
that London would fuck off and
stay out there. This is only
redeemed by the appearance of
the Sohodolls, who are a bit sexy
and on the right side of sleaze
- ‘No Regrets’ is a Madame Jojo’s
of a song, and you should probably buy it, because you live in
Cambridge and therefore your
idea of a sexytune is probably
Pussycat Dolls-shaped.
Girls Aloud: Spot the celebrity racist
Hannah Nakano Stewart
22
What’s On.
Club
Theatre
Music
Film
Random!
Thursday 19/10
The Video Club and ARCSoc
present Bolt Action Five and
DJ The Lovely Jonjo
from the legendery night ‘Trash’
at The End. 10pm-3am
Kambar, £3 before 11, £4 after.
Frobisher’s Gold
History, comedy & politics in the
court of Elizabeth I.
8pm. £8.30-£11.
Junction Clifton Road,
Viva La Punk
With Wreckless Eric, Amy Rigby,
Out Of Nowhere & DJ Les.
8pm. £5. Cellar Bar 8 Napier
Street, Newmarket Road
La Dolce Vita
In association with CU Italian
Society
9pm
John’s Films
Hakim Onitolo: Portraits 2
Paintings & prints concerned
with traditional African religion
11am-5pm. Art Space 5 Green’s
Road, Chesterton
Friday 20/10
Gold
Queens’ Ents slam down some
80s cheese
9pm-12.45am; £4; ROAR
Untimely Figs
Two young men at the end of
the line....
Corpus Playroom; 7pm; £4
Christian Wolff & Apartment House
70-year-old American composer
with beautiful compositions.
7.30pm. £8-£12.
Kettle’s Yard
Brothers of the Head
Conjoined twins do punk
Picturehouse
3pm; 7.10; 9.10pm
Stand Up for Human Rights
Cambridge comics take a stand
for Amnesty
8-10 pm;
Donations welcome
King’s Bar
Saturday 21/10
Drop It Like It’s Hot
R ‘n’ B for the Cambridge crips...
9pm-12.45am; £4; ROAR
Art
No more celebrity casts, but it’s
still damn good.
ADC Theatre, 7.45pm; £5
INSTINCT Featuring scratch
DJ/ Turntablist & Joe 2 Grand.
10pm. £6-£8. Soul Tree
Our Man in Havana
Based on the novel, with the
legendary Alec Guinness
Picturehouse; 5.10pm
Mixed Autumn Exhibition
New works by Martha Winter
& Steve Strode.
9.30am-5.30pm.
Byard Art St Mary’s Passage,
Sunday 22/10
The Sunday Service
Traffic Light Party
9pm-2am; £4; Club 22
WRiTEON! Presents: Naked
Stage Season
Staged readings of short plays.
7.30pm. £3.
CB2 5-7 Norfolk St,
Oxjam Music Festival
A live music night in aid of
Oxfam GB,
8.30pm. £4. Soul Tree
The Godfather
7pm and 11pm
John’s Films
Sculptures By Stanley Dove
Music, myth & magic; Free.
Cambridge Contemporary Art
Trinity Street
Monday 23/10
Crowd Control
Indie and Dance
9pm-3am; £3; Soul Tree
Amy’s View
An enthralling & witty drama
about the power of love & loss
7.45pm
Cambridge Arts Theatre
Alpha Road, Light Colour
Sound,The Lights Faulty &
The Hotbang
Man On The Moon Norfolk
Street
Stop-Motion Animation
Course for beginners.
Be the next Nick Park
Picturehouse; 10am
CU Biological Society Talks:
Malaria - from science to action
8 pm;
Free for members, £1 for nonmembers
Pharmacology Lecture Theatre
Tuesday 24/10
RAG Pyjama Party at Kinki
Raise money through clubbing!
9pm-2am; £4; Ballare
Footlights Virgin Smoker
Unpredictable (in a good way)
ADC Theatre;
11pm; £4
Torben Rees
Sinatra with a Jamie Cullum kick.
9pm. Free.
Elm Tree Orchard Street
Etre et Avoir
Touching documentary about a
tiny school in rural France
Picturehouse; 1.30pm
Grumpy Old Women - Live
An hour of theatrical HRT. Yum.
7.30pm. £21.50.
Corn Exchange
Wednesday 25/10
Rumboogie
9pm-2am; £4
They’ve got a hot tub and they
want you in it.
Ballare
The Alchemist
Ben Jonson’s best comedy from
one of Cambridge’s most promising companies
ADC Theatre; 7.45pm: £5
Sara Mitra
A mix of traditional and modern
jazz
The Elm Tree, Orchard Street
Hable Con Ella (Talk to
Her)
Another masterpiece from
Almodovar. Ambiguity a-go-go.
7.30; £2; 17 Mill Lane
Dreamlines
Animation developed by artist
Leonardo Solaas.
Junction, Clifton Road
23
Features
“I do not tend to
stop myself from
doing things because
I might regret
them. I don’t think
anyone lives their
life like that and if
they do, it’s pretty
”
sad, actually
The work that is being done in tattooing,
is also more and more artistic. While there
are still more ‘arty’ tattoo studios in the USA
(such as Troy Denning’s amazing ‘Invisible
Ink’ Studio in New York), tattooing is being
seen more and more in this country as a
valid art form. Part of the reason for this, in
fact pretty much most of this reason is tattoo artists like Alex Binnie. I met him at his
shop – Into You Tattoo – in Islington a few
short weeks ago. Unfortunately, I couldn’t
get any work from him as he’s so busy and
fully-booked you basically have to reserve a
timeslot as a spermatozoa. The atmosphere,
even just on opening the door, was so different from the other tattoo studios I’d been in,
that I felt the excitement I’d had since looking at the website was already justified. I’d
heard about Alex in so much in my research,
he was one of the few British tattoo artists
who seemed to be featured in pretty much
every tattoo book I picked up.
When I spoke to Alex, he was working
on a Japanese style sleeve, a piece of work
so intricate it would take several hours-long
sessions to complete. He worked a lot quicker
than the other artists I’ve watched working,
very obviously translating the energy he
expresses in his speech and movement. Even,
it has to be said, the energy he has in eating a
Marks and Spencers ready made sandwich.
While concentrating on shading in a series
of already outlined clouds on his client’s
arm, he ascribes his media popularity to
his background, a rather more middle-class,
art-school background than other, more traditional tattoo artists. ‘once you get the
national press into the shop it snowballs, and
I’m lucky in that I speak the same language
as journalists, the gap between an old school
tattoo artist and a Guardian journalist is just
too big. I’m an art-school boy, we’re on the
same wave-length.’
Although he is now ‘semi-retired’ and
only doing odd pieces he finds particularly
interesting he tells me about a Jesus back
piece he will be doing later in the day, that
I wish I could stick around to see – there is
something mesmerising about watching him
work.
I really notice the difference in the
amount of people with tattoos when I get
to Cambridge. Living in Newcastle, tattoos
are pretty common and it’s rare to go out
without seeing a few on proud display, and
there are numerous tattoo studios doing
great business. In Cambridge however, I
know exactly four people with a tattoo, and
the ‘Get ur Tats out’ facebook group has only
seven members (if you see me around please
do let me see your ink. I’ll show you mine if
you show me yours…). I’m sure they’re out
there, just a bit quieter and less on display.
Again, this is not particularly surprising.
I decided on a vague design about eighteen months ago. I had been thinking about
what I wanted to get basically since I was
in primary school, including one short-lived
The second Annual London Tattoo Convention
but memorable phase of wanting a gorilla’s
face tattooed on my own. I was about ten,
it’s forgivable. The design that stuck, however, was the silhouette, in outline, of a bear
about three inches high. For a first tattoo,
it’s quite a good choice because it’s small. On
my back it’s also very easy to hide if I don’t
want someone – e.g. my mum – to see it. It’s
a design that’s really important to me.
When I’d decided, the next step was finding a tattoo artist. This is really very important. You don’t want to end up with septicaemia, or, worse, a badly drawn tattoo. The
first place I went into, they had their tattooists working just behind the counter with no
privacy at all and they didn’t even seem to be
wearing gloves. The receptionist also ignored
me. I walked straight back out again. It was
a short but deeply disappointing experience.
(Much like losing your virginity…)
So I did some more research and found
that every website I looked at that was serious about tattooing in Newcastle mentioned
this particular studio – Hype. I went in and
looked at their flash (the designs they have
on the wall) and had a chat with one of the
designers. He seemed to get the idea of what
I wanted and the studio also smelled strongly
of antiseptic. This was clearly the place for
me.
The design itself, in the end, after many
failed attempts on my part to draw it out,
was based on the bear on the Berlin coat
of arms, only in outline and with a closed
mouth and no claws. This felt right, because
Berlin is somewhere that’s been important
to me.
So I had my design and my appointment
– Monday, 4th September at 12. It only cost
£30 in the end because it was a small design
in outline. This was about half the price I
would have paid in a place of similar quality
in London, which was really my only other
option.
The waiting was the worst part. Wondering
how much it will hurt and whether or not
“Tattoos are
forever, and if you
change your mind
”
things get messy
you’ll embarrass yourself by crying like a
baby. Wondering also, whether or not it
was a good idea. In the same Harris Poll I
quoted from above they found that 50% of
Americans who got tattoos at some point
want them removed. This worried me.
Although I was hugely excited by my tattoo – would I be just as pleased with it in
ten years time? In twenty? In fifty? Laser
surgery and e-raze treatments, although they
do obliterate the design, make a mess of your
skin and are both expensive and painful.
When my cousin became a nurse, she had
to get rid of her tattoo because it showed
under her uniform. I’ve seen her arm now
and it isn’t pretty. I was, however, slightly
relieved as in the said survey the main reason
for wanting a tattoo removed was because of
the person’s name. Much like Johnny Depp’s
famous ‘Winona Forever’, which became,
when they broke off their engagement, the
rather more Jack Sparrow ‘Wino Forever’.
Also, I do not tend to stop myself from
doing things because I might regret them. I
don’t think anyone lives their life like that
and if they do, it’s pretty sad, actually. Yes,
tattoos are forever, and if you change your
mind things get messy. But if you’ve thought
something through enough and made your
decision in possession of all the facts, I really
think it’s worth it. No, it won’t look good
when I’m eighty – but neither will I if I live
that long. There is also something exciting
about taking that risk, about knowing you
might end up hating it and doing it anyway.
So when I walked into Hype, I was completely committed and happy to be, finally,
at twenty, getting my first tattoo. It hurt.
It hurt a lot. Not so much as to be unbearable, but enough to make me almost rip my
t-shirt, which I was holding in my hands. It
may not have been the worst pain I’ve ever
felt – nothing on a bikini wax or a severe earinfection for example – but it was distinctly
“When I walked
into Hype, I
was completely
committed and
happy to be, finally,
at twenty, getting
my first tattoo. It
”
hurt. It hurt a lot
uncomfortable. However when it was over, I
was glad it hurt so much because otherwise
it would have been too easy.
When the design was stencilled on, I
started to have some misgivings, and wonder
if this studio was the right place after all,
the doodle the designer had drawn with me,
which I presumed would be worked upon,
was actually the final thing. However, once
he was done he was perfect. He, of course,
being my tattoo. When Gary, my tattooist,
wiped the ink away and I saw him in the
mirror I almost wanted to cry because he was
so perfect and I was so happy to have him. I
knew, the moment I saw my first tattoo, that
it would not be my last. Not by a long way.
24
Features
The London Tattoo Convention
Elly Shepherd with a final word on inky needles stuck in your back
Lal Hardy, who looks more like a tattoo
artist than anyone I’ve ever met, explained to
me just how much of a big deal the 2nd annual
International London Tattoo Convention is. I
already have a press pass; it’s a pretty exciting
time.
‘Tattoos are becoming such a mainstream
part of pop-culture with shows like Miami
Ink and Prison Break, and this convention
really is the focus of all that in this country,
and on an international level. Artists are coming in from around the world. Last year was
amazing, I used to be involved in a large-scale
convention in Dunstable, and I never thought
any other convention would steal its crown,
but the London one really has.’
“A mate of mine
tattooed his own nipples.
I reckon there was
something just a bit
masochistic about that
”
My appetite is officially whetted, and a
couple of weeks later when I meet Lal at the
convention itself, I can see what he means.
There is the initial wow/gross-out factor – like
for example when you see the guy with 72
piercings in his face, or the guy with a metal
bar thicker than my thumb (in case you are not
familiar with the exact size of my thumb, and
after all why would you be, we’re talking a
metal bar about an inch in diameter. Actually
probably thicker than my thumb but there
you go) through
both nipples –
then you become
fascinated, for
example watching the traditional tattooists chisel into the flesh
of their clients,
or the alternately
pained or brazen
expressions of
those getting tattooed.
I spend about
half an hour
watching
Lal
tattoo this guy’s
foot. It was a
pretty
blokey
atmosphere,
much more conventional than
other tattooings
I’ve
watched.
No-one said a
word about pain,
of course.
But it is about
pain, and a lot of
pain. ‘We whisper this,’ says
Alex Binnie on
the subject, ‘but
there’s a little bit
of the self-harm
about tattooing.
A mate of mine
tattooed his own
nipples black,
drunk, in front
of a mirror. I
reckon there was
something just a
bit masochistic Tattoo by French Thomas. Picture from www.siddhamrastu.com
about that.’
I was thinking about this while I was regisWhat we do when
tering for my press pass. (I was also thinking
how cool it was that I had a press pass in the
first place,) I was looking down at this guy
we get a tattoo is that
with spiky black hair getting a Jesus tattoo
on his upper thigh. I caught his eye. He was
we exert control
clearly in a lot of pain, yet there was a kind of
pride in his face that made me think that he
was getting something out of that pain.
that control, that power back. Making pain
It is an easy pain to bear. You grit your something that we own, rather than someteeth and understand that within an hour, or thing that owns us and makes us weaker. The
maybe slightly more, it will be over. It’s clear, pain of a tattoo strengthens. Walking around
obvious and easy. It’s the kind of pain you the convention it became more and more obvihave control over – you decide you get a tat- ous that what we do when we get a tattoo is
too and you know when it’s going to be over. that we exert control. Yes, it looks amazing
This is very unlike the pain – whether physical and shocking and wonderful, but what peror emotional – that happens and we have no haps goes deeper is the control that it gives us
power over. One thing about tattoos is getting over our own bodies and our own lives.
The process of getting inked is also intensely cathartic. As the larger than life Geordie
tattooist drew his needles over my back I felt
like something was lifted, although I can’t
Tattoos are irrational.
quantify it, and I don’t want to quantify it.
When I think about my tattoo, even now,
six or so weeks after I actually got it done, I
They are extremely
feel an intense sense of warmth. I can’t imagine ever regreting my decision, or ever not
painful - whoever tells
feeling that this tattoo is as much a part of me
as my face or my hands.
you otherwise is lying
“
”
“
- and very expensive
Elly Shepherd’s Ink.
Picture by Hannah Nakano
”
French Thomas @ Into-You Tattoo
I am watching French Thomas tattoo an
intricate pattern of interlocking stars onto
thelower arm of his client. It’s beautiful
work, and I’m so fascinated by the buzzing
progress of his needle that, at first, it’s difficult to remember what I wanted to talk to
him about.
‘I don’t usually like to talk about tattooing’ he says, ‘I like to think the work speaks
for itself.’ He’s right, of course, the unique
style and character of his tattoos really
don’t need any kind of verbal elaboration.
‘To be honest with you, I often find interviews with tattoo artists pretty boring.’
I take that as a challenge, because there
is nothing boring about Thomas’ work.
My designs come from the world I live
in, I live in London and it’s a crowded, multicultural place and my tattoos are crowded
and multicultural. I’m also a space-cadet –
they come from the world inside my head’
I am amazed how still his client is
keeping, as if his flesh was not being
sliced methodically. I am also amazed how
Thomas can keep talking and remain completely concentrated on the movements of
his needle.
I’ve never seen anyone with tattoos like
Thomas – he has this amazing clear patterning over most of one side of his face – he
laughs when I ask him about them.
‘I don’t really notice them. I’m most conscious of the ones on my hands and wrists
– in the world I live in, they’re completely
normal it’s only when I leave that world
that I remember that they’re not. I feel more
myself with them than I did before.’
What he’s saying makes sense to me. I
feel the same way when I see my tattoo in a
mirror – more myself than I was before. As
he is working there is a strong energy – an
atmosphere – around him, however stupid
that may sound.
‘The thing you’ve got to remember is that
tattoos are irrational. They are extremely
painful – whoever tells you otherwise is
lying – and very expensive. I hate getting
tattooed, and most people, if they thought
about it too much just wouldn’t go through
with it. It is spiritual and it’s not. For a lot of
people it’s not so much about what they get,
more just about getting a tattoo. You said
before about tattoos being indelible – but
really they exist only as long as your body
and that’s what I think is important. When
you get a tattoo it connects you with your
body and your mortality – this machine that
really isn’t built to last. Tattoos are around
for exactly as long as you are. I think that’s
the last thing I’ll say’ ‘I thought you didn’t
like talking’ his client says.
As I get up, and thank Thomas for his
time, I realise that he has articulated something that I deeply feel about tattooing and
uncovered some little part of the reason
why I so badly want tattoos, and why I’ve
spent so long researching and writing these
articles. I hope my next tattoo will be from
this guy.
www.intoyoutattoo.com - Alex Binnie’s
Studio, 0207 253 5085, 144 John St,
London. Shop mininum £60, £50 deposit
required. Some of the most innovative artists working, including French Thomas.
www.siddhamrastu.co.uk - French
Thomas’ website, extensive gallery and contact details
www.newwavetattoo.co.uk - Lal Hardy’s
tattoo studio. 157 Sydney Rd, Muswell Hill,
London, N10 2NL, 020 8444 8779
25
Food and Drink
Widgeon, anyone?
Helen Undy explores Cambridge’s lovely, lovely market
Cambridge is an amazing
city. I all hear that a lot, but
still I find myself taking it for
granted, and a walk around
the market on a busy Saturday morning has reminded
me that, even regardless of the
university, the city of Cambridge itself is pretty damn
good. I don’t want to disregard architecture, or the people of Cambridge, or anything
else that might contribute to
the city’s renowned greatness,
but for the purposes of this
article, I’m specifically talking about grub. Cambridge
is packed with independent
restaurants and bars, little
coffee shops, cake shops and,
perhaps best of all, a fantastic
market.
Admittedly in the week
sometimes the market looks
a little tired, just good old
Reynolds’ sweets and ‘Café
Mobile’ to attract our attention. However, try it out on
a Saturday morning and it’s
a completely different picture.Today I counted no less
than five fruit and veg stalls
(although it can be pretty difficult to see where one ends
and the next begins…) selling
pretty much everything you
can think of, including local
eating pumpkins, chicory, artichokes, big fresh chestnuts,
prickly pears, quinces, persimmons, fresh chervil, romanesco cauliflowers and whole
cooked beetroot, all of which
you’d have difficulty finding
in a supermarket. One of the
fruit and veg stalls (the only
one that’s self-service) sells
beautiful fresh herbs, including growing basil, lemongrass
and rosemary; perfect for
cooking, and so much tastier
than the dried varieties you’ll
get in Sainsbury’s. From this
stall I bought my first ever
custard apple, a green, heartshaped fruit that I’d never
even heard of, and was secretly hoping would be full of
custard. One of the advantages of shopping on a market is
that each stall-holder is an expert on the food that they sell,
and can tell you exactly how
best to eat it; in this case by
cutting it open and eating the
inside. I’d recommend you
give custard apples a go, they
have amazing, massive black
seeds, and do taste a lot like
egg custard!
I was surprised to find a
brilliant fishmonger hidden
away in the middle of the
market, I’m sure most people
don’t even know he’s there!
The stall had a massive variety of fresh fish and shellfish,
including whole lobsters and
fresh smoked salmon, and
when the weather gets a bit
colder they’ll be selling fresh
game including pheasants,
duck, partridge, teal, widgeons and wild rabbits. There’s
also an impressive looking
butchers stall selling all the
usual cuts of meat (including an amazing looking rump
steak) alongside Cambridge
honey, homemade pies, jams,
chutneys and sauces, perfect
for cooking for a special occasion. If it’s not the traditional
English fare you’re after, but
something a little more continental, do go and try out the
‘fine charcuterie’ stall, selling
hand made French sausages
and pates from Chamonix.
These aren’t cheap (sausages
are £5, or three for £10, the
pate is £4), but come in some
delicious varieties (including
buffalo, pork and blueberry,
duck and pork and walnut),
and would even make an unusual Christmas present for a
food lover! The stallholder is
a very friendly man who has
just moved from France two
weeks ago, and whose English is very limited, so a perfect opportunity to go and try
out your French!
Other tasty-looking stalls
include the bread and cake
stall, offering everything from
ciabatta rolls to yeast free rye
and volkornbrot (whatever
that is…), the ‘Traditional
Dairy Produce Co.’, selling
beautiful farmhouse cheeses
from all over Europe, and the
natural foods stall (for want
of a better way of describing
it…) selling every kind of nut,
seed or dried fruit you can
think of, alongside lentils,
rice, herbs, spices and Greek
olive oil.
So all in all, its fair to conclude that the market is an
unappreciated jewel in the
middle of Cambridge, and one
that we shouldn’t just leave
to the tourists and locals, but
should invade first thing on
a Saturday morning, armed
with re-usable carrier bags
and shopping lists to stock up
on the essential bread, cheese,
bananas and widgeon!
Jakob Ingvorsen
This week...
Butternut squash
Butternut squash is in season
from mid-September to midNovember, and can be found
in most supermarkets and
greengrocers, as well as on
Cambridge market. Butternut
squash is a well-balanced food
source that is rich in complex
carbohydrates and low in saturated fat and sodium. It’s a
very good source of vitamins
A and C and a good source
of beta-carotene, magnesium,
manganese, calcium and potassium. The rind of a good,
ripe squash should be firm
and unbroken with a uniform
matt tan or beige colouring
(free from green tinges), and
should feel heavy for its size,
indicating high moisture content. While you wont want to
use the seeds of your squash in
the below recipe, they are edible, raw or toasted; try toasting them on a baking tray and
sprinkling with a little salt.
Matching food and wine: the Basics
Fongyee Walker and Edward Ragg’s first dummie’s guide to choosing wine
Over the next few weeks,
we’ll be exploring the art (and
science!) of food and wine
matching. A myriad of books
have been written on the subject and sometimes it seems an
almost arcane mystery, but it
does boil down to considering
a few basic factors:
1. The principle flavours of
both the food and the wine:
you want the flavours of each
to harmonize, not clash with
each other.
2. The “weight” or “mouthfeel” of each: rich foods need
wines that will complement
fat, salt, sweetness and spice:
all elements of how food
“feels”.
3. The general acidity of the
wine and food: wine’s acidity
gives certain foods more zip
(just like a squeeze of lemon
on smoked salmon or vinegar
on chips!).
4. The tannin level of the
wine (on reds): that is, the
drying, gum-tightening feel!
Fatty foods make tannins feel
smoother and less drying. This
is why red wines are generally
better with red meats than
with steamed vegetables.
5. The amount of salt in your
food: there is no salt in wine,
so saltiness can have a big effect on how wines taste (e.g.
it makes tannins more pronounced). Wines with overt
acid can also work well with
salty food, e.g. sherry with
tapas, sparkling wines with
canapés.
6. The sweetness level of both:
many desserts are too sweet
for so-called ‘dessert’ wines
(which can work with savoury
foods too, particularly acidic
spicy dishes).
We’ll be discussing how
these points affect food and
wine matching in the coming
weeks, but understanding a
little about grape varieties will
help first:
Grape Varieties
Let’s take white wines first.
Certain grape varieties can
be remembered for their high
acidity and lighter “weight”
(e.g. Sauvignon Blanc, Riesling, and many Italian whites).
Other grapes, such as Gewurtztraminer and Viognier are
heavier and less acidic. Chardonnay is a chameleon of a
grape! It can range from light/
acidic to heavy/ rich depending on the climate and winemaking style: so where the
wine comes from makes a big
difference.
Similarly, red grape varieties
fall into various classes and
are equally sensitive to climate. Some grapes, e.g. Pinot
Noir and Gamay (the grape
of Beaujolais wine), produce
generally lighter-bodied wines
with less tannins and more
red-fruit flavours. Others, such
as Cabernet Sauvignon and
Shiraz/Syrah are much heavier
in tannins, richer in style and
show more black-fruit flavours. Acid, fruit, alcohol and
tannin are also determined by
climate and wine-making.
The Influence of Climate
Some climate rules (these apply to reds and whites):
1. By and large, the warmer the
climate the wine comes from,
the richer and more alcoholic
it is (and thus, the greater the
“weight” it has).
2. The warmer the climate,
generally the fruitier or riper
the wine.
3. The warmer the climate,
the less acidic the wine is perceived to be.
Thus, it’s fundamental to remember that wines from cooler areas (like most of France,
Northern Italy, etc…) feel
more acidic, less weighty and
less fruity (*in general*) than
wines grown from the same
grape in warmer climates (e.g.
Australia, California, etc.). So
you can combine the influence
of the grape variety with the
climate to form a good judgement of what the wine will be
like – even before tasting it!
Classic Pairings
On the back of these general
‘rules’, we can see why some
of the classic pairings below
work so well:
Oysters with Chablis (a coolclimate, Northern French
Chardonnay): the wine and
food have a similar ‘lightness’
and Chablis’s natural acidity
complements the creaminess
and salt-brine quality of the
oysters.
Roast duck with Pinot Noir:
here the lighter, gamey flavours of the duck match the
red fruit flavours of the wine
and Pinot’s acidity will cut
through the duck fat!
Lamb or beef with Cabernet
Sauvignon: here high tannins
refresh the mouth after a bite
of rich, fatty meat.
Stilton with Port: Stilton’s
saltiness balances with the
sweetness of the Port, while its
richness is offset by the acidity
and tannins in the wine.
To be continued next week...
BUTTERNUT SQUASH AND
SAUSAGE BAKE
The perfect autumn meal!
Serve with mashed potatoes
and green veggies of your
choice., or for a one-dish
meal, add 2 large chopped potatoes to the recipe and serve
with crusty wholemeal bread.
Serves 4
400 g sausages (preferably
with herbs), cut into 3 chunks
1 medium butternut squash,
peeled and cut into large bitesized chunks
2 onions, peeled and sliced
into rings
2 tablespoons chopped fresh
sage, or 1.5 teaspoons dried
1 tablespoon fresh rosemary,
or 1 teaspoon dried
2 tablespoons olive oil
Salt and pepper to taste
Preheat
your
oven
190°C/375°F/gas mark 5.
to
In a large bowl, combine the
sausages, squash, onions,
herbs and olive oil. Season to
taste with salt and pepper and
mix well.
Transfer the mixture to a large
casserole dish or baking tray,
so that everything is in one
layer.
Bake for between 40 and 60
minutes, stirring once, until
the sausages are cooked and
the edges of the vegetables
have browned.
Server on a cold night with a
good glass of red wine.
26
Fashion
Dark
Inheritance.
W
ith the opening of an opulent new vintage clothes store on King Street, we thought it was time to reasses heritage dress-
ing.
It is usually tempting either to be too loyal to the past or to take on retro for the sake of its age.
Vintage can be exquisite, but it must be made to look modern. Silk and brocade with fetish shoes and wooly tights. We took
Charlotte down to the Car Park to see how she could give Vintage the edge...
Photographed by Dan Marmot, Styled by Bea Wilford, Words by Lauren Smith, With Thanks Maria Lisogorsgaya.
Gold dress £125, Blue dressing gown £185, Gold lame jacket £75, Silver lame jacket £85, Hat £55 all Boudoir Femme.
27
Fashion
W
hen
Marie
Antoinette,
supposedly, declared Let them eat
cake, she wasn’t just defending her
inclination to scoff an entire plate of
macaroons before her daily bath in
yak’s milk. The ornate opulence of
that Teen Queen era, from the rigorous
beauty routines to the heavy-duty
bouffant wigs, was above all reflected
in the fashion of the time: the term
smart casual would have been snorted
at from under many a powdered nose.
This sheer luxury fits the fashion
world like a silken glove, and so it’s
no surprise that designers have visited
Versailles time and time again, from
Balenciaga’s brocade suit last spring,
to Miu Miu’s coquettish screen-printed
silk skirts last winter to Prada’s new
jewel-like hues. In American Vogue last
month Kirsten Dunst was queen for a
day, frolicking around in bustling silk
skirts, ballooning out from corseted
waists, with thick brocade and
jacquard cloaking her pale shoulders.
For the rest of us peasants, the look
of opulence is a chance to play dress
up, and the Winter Balls at the end
of term a feasible excuse to embellish
your wardrobe. If your search for such
lavish garments is found lacking on a
high street that is currently infested
with items of a dubiously urban
nature, then it’s high time to indulge
in the elegance of bygone eras, and go
vintage. Boudoir Femme, 18, King
Street, is a veritable palace of vintage
gowns. The quality of many vintage
fabrics also means you don’t have
to worry about sequin dandruff, an
all-too unfortunate side-effect of that
glitzy cape you may have rescued
from the January sales.
For those of us who aren’t so
ballgown-friendly, the idea of
donning a bejewelled jacket creates
fears of a) imitating a Prince video,
or b) blinding others with your shiny
new façade. But you don’t have to
put on such a garish front if you
tone down sumptuous fabrics and
intricate designs with the dark tones
and modern shapes that designers
have fallen in love with this winter.
It may no longer be au fait to swan
down the street festooned in acres
of taffeta, but thick tights, grey
leggings, slouchy knits and thicksoled platforms are basics that will
ground vintage designs. Anyone can
pick a Fifties brocade jacket from
the boutique racks, it’s how a girl
roughens up the gem that makes
things fresh and interesting. So pairing
two of winter’s most distinct moodssimple modernity and voluminous
decadence is one liason that though
dangerous, is thoroughly sensible.
www.boudoirfemme.co.uk
01223 323000.
29
Travel
TaMae hen wlad fy nhadau yn annwyl i mi
Lowri Ellis-Williams spends a idyllic day in Snowdonia
You don’t need to drive on the wrong side
of the road to get lost: you just need one or two
bilingual road signs. It may not be exotic but it’s
cheap and close, and most people speak English.
However those aren’t Snowdonia’s only attributes.
It’s the perfect holiday destination, because its 823
square miles have everything you could possibly
want for a week’s holiday: scenery, castles, shops,
cinemas, history, culture, a church converted into
a playpen and a chapel converted to a recording
studio (as well as the odd chapel that remains a
chapel).
After living in Bangor for 20 years I could
write about it forever. But how about just a day?
Not just any day though: this is the perfect day,
put together over a lifetime, the ideal way to see
Snowdonia in 12 hours.
We start early and head towards Tryfan along
Dyffryn Ogwen – possibly the most stunning
valley in Wales. After leaving the mining town
of Bethesda and its deep blue quarry we enter the
National park. Driving along the smooth bends in
the road you feel dwarfed by the rounded mountains on either side. We take a moment here to
look for defined white cracks in the rocky walls
on our right, trying to distinguish the clean quartz
from the numerous waterfalls falling unguided to
the wide valley floor. A more impressive waterfall
appears in front of us now and, above it, a rocky
blue mountain, muddled with shadows – this is
Tryfan, our morning’s occupation.
Tryfan, at 3010 feet, is the smallest of the Eryri
3000s. Many mountaineers consider it the best
of the 3s and I tend to agree with them. Each face
has a new difficulty and only the best can conquer
every route. But don’t, by any means, let this put
you off. There is a very beautiful and accessible
route on the North face which you can go up after
breakfast and be down in time for lunch. We take
the easy route but still can’t get up without touching the stone. The summit is like another world
as two beautiful valleys filled with three radiant
lakes roll out below us.
Tryfan car park is a traditional spot for a
“panad” (hot beverage) in a polystyrene cup
which restores us after the descent for the next
business of the day.
We follow the A5 along the same valley as it
gets wider, lighter and flatter. This area is especially beautiful in the summer after a shower
when the green grass becomes greener and the
great rocks shinier. Those great rocks, by the way,
are great for bouldering, though maybe not after
that shower! Towards the end of this stretch we
enter Capel Curig, famous for the Plas y Brenin
climbing centre and for having only one pub until
recently. Thankfully the deficit has been rectified.
If we were to carry on, we’d arrive at Betws
y Coed, a classic honeypot location locked in by
wooded mountains. It’s worth the visit despite the
crush as there are some great clothes and jewellery stores, a lovely green (where you can walk on
the grass), Cadwaladers ice cream shop (the best
vanilla ice cream after Hagen Dazs) and a train
museum in the old station. For me though the
best reason to visiting Betws is the chip shop by
the river. There’s nothing better on a sunny day
than a tray of oily chips from that chippy sitting
on the smooth slabs of rock in the silver river by
Swallow Falls.
But that’s for another day; today we have
much much more to see. We turn right at Capel
Curig, pass Plas y Brenin, and follow the road
for Llanberis and Beddgelert. We’re still circling
around the Carneddau mountain range that has
been on our right since the morning. On our left
are fields, stone walls, and yet another beautiful
mountain range.
Soon we come to a T-junction where cars line
the road. This is Pen-y-Gwryd. A few metres to
the right is Pen-y-Pas, a popular base camp for
climbing Snowdon. Three routes leave from here,
including the famous Crib Goch route which in
parts is only a foot wide. Unsurprisingly it gets
a bit busy, and anyone arriving after 9am will be
knackered just walking from car to mountain.
However, we know better than the crowds; we
take a moment to appreciate our earlier parking
spot at the very foot of Tryfan, and drive by.
We carry on along the thin, twisty road
through the forest on the wall of the valley. I’m
getting excited, for soon the trees will subside and
the turn of a corner will reveal the most magnificent sight in the North (of Wales): The Snowdon
Horseshoe.
From this road you can see the five peaks
connected by ridges, hugging the massive gulley
below. Everything before your eyes is dominated
by this huge array of mountains, which even looks
like a horseshoe from some angles. It’s almost
magical when the peaks sit in mist and sun shines
between them in bold rays. Mist and cloud are
common (this is the highest mountain in England
and Wales after all). Sun tends to be more fickle,
but this is the perfect day so we grab our factor
4 and take a late afternoon stroll to drink in the
view.
There’s still an hour before dark so we head a
little further along this road to Beddgelert, former
home of Gelert the dog.
According to local legend, Llywelyn the Great
went hunting, leaving his dog, a most trusted
friend called Gelert, to protect his baby son. On
arriving home, he was welcomed by his wife and
Gelert, but no baby boy. Gelert stood proudly
to his master who noticed blood on his face.
Betrayed and in a rage, the great man took out
his sword and slew the dog. A few moments later,
Llywelyn heard a faint cry, the baby was alive in
his crib and lying next to it was a dead wolf, killed
by Gelert. Llywelyn, realising his error, rushed
to his dog, who moments later died in his arms.
Beddgelert literally translates “Gelert’s grave” and
in a shaded place by the river is the spot where the
tragic hero was buried.
After visiting the grave by the river, we take
a walk through the town’s small buildings and
quirky shops. The Royal Goat Hotel is the place
for dinner and amazingly it’s still warm enough
for one of Beddgelert’s renowned ice creams for
dessert.
I’m exhausted, but there’s still plenty for you
to do if you’ve got the energy. Caernarfon’s night
life is ahead of you, Bangor’s behind. I particularly
recommend Hendre Hall for a bit of live music.
Whichever you choose you can be sure the locals
will be raising the roof long after you’ve retired
happily to bed.
Gelert Cu
The poem of Gelert
From the hunt, on his speedy horse,
Llywelyn came to his court.
He blew his horn, and to him came
His loved ones to the mort;
He saw his wife’s most pretty face,
And to her he did run,
Where is Gelert? he inquired,
And where’s my darling son?
Why won’t the two come hither now,
To give me a welcome?
The boy’s alone and, as I thought,
Gelert is with your son.
Gad imi wel’d fy anwyl fab,
A’i wasgu at fy mron,
Fy nhrysor penaf ydyw ef
Ar wyneb daear gron
Ar frys yr aeth iw ‘stafell ef,
Ca’dd yno ddychryn mawr,
‘Boedd cryd ei blentyn wedi ei dro i
A gwaed yn rhuddo’r llaw !
31
Sport
Pentathletes Prevail
Ice Hockey
Charlotte Thomas
Noel Cochrane competes at the Sealions Modern Pentathlon Competition
Last weekend, 14-15 October saw CUMPC dust the cobwebs from their kit, and cram
into cars to head to Sealions
Modern Pentathlon competition
in Croyden for the start of their
competitive season.
Seven of our club members
made the journey, setting off
at 5am Saturday morning. The
competition, split over two days,
had been broken down into the
skills events on the Saturday
– ride, fence and shoot, leaving
the physicals of the swim and
run for Sunday. A strong turnout arrived with English national
team members and international
competitors from Denmark setting the standard high.
The competition opened
with a ride on Saturday morning. In pentathlon riding, horses
and competitors are paired by
a random draw, leaving each
competitor with a horse they
have never ridden before and
given fifteen minutes and four
practice jumps to get the hang
of it. The standard of the horses
varies considerably. The course
was tight and twisty, requiring
precise riding. Both Cat Wilson
and Jonathan Wright showed
enormous improvements in this
phase, registering strong scores,
whilst Noel Cochrane won his
division. After some healthy
banter with the Oxford commentator, the team headed off to
warm up for the fence.
Fencing Epee under one hit
rules proved to be a test of stamina requiring us to fence everyone in all age groups. Jonanthan
Wright’s training effort with
CUFC II shone through for him
to win the men’s phase, whilst a
gallant effort from new recruit
Oli Samuelson showed his determination despite only having
The successful pentathlon squad
held an epee for an hour previously. In the girls’ competition
Nicky Brooks held no mercy,
coming back from her summer
break stronger than ever, earning a PB in this phase which she
certainly deserved.
The majority of the team
shot high scores to maintain the
domination the club was enjoying in this event, leading in all
open classes. The shoot drew the
curtain on the first day.
Next morning the smell of
chlorine woke us up, and the
international relay rules allowed
each team member to swim just
100 metres (half the usual distance) with the optimum time
of 1m05 for men and 1m10 for
women. Oli Samuelson pushed
himself to the top of the division
with an outstanding swim, as
was also seen by Nicky Brooks
in the women’s division. Overall
strong swims were clocked by
all members, with thanks going
to Humphrey Waddington, our
loyal coach.
One last push, and our tired
limbs worshipped the international relay format again
with half distance running at
1500metres (usually 3000)
but the optimum time harsh at
4min40s for men and 5min10s
for women it was an intense last
kick. Jonathan Wrights won his
division’s run, whilst Sabrina
Verjee’s physical training schedule produced the same result for
her in the women’s sections.
Overall, Cat Wilson finished 4th in the women’s open
pentathlon, followed by Nicky
Brooks. The men’s open tetrathlon saw us stamp our authority
everywhere with Nick England
winning, followed by Oil Samuelson in second, as was seen in
the men’s open pentathlon with
Jonathan Wright winning and
Noel Cochrane coming second.
The women’s open tetrathlon
saw Sabrina Verjee run away
from the competition securing yet another victory for the
team. The strength and depth of
the club is constantly growing,
shown by this monopolisation
of our first competition, which
sets us up well for our next competitions – novice varsity and the
Old Blues match. The future is
bright, the future is CUMPC.
celebrate your loyalty to Cambridge whilst enjoying a preChristmas beer!”
Tickets for the 125th Varsity Match are already selling
fast and students are able to
purchase tickets from either the
rugby club at Grange Road. All
first year students are being encouraged to attend the Varsity
Match with special £1 tickets
on sale during October.
For more details on the Varsity Match please visit www.
varsitymatch.org or www.curufc.com
For more information please
contact Sally Price, RFU Press
Office on 07801 802
711.
Cauliflowers raise rugby awareness in Cambridge
Cambridge University students may normally be tempted
towards healthy eating by adding some salad to their kebab on
the way home from the nightclub, but the organisers of this
year’s Varsity Match have been
taking a slightly more direct approach as we head towards the
annual fixture.
Students in the city centre
yesterday were offered free cauliflowers by representatives from
both Oxford and Cambridge
rugby clubs as part of a promotion for this year’s Twickenham
fixture. Ellie Harris, who was
distributing the free vegetables
around the city yesterday afternoon explained, “The link with
cauliflowers may be tenuous
with cauliflower ears and rugby
players, but this is more an idea
to raise awareness that Varsity
Match tickets are now on sale.
We hope that the Cambridge
students will get behind their
team this year, having beaten
the dark blues last year, and
come down to Twickenham in
December. Over 40,000 people come to the match each
year and its a great chance to
When I think of ice hockey I think of violence, padding and the Mighty Ducks.
When I think of ice skating
I think of fluidity, figure
skates and Torvill and Dean,
maybe even the odd sequin.
Until last weekend, I hadn’t
really considered that some
aspects of my idealised impression of ice skating would
transfer into the reality of ice
hockey. I was keen to experience the opening session of
the year with the Women’s
Ice Hockey Club, but my excitement stemmed not from a
desire to strap on pads and
chase a puck but from fond
memories of gliding on ice
with friends. As the session
came closer I started to feel
nervous.
Of course, ice skating is
the basis for ice hockey, and
for beginners that was where
the session started. Lesson
one: how to stop. The coaches went through stopping
with us in stages, explained,
demonstrated, made us practice. By the end of the session I hadn’t quite cracked
it (though many had) but I’d
definitely improved.
Next returning players
took to the ice, putting all
that skating into action in
a game. The padding was
there, yeah, but the stereotypical violence I’d envisaged was replaced by a fluidity I hadn’t expected. It was
fast and exciting and though
the beginner’s match that
followed wasn’t played with
as much confidence, it had
hints of that same fluidity,
speed and excitement. Some
of the players had started the
night never having skated
before.
The one negative point of
the evening was payment.
Parting with £10.00 in one
night is a lot of money for
me. Of course, the Society
aren’t over charging, in fact,
with transport to Peterborough, equipment, coaching
and time on the ice included
£10.00 is actually quite good
value. It’s just a shame that
Cambridge can’t offer anything even resembling an ice
rink.
32
Sport
Blues 4 - 2 Harleston Magpies
Charlotte Cook is impressed by the hockey on show from Cambridge Mens’ Blues at Wilberforce Road
It’s fair to say that some matches, whether they be hockey,
football or even tiddlywinks,
require some kind of ‘exciting’
preamble in order to establish
attention in the build-up to
the event. This, rather unfortunately, often comes in the
form of an ill-dressed mascot
prancing down the touchline
or alternatively, Alan Hansen
sounding off in the BBC studios. Pick for yourself the
most disturbing option. However, contemplating this issue
the night before the game, it
became clear to me that the
only build-up this match, between the Men’s Blues and the
Harleston Magpies required
was a cursory glance at the
East Men’s League Division:
Prem A league table. Such
a glimpse showed these two
teams fighting for supremacy
at the summit, (both having
taken maximum points from
their opening three games) in
a fashion that resembled all
too closely the situation in the
Premier League, with Chelsea
and Manchester United having
a similar styled face-off.
Whilst at the end of Saturday, there was still no daylight
between the two Premiership
titans, the other league had a
very different look to it. This
was the result of the Blues’ hardfought and impressive victory
at the Wilberforce Road pitch
during the afternoon. The importance of this match to the
home team was evident before
the Blues had even commenced
the proceedings following the
coin toss. The players looked
physically impressive and mentally pumped up throughout
the warm-up, driving forward
in tight units to batter the goal
with a combination of pace and
skill. This initial display set a
precedent for the general shape
of things to come. However,
the ambitions of the home side
to maintain their 100% start
to the season took a knock
within the first five minutes,
as the Magpies weathered an
early storm from the Blues and
managed to score from a wellexecuted short corner. Much
to the Magpies’ exasperation,
their goal just served to spurn
the Blues back into action and
they had several half-chances in
as many minutes. Some forceful attacking play resulted in a
short corner for the Blues and
their first real chance of the
match. Luckily for the home
team, Alun Rees was in the
right place at the right time to
skilfully smash the ball into the
top of the net, providing them
with a deserved equaliser. The
game was now finely balanced
and both teams drove forward
in search of the goal that would
help break the deadlock between them, not only in this
match but in the league as well.
The Magpies enjoyed a period
of sustained pressure, which
some adept counter-attacking
“It was probably our best performance of the season”
“It was a hotly contested match but our class shone through in the end”
runs from the Blues left-half
helped to disperse. Unfortunately for the Magpies, many
of their long balls by-passed
their midfield unit and proved
a waste. The end of the half
continued in a similar vein to
the rest, with the Blues fighting
hard for possession and never
pulling out of a tackle anywhere on the field. The Blues
coach soon handed a league
debut to Dave Jones, who impressed immediately; his energy
and dynamism injecting a new
vitality to the team, who were
certainly the strongest side as
the half drew to a close.
Jimmy Appleton
If the end of the first half had
any aesthetic flaws, they were
the result of a decline in the
drive and attacking prowess that the Blues had shown
glimpses of earlier in the match.
However, they quickly regained
this and more in the opening
period of the second half, forcing several dramatic diving
saves from the Magpies’ brave
keeper, who was having to be
on top form to keep his goal
safe from the barrage of blue
shirts threatening it. If there
had been any doubt as to the
identity of the dominating team
thus far in the match, it was established beyond doubt by the
ten minute mark in the second
half. Some strong attacking
work by another debutant, Phil
Balbirnie, who was proving a
constant thorn in the Magpies’
side, nearly forced an opening
but a goal for either side soon
followed in quick succession,
sustaining the game’s delicate
balance. The Magpies were
however, growing increasingly
frustrated with their general
play, throwing hockey sticks
to the ground in anger. This
frustration, combined with
consistently skilled and calm
play from the Blues, who kept
playing their own game with
an accomplished patience, led
to a break-through and a welltaken goal. Despite the Blues
only having a one-goal cushion, it never looked likely that
the Magpies would come back
from the deficit and the three
points were secured soon after,
Jimmy Appleton
through the individual skill and finishing of
the impressive debutant, Dave
Jones. In the final minutes of
the game, the Magpies surged
forward in the hope of a consolation goal but the Blues
crowded them out all over the
pitch, with Jez Hansell and
Dave Saunders leading commandingly from the back, as
they had done throughout.
Dave Saunders’ performance
in defence later deservedly
earned him the accolade of
Man of the Match.
With maximum points won
and their place at the top of the
league table secured in style,
the Blues players and coach
alike were in jubilant mood.
The coach was visibly pleased
with the hard work put in by
his team, not only in today’s
match but in the build-up as
well: “I’m really pleased with
the result, we’ve been working
hard for a while but a month
ago we would have buckled.
Today we pressed really hard
and it paid off”. Midfielder
Tom Littlewood summed up
the triumphant mood of the
players: “It was a hotly contested match but our class shone
through in the end. It was
probably our best performance
of the season, we’ve moved
from strength to strength
and will keep on improving”.
From today’s evidence, this is a
daunting prospect for the rest
of the league.

Features - The Cambridge Student

Transcription

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