The Pembroke Bullfrog, Hilary 2013

Pembroke Bullfrog

The

Hilary 2013

Origins

The Bullfrog: named after the Lynn Chadwick sculpture in The Emery Art Gallery

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Photo Essay: Oxford

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Mimi Kim

How to write a Mills and Boon Novel

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Claire Rammelkamp

So what if I have an American accent and a Spanish-Chinese 6 surname? I’m from France

Stephanie Sanchez Kuong

Up and down honey-colour Cappadocia

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Enrichetta L. Frezzato

Photo Essay: South America

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Madeleine Stotter

Run with the herd or blaze your own trail

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Andris Rudzitis

On good foundations: the place of the New Build in Pem- 12 broke’s architectural history

William Clement

The Aleppo Souq: Tribute to a Hub of Civilisation

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Clare Roberts

The Beautiful Game and the Fairer Sex

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Ella St. George Carey

Photo Essay: Oxford

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Mimi Kim

The Eurosceptic

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Simon Posner

Science and Art

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Rebecca Moore

Wednesday

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Peter Kentros

Another Year

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Elspeth Hoskins

Wings

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Hiba Harris

Parallel

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Dyedra Just

Distance

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Adam Lowe

Promise

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Rebecca Moore

Torque

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Peter Kentros

I Sat Beneath an Ancient Tree

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Matthew Byrd

Thursday Struggles

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Michael Restiano

Photo Essay: Light

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Jesse Schwimmier

Ali Smith on Stories

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Harriet Baker

End of Watch

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Johannes Kniess

On the Road

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Adam Lowe

Enrichetta L. Frezzato

The Elegance of the Hedgehog

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Joe Nicholson

Strings Attached

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Elspeth Hoskins

Photo Essay: Winter

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Mimi Kim

Contents

Once there was: one there wasn’t... The Bastard of Istan- 29 bul

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Photography: Mimi Kim

How to write a Mills and Boon Novel

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love charity shops. They are little smelly treasure troves.

Most of my own wardrobe was lovingly picked out from between piles of bobbly jumpers and granny skirts; hidden gems that wink at you with spangles and a Topshop label.

Charity shop books however, are like drunk lovers: battered and disappointing. A search for last year’s Mann Booker prize winner or a second hand Stieg Larson will only ever turn up endless home-front novels, a few copies of Katie Price’s ‘Crystal’, and reams of Mills and Boons novels. RRP £3.99, charity shop price: 35-50p.

When my friend Ella and I wandered into such an establishment last weekend, I strode past the spinny-rack of Mills and Boon in favour of the more promising CDs (some of you may remember what a compact disk is). Distressed that Ella did not respond to my nostalgic cry of “Oh my God, Atomic Kitten”, I turned around to berate her lack of enthusiasm.

It seemed the Mills and Boon rack had caught her eye. Her silence was not rudeness, it transpired, but lust. The blue paperback specimen in her hand sported a rather anodyne blonde in a wedding gown and in the arms of a man who appeared to be hewn from machismo. The title; For Duty’s Sake.

And, bizarrely, Ella was smiling.

Intrigued, I selected the rather raunchier title, Bedded for the Spaniard’s Pleasure. The front cover showed a tanned and topless lothario – presumably the ‘Spaniard’ – and a sexy redhead – presumably the one being bedded. But wait, there’s more: the blurb helpfully informed me that ‘Wealthy, powerful and handsome, Rafe Montero has it all.’ Well, jolly good for you, Rafe. Also, ‘Rafe will take immense pleasure in seducing Cairo... and making her his wife.’ Now, as a feminist, I found this a little disconcerting. As an English student however, the heady allure of complex and believable protagonists in a highly original plot structure kept me yearning for more.

It was definitely nothing to do with the sex.

But let’s be perfectly honest, sex sells. The literary monster that is Fifty Shades of Grey had us all bound and gagged in its bondage-tape monopoly. Interestingly, bondage tape does actually boast something of a monopoly now. Sales figures for online retailer LoveHoney have almost doubled since Christian Grey came on the scene. Or rather, all over the scene’s face.

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Nom de Plume The classic classroom occupation when a supply teacher arrives, you spend the lesson shirking off work by calculating your author name/porn star name/vampire name etc. using various combinations of the name of your street, pet, or maiden name. A Mills and Boon name is created using your middle name and the name of the road you live on. Yours sincerely, Emma Sloan (a.k.a Claire Rammelkamp).

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Ridiculous Characters Men are men. They are hard men. Hard work, hard jaw, hard

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Ridiculous situations Genuine plot: charity-doctor-husband disappears in Africa.

Meanwhile mother brings up blind daughter in Sidney. Father returns five years later, having been shot and nursed back to health by tribesmen, and conveniently having learnt braille.

Other genuine plot; sexy lawyer goes out to the United Arab Emirates to locate the long lost brother of a sheik. She is seduced, and subsequently married by said sheik. They then embark together on a quest for his five long lost brothers and find them all wives. Anything less exciting will be considered mundane.

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Failed attempts at feminism.

The typical Mills and Boon heroine begins as a feisty journalist/film-star/lawyer-cum-interior designer. She finishes the novel by being ‘taken’ on ‘satin sheets’ by a man with something described as ‘engorged velvet’, whilst her interior monologue explains how good it feels to ‘finally submit’.

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Adjectives Her sparkling saphired opalescent limpid lash-framed bejewelled ethereal intense eyes are always in need of description.

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Adverbs She breathed lustily. She sank sensually. She sighed explosively. She looked up alluringly. She made tea...seductively. The overuse of adverbs is what makes a Mills and Boon novel. If she doesn’t do it (something)ly then she may as well not do it at all.

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Genitals Mills and Boon novels are one of the few places where the unadulterated description of genitalia can carry on for a good ten pages and be considered acceptable for general retail. Alas, the Pembroke Bullfrog is not one of those few places (as of yet) so I’ll refrain from any quotation. I’ll just leave you with the knowledge that length, girth, texture, motion and viscosity must all be alluded to, preferably through some metaphor involving materials such as steel and velour.

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Happily Ever After Golden rule: nothing sad is allowed at the end of the book.

Everyone must reach the conclusion of a stable monogamous heterosexual relationship. Preferably married and fantastically rich. Always flawlessly beautiful. Blindness, loss of limbs, hideous scars; they are always healed by the narrative climax. The only minority a character is ever allowed to belong to is ‘swarthy’.

Reviews

My advice: cash in on the action. Because if there is one thing that is glaringly obvious, having read a few Mills and Boons, it is that they could quite conceivably all have been written by a drunk, an illiterate (if oddly knowing) fifteen year old, or a monkey. Or, in fact, all of the above. With the knowledge that we Pembrokians generally surpass the intellect of gin-soaked adolescent monkeys, I invite you all to try my eight simple steps for literary success:

heart, hard... um... you get the idea. Women are beautiful, and ‘feisty’. They are all called things like Chad and Diego and Lorentia and Phoenix and Rosa-Lola. They are all very successful and excellent in bed. Yet, they are all secretly vulnerable. Also, they usually own a private jet.

At the end of the day, this erotic fiction lark really is a foolproof career path. There will always be call for Mills and Boon. Because reading Mills and Boon, it transpires, is like binge drinking. You really enjoy it at the time, carry on to excess, laugh like an etherised Victorian woman, and once it’s all over, wonder why you wasted your time on it. You also feel approximately half as intelligent as you did before, as though your mind has been somehow polluted by the sheer awfulness of the writing. But then about three days later you are desperate to do it again.

5 Claire Rammelkamp

So what if I have an American accent and a Spanish-Chinese surname? I’m from France!

“Where do you come from?” is a question I have been asked about a million times since I have set foot in Oxford. After answering, “I’m from Pembroke College.”, I usually get a reformulation of the unoriginal question of origin.

“Yes but where do you actually come from?”

“I’m from France.”

“I mean, what’s your country of origin?”

I

’ve had such a mute dialogue of the deaf with a professor (that I shall name Günther). I have chosen the name Günther arbitrarily. This in no means refers to the possibility of him being German. Professor (‘rrr’) Günther (‘rrr’) asked me where I came from. When I answered “From France.”, his riposte was immediate: “Yes and I come from China.”.

My eyebrows automatically came together creating the wrinkle on my forehead called a “disapproving frown”. I blinked my almond eyes. I tried to understand the remark. This is what came to my mind. First, I cannot hide my epicanthus.

Second, my physical traits are closer to Jackie Chan’s than Marion Cotillard’s. Third, it might be easier for people to picture me eating dim-sums with chopsticks rather than a baguette under the Eiffel Tower whilst wearing a beret.

The professor’s reaction is just one of the perplexing responses that I have encountered. Their brains herald the flag ‘Fallacy detected’ when processing the statement “This ethereal American-accent-speaking Asian-looking girl comes from France…”All these experiences had me ponder upon my identity. Should I say I am American because of my citizenship? Or should I say I am Asian because of my ethnicity? Or again, should I say I am French because I was raised and have lived there for more than fifteen years? In other words, is my cultural identity defined by nationality, ethnicity or the environment in which I grew up?

This issue has had philosophers and psychoanalysts thinking and bickering for centuries. I am not here to elevate the debate. However, I believe that defining myself by one rather than the other would be negating part of me. Just like many other Oxonian students, I consciously and unconsciously incorporate a thousand or more cultural stereotypes. I cannot go a day without rice. I respect the ‘quart d’heure de politesse’ with brio and class. Like millions of other Americans, I believe that Thanksgiving without turkey is not Thanksgiving.

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Je suis américaine et française et j’ai les yeux bridés et je vous em*****.

Depuis mon arrivée dans le Royaume de notre Sérénissime Elizabeth, combien de fois ai-je dû répondre à la question originelle et non-originale: « D’où est-ce-que tu viens ? » La réponse : « Je viens de Pembroke College. » provoque toujours une relance : « Non, mais tu viens d’où ? » « Je viens de France. » « Non, mais c’est quoi ton pays d’origine ? »

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n exemple d’un tel dialogue de sourds est une conversation que j’ai eue avec un professeur que j’appellerai Günther. Le prénom Günther ne fait pas du tout référence au fait qu’il pourrait probablement être d’origine germanique.

Professor (roulez le ‘r’, s’il vous plaît) Günther (‘rrr’) me demande d’où je viens. A la réponse « De France. », il me rétorque du tac au tac : « Oui, et moi je viens de Chine. ».Perplexe, je cligne mes yeux bridés. Oui, mon pli épicanthique est visible. Oui, mes traits physiques rappellent plutôt ceux de Jackie Chan que ceux de notre Marion Cotillard nationale.

Une troisième fois : oui, c’est bien plus facile de m’imaginer manger avec des baguettes que de manger de la baguette en portant un béret.

La réaction de Günther n’est pas isolée. Je perçois chez mon interlocuteur une succession de pensées pour essayer de digérer l’information « Accent américain. Traits 100% Asiatiques. Origine France. ». Du coup, j’en suis venue à me demander comment je devais m’identifier. Dois-je me définir par ma nationalité américaine? Ou par mon ethnicité asiatique? Ou encore par mon pays d’accueil, la France, où j’ai vécu pendant plus de quinze ans ? En d’autres termes, mon identité est-elle définie par la nationalité, l’ethnicité ou par l’environnement dans lequel j’évolue?

Je n’ai pas la prétention de me substituer aux philosophes et psychanalystes qui se sont penchés sur la question et se sont tapés dessus pendant plus de deux millénaires. Simplement, me définir par l’un plutôt que par l’autre serait nier une partie de moi-même. Je suis, à l’instar d’un grand nombre d’étudiants Oxoniens, l’intersection d’une multitude de clichés culturels. Je mange du riz au moins une fois par jour.

Je respecte toujours le quart d’heure de politesse (mes amis confirmeront).

On a more serious note, identity transcends race, belonging to one nation, or dietary habits. Identity is the result of our experiences and the values that we cherish and believe in.

Hence it changes as life brings us to new places. Today, I am an American-French-Chinese-Filipina who believes that education will save the world from the plague of ignorance. But that’s off topic. Tomorrow, only time will tell where I will be and how I will have devolved.

Plus sérieusement, l’identité transcende les questions d’appartenances nationales, de couleur de peau, ou d’habitudes alimentaires. Elle est le résultat d’une réunion d’expériences et de valeurs enseignées ou acquises.

De fait, elle mue chaque jour au gré des saisons de la Vie. Aujourd’hui je suis une Américano-Franco-Sinno-Filipina qui croit en l’éducation comme ultime remède contre le fléau de l’ignorance. Dans un an, que serai-je ? L’avenir ou mes performances à mes entretiens d’embauche me le diront.

I don’t believe that Prof. Günther meant to be rude. He may even have been cracking a joke. Nevertheless, in an ever more globalized world, genetic mixing due to interracial marriage should no longer raise eyebrows. So next time someone tells you he is half-Hobbit, half-Elf of Lindon, but his ears remind you of Rivendell Elves, give him the benefit of the doubt. Or call the asylum…

Je suis certaine que Prof. Günther plaisantait et ne pensait à mal. Cependant, à l’heure de l’ultra-mondialisation, le brassage génétique dû au mariage interracial n’est plus censé étonner. La prochaine fois que quelqu’un vous dira qu’il est mi-Hobbit, mi-Elfe venant de Lindon mais qu’il a un air d’Elfe de Rivendell, accordez-lui le bénéfice du doute. Ou appelez l’asile, au choix…

Stephanie Sanchez Kuong

Up and down honey-colour Cappadocia

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he moment you sit on a plane and realise that up until ten minutes earlier you were God knows where on a squeaky clapped-out bus tossing you from central Istanbul to Sabiha Gökçen, via every single road Google Maps can detect between the Bosfor and the Havaalanı Yolu, is a moment of overwhelming puzzlement. Such intensely heroic races do not happen in real life, you think. Not true. Your reward for cutting the tape to your seat materializes in the form of ‘Picnic’, a chequered pretty lunch box that comes complimentary on all Turkish Airlines flights. Somehow, those who have gone through years of ruthless Ryanair training seem to be subject, without exception, to the charm of this little treat; twinkling eyes and touched smiles unerringly appear on their faces, be it the first or fifth time they’ve been pampered with this tiny basket of fresh delicacies. Nonetheless, as the plane starts its descent over the windy Cappadocian Highlands, some wish they had kept a tighter rein on their excitement and told the hostess they weren’t hungry.

Most of what you see of Cappadocia from above is a vast arid expanse. What will ensnare you in ravished amazement lies instead gouged inside its land. Sculpted by volcanic eruptions and wind and water erosion, some unique rock formations known as Fairy Chimneys dominate the quirky moonscape. Perfect as they look for magical creatures to settle into them, the rock-cut houses and churches carved into these honey-colour lava pinnacles were a refuge to early Christians during the Byzantine period. Around the Göreme area, accessible for visitors to sneak their way through narrow cavities and hidden nooks, are the smooth stony cones of Çavu in, Zelve, Avanos and what is now Göreme OpenAir Museum, all of which were once inhabited by families or small religious communities. Some twenty monks used to climb up and down the twisting paths and steep staircases to reach the dining hall, the little pantry, the kitchen or one of

the numerous frescoed caves consecrated to worship. Also offering an insight on life in Cappadocia during Byzantine times is Selime monastery in the Ihlara Valley. Even harder to clamber through, this astonishing structure looks from the outside just like a bunch of pitted pointed pillars. Once scrambled up the intricate system of tunnels and galleries, one finds himself in a maze of rooms opening wide inside the rocky hills: a church with a gallery running around it, horse stables, a dovecote, other broad spaces and a vast kitchen with ancient tandoori ovens big enough to cosily fit a few people for a smiley group picture.

So, setting foot in this ‘land of the beautiful horses’ (the etymology remains uncertain, but surely the closest thing to a horse to actually cross our paths there was a donkey) feels like stepping back in time, but not only because of the stunning historical sites that populate its many valleys. Mainly rural and sparsely dotted with small villages dozily clutching to the dry rock faces of its valleys, Cappadocia’s vastness seems to essentially resist the buzz and hastiness of modern life.

Yes, the tourist boom of the 1980s made it one of Turkey’s most popular destinations. And yes, being received in a cave dwelling with open arms and a “Welcome to my home!” by the most charming and affable host you could ever imagine might romantically induce you to think you’ve landed into a different era, peacefully accepting the idea that in that moment you could be sold anything. But then the winding dusty roads and drowsy hamlets, the pitch-black night skies and little English spoken remind you that you’re blissfully not yet a jet-setter. One could argue that the swarms of tourists whizzing around in the sultry August air make it a bit difficult to grasp a sense of what life is or used to be like centuries ago. Especially in the cramped spaces of underground cities such as Derinkuyu: carved out of the soft volcanic soil, some think as early as 800 BC, this cave town, as the many others in Cappadocia, served as a refuge at times of war and raids.

Accessible through hidden gateways and extended enough to accommodate approximately twenty thousand people who could live down there for up to six months, Derinkuyu was equipped with all necessary spaces and amenities usually found in such towns: storage rooms, cellars, refectories, chapels, oil and wine presses, stables and a large room with a vaulted ceiling, possibly a religious school; a ventilation shaft provided air but was also used as a well, water was stored in tanks and oil lamps lay in niches on the walls. Nowadays its tunnels are crammed with tourists. The popularity of such unique sites has increased to the extent that some fear their “Disneyfication”, their repackaging and conversion into mass tourism-friendly theme parks deprived of their historical significance. Nonetheless, this process hasn’t yet fully gobbled places like Derinkuyu, which, despite the number of visitors, still maintain their charm and fascination intact. Inestimable in their value of historical document, the little ascertained information we have on their origins, functioning, location and overall number adds some sort of mysterious aura to their atmosphere. Among all enigmas concerning them, what is seemingly the most intriguing question still lies unsolved: which (if any) of that myriad of ingeniously excavated rooms was the bathroom?

Enrichetta L. Frezzato

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Run with the herd or blaze your own trail

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hen did it become cool to get an internship? The most recent identity that impressionable young-people pick off the shelf is one that defies belief. It’s of a rich, middleaged banker with a FT under his arm who meaningfully splashes it out on a middle page for all to behold on the train towards ‘The City’ – that Mecca of employment to which we must all make pilgrimage. It’s a particularly infectious subculture which makes even the most dedicated and diligent Archaeology and Anthropology student question whether or not they should also be applying to investment banks. To explore these issues Pembroke students Miri Buckland and David White, and Management tutor Eamonn Molloy hosted the hugely successful and illuminating panel discussion – ‘Run with the herd or blaze your own trail?’

cruitment shows a vast increase in the graduate population of more than 430,000 graduates in the past 10 years from 1,063,000 in 2001 to 1,501,000 in 2011. Students are very aware that there is more and more competition for graduate jobs and the latest High Fliers Research in the Graduate Market 2012 reveals that a third of this year’s entry-level positions will be filled by graduates who have already worked for the organisation during an internship. In the finance sector, this figure rockets to close to 80%, a figure that greatly disturbed some members of the panel since it suggests students are getting trapped. As recruitment expert Raphael conceded, if you want a graduate job in finance, you need a 2nd year internship, and if you want one of these, you need to have done a spring week in your first year. This means that

The panel reflected the full scope of opinions on the matter. The all-out endorsement of Jonathan Black, Director of the Oxford Careers service and Raphael Mokades, Managing Director of Rare Recruitment, was tempered by our own Professor Ken Mayhew. Alongside them were three current Pembroke students; David, Miri and Rhodes Scholar Helen Jack, as well as alumna Lale Can. The forum began by responding to the question of how the internship culture affects academic work. Whilst David White’s contribution that it offers direction and purpose to our studies is undoubtedly true for many, is this not a sign of a deeper underlying problem? Dangerously endemic among young people is the attitude of seeing education as a means to an end. Nowhere is this more prevalent than in subjects like E&M where, I’ve been assured, some people even confess at interview to applying to the subject to get a good job! Internships rush students out of university and into The City leaving no room for intellectual curiosity, creativity and exploration which should be the hallmarks of a rich academic life at university. As someone who personally fell victim to this, Lale offered a story of her own experience at Pembroke. She came as an academically driven and ambitious student who won prizes for her First Class in prelims, in her second year she got sucked into internships and left university with an unfulfilling 2:1 and going into a job she would loathe and later quit within 3 years. Justified by rumours that some companies prefer you to receive a 2:1, the most damaging issue is the attitude internships give rise to of satisfying your academic needs, rather than maximising your intellectual potential.

The Office for National Statistics report in graduate re-

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in order to be a 21 year old working in the finance sector, you have to be an 18year-old who knows they want to do just that.

As both Eamonn and Ken pointed out, you don’t just need to decide you want to go into finance, you also need to have committed to a sector within this to fill out your application form. Raphael noted it was determination, desire and drive that were being sought. Yet, with hundreds of 19-year olds

filling out these applications, it becomes a contest in who can articulate their insincerity the clearest. The panel agreed that it is simply ludicrous that you should have decided what you want to do by the age of 18 and when Eamonn asked the audience of current students to raise their hand if they knew what they wanted to do, only one hand was raised; quite beautifully, I later learned, it does not involve an internship.

This was but one example of the value of contributions from students in the audience who frequently contributed their thoughts; often cutting through bold generalisatons with their own experiences.

Jonathan Black of the Oxford Careers service tried to defend students’ resolve by quoting the astonishing statistic that after

Exposure is a key issue here as Miri Buckland pointed out. As far as 2nd year students are concerned, there are three sectors to go into when you graduate: finance, consultancy and law. It is no coincidence that these are the sectors which spend the most money on marketing. As Eamonn, Ken and Lale were eager to note, however, the firms put in very little work on behalf of the student. Instead, the application processes treat you like a “drone” – hundreds of students being churned up in an amorphous process and a lucky few being spat out for 10 weeks of, as one panelist said, being treated like a bitch.

No effort is put into finding the right sector for you, discovering your strengths, learning where you will be best suited.

Greg Smith’s recent book lambasting Goldman Sachs describes 5 a.m. and 6 a.m. boot camps and being punished for getting your boss’ lunch order wrong as being what you can expect of your experiences in this bank.

Last summer vac lasted 15 precious weeks. Precious because, as anyone in full-time employment will tell you, the next time you get 15 weeks to do whatever you want, you’ll be retired. This is an aversion to internships that Giles Henderson shares as he made clear in his speech at the Scholars dinner where he emphasised the importance of valuing and enjoying your long vac for what it is rather than writing 8, 10 or even 12 weeks of it off to an unnecessarily premature dread. The long hours has even become a source of competition, a sort of race to the bottom with students seeing their peers’ 6 hours sleep and raising them 4. People complain about essay crises and long university working hours, but the hours at internships appear to be longer and voluntary! When did how stressful your summer was become something about which to show off ? So why do people do it? Miri and Lale agreed when they said that when something is as much a vogue as internships are now, there is a great deal of peer pressure. Insecurity follows and, like many instances, the easiest cure is conforming, running with the herd. And who will be there to welcome you into their bosom? Huge firms with massive marketing campaigns.

graduating “95% of students are doing something they want to do.” No doubt this is a useful statistic when persuading governing bodies that Oxford’s careers prospects are the best in the country, but it was less persuasive when, ten minutes later, he tried to advertise the diversity of the careers Oxford graduates go into by saying that “the average graduate works in 3 different sectors within their first 10 years, with some working even 5 or 6.”

Illustration: Ruby Carrington

I realise that the response on many people’s lips will be that this view is unrealistic, the world of work is hard, and you can’t expect to get up every day doing something you love. To that I would respond that pessimists have always had the luxury of calling themselves realists; Helen’s contribution, one of the most valuable, was that we must at least try.

If slogging away for incalculable hours in a job we dislike really is the fate to which we are all condemned (and I don’t believe for one second it is) then delay it is as much as possible! Explore, search, allow yourself to become interested by something and blaze your own trail. It might be, as David and Helen made clear it was for them, that this does involve an internship, but be sure; you’re giving up a lot to dip your toe in the water.

Andris Rudzitis

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On good foundations: the place of the New Build in Pembroke’s architectural history

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he shock of the new takes some time to wear off. The memories of a complete south wall in Chapel Quad, or of a Brewer’s Street without a bridge spanning its length, are quickly fading. Instead, we are confronted with these new portals across to a mammoth new area of the college, summed up aptly in the ‘Bridging Centuries’ moniker given to the project. Yet, as radical and unnerving as this new introduction may be, these changes to the architectural fabric of the college are merely the latest in a long history of piecemeal building at Pembroke.

When Pembroke College was founded in 1624, the physical site was significantly different to how it is today. Halls and gardens belonging to several different colleges, of which Broadgates Hall was just one, occupied the ground where Chapel Quad now lies, and North Quad was a bustling Beef Lane. The Almshouse, which had been built by Cardinal Wolsey in 1525, was in possession of Christ Church College, only to be purchased outright by Pembroke in 1888.

The first major building works took place in the in the 1600s, when what we now know as Old Quad was built, wall-bywall. A print from 1675 by David Loggan, the University’s engraver, can be viewed alongside the modern architecture mock-ups that adorned the ‘Bridging Centuries’ website for the New Build, as it engaged in heavy artistic licence.

The north side of Old Quad was not built until 1690-94, therefore the artist took creative liberties, constructing the wall how he believed it would be upon completion. The gatetower and porter’s lodge stand proudly in the middle of this fictitious wall, as opposed to nestling in the corner as it transpired to be built. Due to financial restrictions, the entire quad took seventy years to complete, which puts the minor delays of the New Build in some kind of perspective.

The next hundred or so years were relatively quiet, with the building of Staircase 8 in 1695 as lodgings for the master, and the construction of the neo-classical Chapel between 1728-32 by Hawksmoor’s student William Townsend as the

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main additions. The chapel drew upon the style favoured by seventeenth and eighteenth century British architects in Oxford, notably Sir Christopher Wren and Nicholas Hawksmoor, and was in keeping with the neo-classicism vogue.

Between 1829-38, however, the entirety of Old Quad was refaced in bath stone, adopting a gothic style instead. It was not until the mid-nineteenth century, however, that a burst of building fervour dramatically changed the site of the college.

Dr Francis Jeune, master between 1844-64, brought an unprecedented verve and drive to Pembroke, and it was under his mastership that Chapel Quad took shape. The architect John Hayward designed the buildings on the north of this quad between 1844-46, as well as the hall itself between 1848-50. The hall, medieval in style, harkened back to an earlier Oxford than the classicism which Townsend’s chapel had added a century before. Upon completion, the hall was second in size only to Christ Church’s at the time. The hammerbeam roof, crenellated skyline and stained-glass windows evoked a much older Oxford. In a space of six years, an entire enclosed quad was constructed.

Interestingly, the name ‘Chapel Quad’ is a relatively modern invention. When the quad was first conceived, it was referred to as ‘New Quad’ or even ‘Grass Quad’ as, until the late 1920s, Old Quad had a gravel surface instead of the lawn that we know today. ‘Please keep off the gravel’ doesn’t quite have the same ring to it.

After Jeune’s burst of building zeal, it was not until midway through the twentieth century that Pembroke expanded its site and architectural variety. The founding of the Besse Building in 1954 was followed by the famous annexation of Beef Lane in 1960 to facilitate the opening of North Quad. This quad and the conversion of buildings of Pembroke Street into undergraduate accommodation drastically increased the size of the college, further reinforced by the building of the McGowin Library in 1974 and the MacMillan Building in 1977.

As crucial as the opening of North Quad was, however, it is in the planning and construction of the Sir Geoffrey Arthur Building that we find a project that is more comparable to the scale of the New Build. Maguire & Co., who won the competition in 1986 to design new college accommodation by the river, provided a design typical of post-modern respect for context, history, and meaning. The first university or college building to be built on the south bank of the Thames, their winning design was opened in 1990 by Senator Fulbright. Imperious in its fortress- (some would say prison-) like manner from outside, the fusion of modern functionality and collegiate quadrangles within places the GAB firmly as a successful modern addition to Pembroke’s architectural repertoire.

you: for those who had to come to terms with their precious gravel being replaced by grass in Old Quad; for those who woke up one day to find the hustle and bustle of Beef Lane closed off forever; for those who first breached the walls of Colditz-on-Thames at the GAB. When you think about it that way, the New Build is just another startling, yet innovative, addition to the rich and diverse architectural history of Pembroke College.

Will Clement

The mid-90s Bannister Building’s conversion of an 18th century townhouse notwithstanding, the New Build marks Pembroke’s first foray into the new century. Common themes or restrictions of funding, aptness of style, and overall context had to be considered here as much as they had to be when Old Quad was built, or when John Hayward designed the features of Chapel Quad.

While the GAB embraced certain features of collegiate building to lend itself some historical credence, its physical location ten minutes south of the college cannot help but leave it aside from the college as a whole. The New Build, on the other hand, is far more than a modern annex or block of accommodation. It is unashamedly modern, and yet the physical connection provided by the Brewer Street bridge connects it indelibly to the college.

So while it may seem unnerving at first to cross the centuries from Hayward and Jeune’s ‘Grass Quad’ to this modern addition, spare a thought for the bewildered students before

13

W

The Aleppo Souq: Tribute to a Hub of Civilisation

hilst on vacation from my studies of Arabic at the French Institute in Damascus, Syria, in Easter 2011, I found myself discovering the twists and turns of the most magical marketplace I have ever visited. Enchanted by the rows of pungent soap stalls, the bustling meat market, and the hidden courtyard houses buried in its ancient walls, it was an unforgettable experience. Vendors called out at every corner selling beautiful Aleppo silk, delicately shaped slippers, and copper teapots. Stall owners exchanged jokes and cried out in delight to their friends and relatives passing by, displaying the fun-loving, welcoming, and warm characteristics shared by all the people I got to know during my time in the country. This marketplace was clearly loved by all who knew it, local and foreign visitors alike - a favourite meeting-place and a greatly revered hub of the community.

Internally recognised for its rare architectural styles, Aleppo is not the only world heritage site at risk due to the civil war that has engulfed Syria for so long. Syria has six UNESCO heritage sites, the others being the city of Bosra (not far from Dera`a, where the violence began), the old city of Damascus, the ancient villages in the North of Syria, Crac des Chevaliers and the Citadel of Saladin, and Palmyra. Just a stone’s throw from Aleppo is the site of St Simeon the Stylite. When I visited its ruins in March 2011, just before the conflict got underway, the fruit trees between the columns were in full blossom, and I could see nothing but olive groves stretching down the hillside.

It was hard to believe a more peaceful place could exist. Who knows when beautiful Syrian sites such as this one will once again be enjoyed by visitors?

In September 2012, Souq al-Medina, the marketplace forming part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site that is Aleppo’s old city, went up in flames. The souq, a key trading centre since the 14th century and serving as home to over 1,550 stalls, was one of the world’s largest. Its shops lined the city’s famous Citadel, itself a world-famous historical site. Aleppo, Syria’s second largest city, has tragically been subject to attacks and bombardments from government and rebel forces since July 2012.

The souq was a major tourist destination, and a site about which the Syrian people would proudly boast. Paying tribute to every individual life lost in this conflict would clearly be impossible, and while I would not wish to suggest that the loss of a monument is more tragic than the losing of human life, it could be said that the Aleppo souq, at the heart of Syrian civilization, represents the people as a whole.

It is perhaps strange to highlight this particular tragedy over the thousands witnessed by the country since the beginning of the uprising in March 2011, but, having seen nothing but devastation on news reports from Syria for nearly two years now, we are in danger of forgetting the rich heritage of this culturally vibrant country. The old city of Aleppo has borne witness to a diverse range of civilizations and is, in many respects, a symbol of the country’s ability to thrive. Whether it can recover from this latest struggle is a different question.

But the violence, now spilling over Syria’s borders into Lebanon and Turkey and forcing hundreds of thousands to flee their homes, shows no signs of ceasing. There is next to no chance of foreign intervention, and the destruction of this beloved landmark begs the terrifying question of how many more treasures of Syria will be lost before this deadly, drawn-out conflict comes to an end. Ultimately, however, this just serves as a distraction from the real question at the forefront of our minds, namely: how many more lives will this bloody mess of a conflict claim?

Clare Roberts

U

The Beautiful Game and the Fairer Sex

ntil very recently my experience of football for girls consisted mainly of ‘Bend it Like Beckham,’ from which I garnered that Jonathan Rhys Meyer looks banging in a white v neck and something about Sikhs not approving of soccer. At school it was an elite sport played by the popular girls who had Renault Clioes, blonde highlights and sex. As the mousy haired, chubby asthmatic who spent most of adolescence playing Scrabble with her grandmother and lusting after Ensign Harry Kim from Star Trek: Voyager, the women’s football team was as distant as the planets visited by my beloved Harry.

At University, my sporting prowess is generally limited to a sport called Korfball which few people have heard of and even fewer play, so imagine the surprise of someone who likes their sports Dutch and obscure, finding themselves facing down Wolfson Women’s 1sts in the inaugural match of Pembroke Women’s Football team. Heavily mascara-ed eyes wide with fear, the Velcro from borrowed shin pads itching my calves and the wires of an industrial-style sports bra poking distinctly sensitive flesh, I was internally cursing with the language of the worst football hooligan. What had I been thinking?

The starting whistle blew.

Then, as I am sure fans of the sport saw coming all along, it was

incredible: exhilarating, hilarious, and a complete surprise. So we had only mustered 8 players, lost 6-0, half way through it started raining so my hair lost all its volume, and, confirming all existing stereotypes, confusion about the nature of the offside rule continues to this day, despite repeated readings of wikiHow’s ‘How to Understand Offside in Soccer (Football)’and increasingly exasperated explanations by the men in my life. However, a failure to completely grasp the rules in no way inhibited the game play.

Legging it around, beaming and occasionally getting in the way of play like a Labrador puppy: it was bliss. As a woman it felt good to take pride in something that wasn’t the letter(s) on a test or on the label of a bra. It felt right, sort of like justice.

Admittedly, perhaps, I’m making too big a deal out of the idea of women in football under a guise other than that of ‘WAGs,’ so for you doubters and piss-takers out there, it was good fun so please, bitch, don’t kill my vibe.

“In the sweep of its appeal, its ability to touch every corner of humanity, football is the only game that needed to be invented.”

--Bobby Charlton Anyone interested in playing for PCWFC, contact eleanor.mccelland@pmb.ox.ac.uk Ella St. George-Carey

14

Photography: Mimi Kim

RostronParry

Introducing The Blog for Short Books. http://www.theblogforshortbooks.blogspot.co.uk/ It’s important fun and we’d like to make it bigger. Read the blog, get the idea, read a book, and send a review to: Sfmrostron@gmail.com.

No prize but there’s to be a regular contributors’ lunch.

Communications Clerkenwell,

Financial PR

www.rostronparry.com

London

15

The Eurosceptic

T

he other week I went to Tesco - the big one past the end of Cornmarket, where the queue always snakes its way to the back of the shop. I stood in that queue and eventually I got to that point where you hobble from left to right ready to charge forward into either aisle as soon as a self-service checkout becomes free.

But I didn’t charge forward; the newspaper stand had caught my eye, and it made me angry.

Although we shouldn’t confuse tabloid exaggeration with the true opinions of the nation, it is nevertheless alarming that the press present these impressions of European integration. In fact, like fancy chocolates, smelly cheese and cheap wine, European integration is all the rage on the Continent. But it isn’t here. Why? Well, that’s because of the second feature of the Eurosceptic personality: arrogance.

The front pages were all reporting Cameron’s negations on the EU budget. The Daily Express proclaimed “EU MAKES FOOLS OF BRITAIN AGAIN”; the Daily Mail announced, “CAMERON ROUNDS ON EU LEADERS”. Of course these are hardly surprising tabloid headlines, but still, the ‘bulldog spirit’ brandished across the front pages of Britain’s most popular publications led me to contemplate the flaws of the Eurosceptic personality: ignorance, arrogance and Britishness. That’s right, Britishness is a problem. Let’s consider these characteristics.

The Eurosceptic has glorious visions of a VictorianEra Britain, where our green and pleasant land is the envy of all the world. No wonder then, that Janet Daley preached to her Sunday Telegraph readers that in refusing to cooperate with our Continental counterparts at a recent summit, Cameron was “indisputably, categorically, irreproachably right”. I, for one, would dispute this rash claim.

Ignorance is the cornerstone of most Euroscepticism.

Now I accept that there are some political radicals - Nigel Farage, an UKIP MEP for a start - who do understand how the EU works, but these outspoken nationalists mislead the population by blurring the reality of EU policies and banging the tabloid drum of Euroscepticism. On their website UKIP claim that “The EU reduces our rights and liberty”, citing as evidence the European Arrest Warrant; yet this mechanism has allowed cooperation in catching many of Europe’s most elusive organised criminals. Apart from this, it is absurd that UKIP think that “The EU reduces our rights” when the European Court of Human Rights implements some of the most protective human rights laws in the world.

Eurosceptic ignorance is made worse by dodgy lines of reasoning. Simon Heffer, electorate analyst extraordinaire, explained recently in The Daily Mail that British “voters predominantly inhabit the centre right politically. Proof of this is the fact that the combined Conservative and UKIP vote at Corby was almost 41 per cent — even at a time when the Tories are deeply unpopular” You don’t need to be a PPE-ist to realise this reasoning based on a single constituency is balls.

16

So why does this ill-founded detritus sell newspapers?

Because we’re British. The Eurosceptic is proud that our country is separated from the Continent by a body of water; as a frontier, the Channel is like St Aldate’s, not very wide but wide enough to separate us from our rivals across the way.

If you’ll allow me to quote again from the esteemed publication that is The Daily Mail, Amanda Platell wrote “The Queen has provided reassurance, inspiration and unswerving dedication for our country”. Only because of Britishness can readers enjoy a euro-by-euro scrutiny of the payment packages of the people who control the future of the European Union, and then glorify a monarch who sits in a palace all day. Therefore the Eurosceptic is a pompous Briton, whose heart is invariably roused by any criticism of the cheese-chompers who live in Mainland Europe, even though they wish to unite with us to secure the prosperity of all Europeans.

So the typical Eurosceptic is ignorant, arrogant and British. If you don’t fall into any of these categories, but consider yourself a Eurosceptic, then I have great respect for you; to you I can only suggest that the EU is a bit like Pembroke’s catering arrangement: you might not like it, it can be difficult to work with and at times it is expensive, but it exists to serve us all and week in, week out, we rely on it.

Simon Posner

Altarnun Cottage Contact details for booking are: Mr. & Mrs. Dunley Rose Cottage Tanhay Lane Golant Near Fowey Cornwall PL23 1LD or telephone 01726 832807

17

Science and Art “Item 29: Release seat belt”. he voice was pure Mission Control, a voice made known by years of cinema. The safety belt was strapped around Felix Baumgartner who, in a few seconds, would bunny-hop into history. But it was this recitation of protocol–“Item 29”–that made the ordeal real for those left behind on Planet Earth.

T

After all our advancements in science and technology, here was a man still attempting to fly – or at least fall with some style. The fundamental desires that underpin our advancements remain the same: go faster, get higher, be better. But, please, do it all with a little razzle-dazzle. Don’t underestimate the razzle-dazzle; the right amount suspends and connects us in a shared state of wilful distraction.

Felix’s PR achievement spoke directly to imagination - here, onscreen, was that Spectacle of Space in glorious webticolour, known deeply but not at all understood. As Felix hopped from his platform, collective stomachs lurched in a unifiedfield thought experiment.

Historically, there has seemed mutual fear between scientists and artists; as though one cannot exist while the other one does. But perhaps they are part of the same thing: the creative imagination that envisioned Felix’s hop also envisioned the technology required to get him there. Research is suggesting this very thing; a high proportion of scientific Nobel Prize winners are also outstanding artistic visionaries, writers, and musicians. The same dazzling areas of the brain light up.

Indeed, Albert Einstein declared ‘Imagination is more important than knowledge’, and his thought experiments certainly validate his point. But he also planted his imaginative flag in the moonscape of previous physicists’ work to return with theories that changed our world.

It has been said that imagination dropped the Atom Bomb.

Imagination sank the Titanic. It was certainly imagination that envisioned a steamer so large, so arrogantly misplaced, that lifeboats seemed superfluous. It was also imagination that allowed James Clerk Maxwell to envision radio waves of knowledge travelling the century to enable Marconi’s radio transmission. This radio became a lifeboat, ferrying distress calls across a black Atlantic as the dying leviathan’s lights went down on the twentieth century.

Richard Feynman was one of the preeminent physicists of the twentieth century. When his artist friend alleged that scientists do not see a thing called ‘Beauty’ in the way a painter or a writer sees it, he responded: “Poets say science takes away from the beauty of the stars — mere globs of gas atoms. Nothing is “mere”… it does not do harm to the mystery to know a little more about it.” For him, imaginative vision and science are complementary; if you have both, the mystery becomes more beautiful.

18

What about when technology and human bodies physically merge? There are different levels at which this can take place - it can happen when someone has a mild to serious disability – contact lenses or prosthetic limbs, perhaps. These we accept quite sensibly into our culture. But another level is achieved when a person’s body is ‘enhanced’ by science.

Not by cosmetic surgery, or even laser eye surgery. Human

cyborgs are coming, as Kevin Warwick can personally attest to. Over the last fifteen years Warwick has inserted silicon chip transponders into his body, allowing interaction between his nervous system and computers.

Warwick justifies his research by promising that wheelchairbound individuals will be able to operate their machines – and the world around them – by simply indicating with their finger, or maybe one day even ‘telepathically’ (via chips in their brains). More than anything, he emphasizes the excitement value of his research, and why not? It is exciting, in a way we’re not fully sure of. It’s that ole razzle-dazzle.

For Warwick and researchers like him, the next logical step is brain-to-brain ‘interfacing’; i.e. mind reading. These human cyborgs will mind-read, both with other human cyborgs and with the technological world around them. And Warwick is quite honest about the implications for non-enhanced humans: they will become a sub-species. There’s something slightly queasy about turning the human body, incision by incision, into a machine, and it raises a need for differentiation between scientific advancement and human progression. The two must walk forward together. Science is a tool, not the enemy. We invent things because we imagine them, and we imagine them because we desire them, or perhaps because we fear the thing they are designed to protect us from. Science is imagination made real and, as such, it is the most powerful force we have to alter ‘reality’. But how do we wish to alter it? We have a choice right now between using what we know imaginatively in order to save what’s important, or using what we know to imaginatively forget everything worth saving.

For every odd scientific advancement we also see its positive impact on life and culture; superstorms hit social media the hardest, linking rescue workers with stranded homeowners – it’s those radio waves again, offering more lifeboats.

We have technology that can make energy efficient, that can reduce our ‘carbon footprint’, that can mend a broken heart.

We may, in the not too distant future, have human cyborgs in touch with the world around them; able to open doors at will and read a loved one’s mind. But let’s not lose touch with what led us here: we have science because we’re human, with human needs and a wonderful capacity for a belief in better.

As Felix stepped out and looked down on a world he had no way of knowing he would ever consciously re-enter, we imagined what he thought and felt. We know what he said because technology sent it down to us. The distance between what we know and what we imagine is always a blurred space, a place of possibility and latent power.

However, we always understand the feeling we achieve when the two are in perfect harmony, when what we know is instinctive because we visualize its essence - when what we imagine is known even before it is understood. Great poetry can communicate before it is understood, according to T.S. Eliot. There is some kind of poetry to our world, something communicated to us with or without scientific understanding.

It does no harm to the mystery to know a little more about it - indeed, the mystery becomes more so. In the unchartered landscape of imagination, snatches of knowledge merge and miraculously form into wholly new dreams. These dreams could allow us – and the world – to fly. Or we can fall – in spectacular style.

Rebecca Moore Photography: Jesse Schwimmer

Wednesday Now

Monday

It’s getting late You remember incorrectly; That was last night.

Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow, but tonight Let’s blow out the candle.

Our perennial love allows a one day break Perhaps an intentional reflection On hesternal memories

Out I wish they had printed an expiration date on you That I could see even in our darkened bedroom A quick note, a Best by _________ So that you knew when to leave Instead of staying here

Is this a mausoleum or a relationship?

I feel pelagic.

Hey look, I found a dictionary That will surely cheer up dinner After a wonderful day of work.

Tomorrow but today Tuesday

I sit up in the dark, woken and putting first things first: Thousands have lived without love, not one without water.

If I can’t amuse you, as you say it Then what has this been for?

You learned nothing, we know that And I learn little Our bed is built without olive tree wood still rooted in the ground I don’t mean to get angry. I just wish I could sleep.

Auden said For the error bred in the bone Of each woman and each man Craves what it cannot have, Not universal love But to be loved alone.

I hope he is right, I know your expiration date But you are already gone Today.

Tomorrow

Peter Kentros

I wish they had printed an expiration date on you How could a breakfast bellini go flat so quick?

People don’t enjoy museums But we both do Not today, it seems.

I match the contrapposto all too well And you feel like a warm June shower Wet, frustrated, and uncomfortable Struggling even with your shoelaces You are right, you are tired You want to call it a day Tomorrow and tomorrow but today

Poetry

Illustration: Prerna Aswani

19

Another Year

Another year, another Wednesday in late October.

We move across the crisp grass, crushing the blades with each step.

We’ll remember this later.

No words are passed, but then they never were, as if we understand the inevitable failure, or perhaps are simply muted by yet another year and another Wednesday.

We are there now.

My finger traces the soft headstone, taking with it winter’s coat: a necessary exposure, I am told.

It tells me your years: years that now seem so far behind.

And I wonder, again, if you grow with us, if you are really twenty two: an insignificant age, but where you should be.

Or if all ended on that Wednesday, as if the world stopped for you then too.

And we are moving, moving away from your place and away from our October ritual; stepping into the breaking sun.

The grass is soft now, unthawed and changed.

And this must be why I cannot hear your footsteps, for you said that you would always follow.

Elspeth Hoskins

20

Wings He confessed Left her vexed.

Butterflies, butterflies, fly away Not needed, not wanted Scatter today.

Hey, Can’t go on living this way All elated smiles And moody frowns How much longer Before one of us drowns In this sea of emotion This vast ocean This preconceived notion That love can exist So butterflies, butterflies Fly away, Take back your flutters Rid me of your strings!

He lets go And she sinks.

Seems dark now Without your coloured, flapping wings.

Hiba Haris

Illustration: Claire Rammelkamp

21

Parallel Parallel worlds Clashing in the Moments Of joy and fear Parallel minds Wishing for Nothing More than time Parallel hearts In synchrony Beating Individually together Parallel lines Meeting as Everything In the infinity Parallel Futures In this universe Always Remaining possible Dyedra Just

22

Distance So much is left unsaid In the crease of your mouth, Twisted in confusion I look to you in need.

The days aren’t full enough, you say Charm is wearing thin under frozen skies.

Drop in warmth The heat leaves like nothing.

Her eyes like a dream beckon Through dangerous paths of chance, Strength pull me through In my time of need.

The reality is distant The glow transcends boundaries, Wonderland is rising And the evening sky will guide us.

Adam Lowe

Promise My walk from work leads down a long, cool lane named Brewer Street.

To my left, high wall - stone older than the first thought conceived some great element of me. But I dare not touch it, this wall.

A child blowing bubbles has not yet learnt the fragility of stone, how any creation of any kind can be withdrawn, collapse or worse; promise itself to somebody else or nothing at all.

It is a long walk Home.

Even tonight; on the inside now, striding out around clipped bright grass, toward Formal Hall. still, I dare not touch it – things break even from the inside – even (don’t touch it!) this wall.

Rebecca Moore

Torque When I started driving (all those years ago) I noticed there was often a car tailgating me.

Sure, if I was a little tipsy (before we knew that was a bad thing to help you drive) or drowning at volume level 23 the rearview mirror was out of sight.

I crashed four times this way, (in retrospect, never seriously) so I stopped drinking and left the compact discs at home.

I could appreciate the car behind me when I would drive at night or in a storm; its lights all 1369 of them illuminated the road around me, though rarely the road ahead.

I loathed the anxiety my follower(s?) gave me, as if a constant tatarratat plagued my truck door.

I mostly wished most of all that I could switch into reverse

and total my follower.

With age, however, I realized that my car would stop running if I faced that damage.

I will always hate driving.

I tried filling my car with opera tapes and friends and leather (leather leather) seat-heaters and coffees but I still dread waking up (though often there was no sleep) To find the keys in my sweaty hands hating my car and my mirror and the things behind me.

I crashed this morning, I’m Not sure anyone else knows.

I was listening to music and drove the whole night through.

I hope I can serve as a lesson to the children who pay too much for insurance that distractions on the road and tired carelessness can kill.

Peter Kentros Illustration: Ruby Carrington

23

I sat beneath an ancient tree I sat beneath an ancient tree, A troubled man, intent to muse And so forget my human self; With shadows fuse.

Within the roots of nature’s weave, Above my head a voice was blown: A wind-born sigh of mournful leaves And wooden groan.

The tree itself - a whispered sound Of woodland steeped in secret - said: “With mobile limbs, why sit beside The living dead?”

“Despite the gusts and desperate growth I cannot move. My roots go deep; To chain me in this prison-tomb Of waking sleep” “Yet you, with limbs of movement free Could visit further fields than these.

And here you sit, wasting your hours To hear the breeze?”

And hours I listened, ‘til my voice, Like vengeful-light cut through the gloam: “I sit here that my restless thoughts May further roam” “In vain the world fetters your form, For thoughtful souls are ever free.

And deep within the inmate’s mind Waits Liberty.”

“For this is freedom: (not to move, Like fleeting wind, within the world) A solitary stillness with One’s mind unfurled” “Deny creation’s atom truth, And in the fields of Fancy’s breath Take root! To wake from life and die A dreamer’s death!”

The ancient tree gave no reply.

Its voice was taken by the wind, Too far away to give retort.

For dreamer’s minds can distant fly On wings of thought.

Matthew Byrd

24

Thursday Struggles The walk back from the English Faculty always involves me carrying the freshly rendered shreds of both my latest essay and my dignity. Why, Oscar Wilde, could you not just have a personality of your own? You'd be a lot easier to analyze if you were, you know, a human being. Halfway through Broad Street I think I'm forgetting something I'm gon' party I'm gon' dance about today. DID I REMEMBER TO SIGN IN I'm gon' party I'm gon' dance FOR HALL? Yep, did that right before tute. But I really just want to put yo hands up on my body come away from one of these things feeling on my body on my body semi-­‐confident in my academic abilities. Oh, American education system, some part of me must have known that causing a heatwave taking Concepts of the Cosmos and Math of Social Choice as classes wouldn't causing a heatwave really help my intellectual development that much. And why I'm gon' party I'm gon' dance is this idiotic song stuck in my head? WAIT A SECOND, I'm gon' party I'm gon' dance THURSDAY IS JUNCTION NIGHT! But don't I have on my body on my body tute at 9 AM tomorrow? Maybe I'm gon' party I'm gon' dance I should just go to the library and put what about

I'm gon' party I'm gon' dance the £2 double-­‐vodka

put yo hands up on my body it'd be blasphemy to

mixers not

yo hands up on my body read some more books. But

put yo hands up on my body take advantage of

causing a heatwave you moron you need to I'm gon' party I'm gon' dance be vigilant and put yo hands up on that on a year abroad but no, NO think about your essay

my body read this is academia and learning and intertextuality and baby

Jesus and Upay

causing a heatwave and goddamn it why even try to fight it:

I'm gon' party I'm gon' dance put

yo hands up on my body, on my body, on my body,

causing a heatwave Michael Restiano

25

26 Photography: Jesse Schwimmer

Ali Smith - on Stories

A

li Smith has a rhythmic way of reading her stories aloud, jabbing at the prose until she pulls it into the punchy shape of verse. Listening to her speak, it is difficult to keep up, but impossible, too, to detach yourself from her energy and rhythm. Her brilliance asserts itself in her way of tweaking the way things are said until they make something new.

She is also incredibly funny. Ali Smith is about ‘the blowing open of things.’

She reads a story on the subject of ‘beauty’, entitled ‘The Beholder’. It is the story of a woman whose life is in tatters.

One day she notices a patch of hardened bark growing on her chest. She sees a doctor, who refers her to a plethora of departments, the result of which is an endless series of phone calls and procedures. During this confusion, the patch of hardened bark has sprouted a thorn, a stem and a bud.

Soon, a beautiful rose bush is growing from her chest. The woman nurtures the rose bush, though the thorns ruin her clothes and she struggles to answer the phone. In the midst of the chaos she sees the ‘first burst of colour’ as a bud comes into flower. Out of loss stems a profound joy.

Typical of Smith’s short stories, ‘The Beholder’ is conceptually bizarre and original, and yet pulsating with energy and colour. The woman, steeped in grief and being prodded by doctors, allows herself to be surprised. She is generous. Where beauty blesses her, though in an unusual guise, she accepts it gratefully, and it brings her joy. But the story also seems to indicate Smith’s feelings on literature, and the attitude a reader must have when facing a text. The playful, experimental nature of her writing reflects her devotion to the unusual, to the desire to reinvent.

Ali Smith is a champion of the pun, which she transforms from bawdiness to beauty. She says that ‘words ask me to play with them’, describing a pun as ‘magic, a little spell of language’. ‘Language,’ she argues, is the means through which ‘the clinical things in the story meet the poetry’, of which the effect is, throughout her fiction, the element of ‘transformation’. The fluidity of Smith’s writing is clear in her love of connections and patterns, between words and also writers and their predecessors. She cites Milton as the ‘inventor of words’, the Romantic impulse of Keats, and the genius of Angela Carter. She says ‘writers have other selves’, recalling the tribute to Edwin Morgan in ‘First person and other stories’; ‘So many pieces of me! I must hold tight.’

On

Smith says that stories should ‘hold us, contain us, let us know where we are in the world,’ and that we must ‘allow ourselves to be fluid… to feel changed and feel surprised.’To listen to Ali Smith talk is to be defamiliarized. She allows us to see something new and accept the unusual. She urges us to ‘be open to the thing that it brings.’ Her fiction stems from the accidental; fulfilling what for her is the basis of storytelling, to ‘surprise and to reinvent.’

Harriet Baker tuesdayreviews.wordpress.com

T

he buddy cop genre is a well-trodden path in film, and it’s hard to think of a variation that hasn’t been done before. If Akira Kurosawa’s police thrillers of the fifties anticipated the style, it reached its climax with classics like 48 hours and Bad Boys, before degenerating into endless banal permutations, such as White Chicks; a film in which two black undercover CIA agents disguise themselves as (you guessed it) white women. It is all the more surprising, then, that End of Watch manages to breathe some new life into the genre, even by telling the same old story.

Jake Gyllenhaal and Michael Pena play Taylor and Zevala, two young cops who patrol the streets of one of Los Angeles’ most dangerous neighbourhoods. Unlike the anti-heroes of many modern police movies, these two show remarkable integrity and pride in their profession. At the same time, they have remained kids at heart, playing pranks on their colleagues and excitedly going after the bad guys with guns and cool gadgets. Above all, however, the two of them are best friends, and this is ultimately a film about their bromance.

During one of their action-packed daily patrols, they arrest a member of a notorious Mexican drug cartel, unaware of the inevitable consequences. Only a few days later, they uncover a large human trafficking operation, run by the same cartel.

“If you tug on the tail of a snake” a senior detective warns them, “it’s going to turn around and bite you back”. So it comes, and soon there is a price on their heads. Like every good action movie, the story culminates in a gripping showdown packed with chases, shootings and heroic sacrifice.

While the plot may be simple and predictable, director David Ayer manages to create a remarkably intense atmosphere by deploying the shaky camera technique. Most of the scenes in End of Watch are shot with digital hand-held cameras, which supports the realism of dialogue and performance. We learn at the outset that Taylor is making a documentary for a film class he is attending, and throughout the movie we are constantly reminded of the presence of the camera. In one scene, Taylor’s superiors even tell him to turn it off. Other scenes seem to come from surveillance cameras, or other people’s footage, but we are never really given an explanation.

Many viewers will find the use of the camera illogical and inconsistent. Most scenes are shot from different angles, and some of the bad guys seem to be enrolled in the same film class as Taylor; maybe everyone in LA films himself or herself constantly? Perhaps the most comical scene of this sort is when we see the head of the Mexican drug cartel in his rancho somewhere in Sinaloa, giving the order to get rid of our two troublemakers, filmed with a night vision spy camera.

But all this doesn’t matter, because that is not the kind of realism Ayer is interested in. We are happy to believe the story despite its inconsistencies, and that is in no little part due to the great chemistry developed between Gyllenhaal and Pena.

Their performances are credible and moving which, when combined with the intimacy of the camera, mean that the viewer cannot help but get drawn emotionally into the story.

Despite appearances, this is a sensitive movie about friendship. While it may run to a familiar and predictable storyline, the intensity of the action blinds us to the movie’s inevitable conclusion; we fear the worst but hope for the best.

Johannes Kniess

Reviews

the unexpected in her stories, Smith explains the vital element of the accidental. Its basis is generosity; ‘I believe at the basis of art and creativity is generosity.’ She says, ‘In the beginning was the word, and the word was yes.’ Of her writing process, she says that she lets the stories write themselves.

Her characters, she says, ‘bring themselves, they invent.’ This essential generosity is ‘an agreement, an openness’, between reader and text, writer and story, between both writer and reader and the world. She encourages a way to read literature that is as easily the way to read life.

End of Watch - David Ayer

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On the Road - Jack Kerouac

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ublished in 1957, the novel On The Road by Jack Kerouac is viewed as a cult classic, embodying the romantic ideals of a generation lost in post-war America. The intensity with which they attempted to break free from the shackles of previous generations, with liberal ideas of sex and drugs and new philosophies, led to this young generation being named the ‘Beat Generation’. On The Road is a cornerstone of this period, espousing the breaking of social conventions and the allowance of a more fluid, free society. It aimed to find new answers to the question ‘what is life?’ through the road, by journeying across America to the seedy Jazz bars of San Francisco and anywhere this counter-culture existed.

Sal Paradise (a pseudonym for Kerouac himself) and Dean Moriarty (fellow Beat writer Neal Cassady) are the main protagonists through this journey on a road which carries the promise of meaning.

Late 2012 saw the film adaptation of On The Road, fifty five years after its initial publication. Directed by Walter Salles, famous for The Motorcycle Diaries, this adaptation attempts to capture the intensity of the original narrative, whilst trying to translate it onto the big screen. It proves a difficult task for Salles; the rolling landscapes and atmospheres do enhance the film with a picturesque backdrop, but the film is a case of style over substance. The film is able to capture the visual beauty of the surroundings on the journey in a way that beautiful cinematography can and a novel cannot, as with the opening scene showing the stunning plains of America stretching as far as can be seen. Yet the depth of the novel and its impressionistic nature makes this translation from novel to film difficult. There is, of course, always trouble translating a popular novel to a film, especially one with such a devoted fanbase, and a novel as expansive and fluid as On The Road is no exception to this.

Sal Paradise (played by Sam Riley) meets Dean Moriarty (Garrett Hedlund) through writer friends, entwining their lives together and setting up their adventures on the road.

Garrett Hedlund brilliantly captures the egotistical and animalistic nature of Dean, burning with a passionate intensity and insatiability perfectly in line with the novel’s character. Sal Paradise is portrayed by Riley capably, full of quiet admiration for Dean and fascinated by the many twists and turns of Dean’s life. This is evident in one scene, as Sal watches on whilst Dean and Marylou dance passionately and full of lust.

Sal’s respect and awe for Dean is clear in this scene, as he

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claims ‘the only people for me are the mad ones…who burn like fabulous yellow candles exploding like spiders across the stars’. Kristen Stewart as Marylou, Dean’s on-off lover, does not give enough charm and interest to a character much more passionate and dynamic in the novel; relegating her to a minor character.

The fiery passion of Dean and Sal’s trip to Mexico, the brilliant soundtrack and fervent jazz performances, the heightened sexuality of the major characters all serve to paint the generation as wild romantics, as with their literary counterparts.The trip to Mexico is wonderfully conveyed in the film, as Sal and Dean visit a brothel and party eagerly with the beautiful women, strongly desiring pure pleasure and entertainment. Yet with this trip comes a real undercurrent of sadness and loss which runs throughout, as the impoverished Mexicans do all they can to make a living, and Sal and Dean escape the troubles of their own life. Dean struggles to accept the idea of growing up and out of his wild ways, whilst Sal tries to find himself as a writer without the backing of his family.

On The Roadi s a road-travel film in the truest sense – the road embodies the notion of an idyllic life, but cannot provide concrete answers. Left behind on these journeys are the women: Camille who throws lover Dean out, Galatea left behind by her wayward husband. The film memorably shows Ed Dunkel following the promise and freedom which Dean embodies, but after a freezing journey on the road with no food, he ends back with his furious wife Galatea and back to domestication. The moral message is that the road is not the solution for problems in life, but merely a way of escaping problems.

The film feels more like an ode to the novel and its ideals, rather than a real representation of it. On The Road tries to capture the atmosphere of the novel, bouncing from one place to another, permeated with a frenetic jazz-like spirit.

The beauty of the novel lies in its depth; the flowing style of prose questions everything and nothing, encapsulates the hopes and possibilities of this ‘Beat Generation’. Though the film is interpolated with extracts from the text, it falls short of reaching its aim. Recreating a brilliant piece of literature is never easy, and Salles’ On The Road cannot quite reach its intended destination.

Adam Lowe

Once there was: once there wasn’t. ‘The Bastard of Istanbul’ - Elif Shafak

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innamon. Garbanzo Beans. Sugar. Roasted Hazelnuts.

Vanilla. Pistachios. Pine Nuts. Orange Peels. Almonds.

Dried Apricots. Pomegranate Seeds. Dried Figs. Golden Raisins.

Rosewater. White Rice. All but the last chapter of The Bastard of Istanbul are named after food. The narration is sprinkled with the smells and flavours of spices and dishes which fuse together into a thin thread interweaving the stories of the characters as well as providing a rich complement to the visual evocation of the places described.

At first the book seems to follow two parallel tracks. On one side we have an all-women Turkish family in Istanbul, a pretty variegated and bustling four-generation household where young Asya Kazancı grew up not knowing who her father was, but ‘with all these aunts playing the role of the mother’, to which she responded with detachment, harsh cynicism and by implementing the rules of her own Personal Manifesto of Nihilism.

On the other side, shunted between San Francisco and Arizona, nineteen-year-old Armanoush Tchakhmakhchian feels trapped in the duality of her Armenian-American identity. Raised as part of a numerous Armenian family in the diaspora on her father’s side, she is also the daughter of an American woman who failed to integrate with her husband’s family, divorced him and rejected him, his family and Armenian culture to the extent of rejoicing with subtle pleasure when later getting remarried to a Turk.

An ocean between them, the two stories flow parallel and apparently unrelated whilst we get acquainted with Armanoush’s sensible and tactful nature, with Asya’s self-reliant and surly character, and with the unsolved knots looming above both their histories.

But as the plot unfolds, just like in a snarl of ropes, knots that seem unconnected become entangled and the two stories finally converge in Istanbul, the city-boat where ‘we all come and go in clusters’. Here Armanoush’s inherited burden of sufferings, resentment and incredulity meets Asya’s light-hearted unawareness and willingness to be detached from past and history. And here Shafak tackles a matter that still remains unsettled in modern Turkey. Just like every other member of the Kazancı family, Asya lives beyond the ‘impermeable boundary between the past and the present, distinguishing the Ottoman Empire from the Modern Turkish Republic’. Whatever happened before the new state was established in Turkey in 1923 feels to them like another people’s history. Including the Armenian Genocide. However genuinely sorry at hearing about the history of the Armenian people from Armanoush, none of them senses the loosest connection to the events of 1915. Turkey has been established in 1923 and any issue occurred before then is perceived as nothing more than “grim news from a distant country”.

Through the tones of a tragic tale, Shafak evokes vividly what the Turks seem to have forgotten: the planned deportation of all Armenian intellectuals, the horror of women and children starved and marched to death to the Syrian desert, the disintegration of entire families, the agony of the diaspora and of thousands of families being denied the right to see the truth recognized.

Despite getting an hostile reception from parts of the public, when The Bastard of Istanbul was published in Turkey in March 2006, it was a best seller. It was Shafak’s sixth novel and her second to be written in English and then translated into Turkish. It was also the reason why she was brought to court. A few months after the book appeared, nationalist lawyer Kemal Kerincsiz filed a complaint against Shafak, her publisher and her translator, as characters in her novel refer to the killings by using the term ‘genocide’, a definition Turkey rejects, and talk about Armenians being ‘butchered like sheep’. In Kerincsiz’s claim this would render the author indictable for “insulting Turkishness”, which, according to Article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code, constitutes a criminal act . By being charged under Article 301, Shafak joined more than sixty other writers and journalists, including Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk, who was sued in 2005 for declaring in an interview that ‘thirty thousand Kurds have been killed here, and a million Armenians. And almost nobody dares to mention that. So I do’. If convicted, Shafak could have faced a jail term of three years, and would have been the first author to be sentenced because of a comment made by a fictional character. After going through a process that was closely watched by the EU, she was finally acquitted.

Shafak’s book is courageous and daring. In a country like Turkey, where, as she herself said, ‘a novel is first and foremost a public statement and a novelist is always more than a novelist’, Shafak has been drawing attention to an uncomfortable subject matter.

And has done so through an insightful prose that beautifully fuses together the magical, velvety atmospheres of Istanbul interiors with an articulate critique of a country’s silent leniency, a strong sense of legacy, history and past, and a call for a critical attitude and engagement.

In the light of these particular considerations, the epigraph for The Bastard of Istanbul stands out as perfectly comprehensive and, perhaps, sadly prophetic: Once there was; once there wasn’t.

God’s creatures were as plentiful as grains And talking too much was a sin...

Enrichetta L. Frezzato

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The Elegance of the Hedgehog - Muriel Barbery

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he Elegance of the Hedgehog, translated from the French original in 2008, is a wonderful read. Ian Sansom, reviewing for The Guardian, billed it as a “book group” novel, but trite as such an assessment may seem, it captures how the narrative balances the heavier subjects of philosophy and sharp social commentary with a grace and humour that makes for effortless reading.

The novel is set in Paris, centred around a luxury apartment building, home to its two narrators, Renée, the middle-aged concierge, and Paloma, the eleven year old child in a leftwing intellectual family occupying one of the flats above her.

Renée’s experience is delivered through first person narration, Paloma’s through her diary entries, and the book traces how these unexpectedly similar characters eventually form a friendship. Both are exceptionally intelligent, and both conceal it. The widowed Renée holds a belief in the fixity of her position, thus her erudition and interest in the arts and philosophy has remained unnoticed over the years that she has worked as a concierge. The younger narrator has, out of a nihilistic frame of mind borne out of her observation of her social milieu, decided to commit suicide on her 12th birthday, unless she can find something worth living for. She is precocious, and although her decision is dark, the tone of her narrative is comes from her frank commentary on the bourgeoise social circle in which she moves. Her criticism focuses on the affectations of her mother with a literature PhD, her cabinet minister father and the ridiculousness of her elder sister, and the comedy is consistent. Renée’s insights, meanwhile, wittily deconstruct the self-assurance of those who believe themselves superior to her. Barbery constructs two engaging characters who between them unmask the pretensions of the other inhabitants of the apartment building, a social portraiture that is wryly funny throughout.

The author extends her characters’ class satire alongside an exploration of philosophy, meditating upon the beauty that may be found in life. The arrival of Kakuro Ozu, a Japanese businessman who takes up residence in a vacant apartment in the building, catalyses the friendship that forms between Renée and Paloma. Ozu too is cultured in a way that contrasts to the social vanities of the building’s inhabitants, and shares the 12 year old narrator’s interest in what lies beneath the concierge’s front. Barbery lavishes the private experiences of Renée with delicious detail, an example being the “tea ritual” which she repeats with her only friend, Manuela. This technique is used again and again, ever satisfying to read, a culmination being the concierge’s dinner with Ozu, during which her biting self critique gives way to an appreciation of her self-worth. Barbery weaves Japanese motifs throughout the novel, from Paloma’s interest in haiku and manga, to Renée’s discoveries with Ozu, thus offsetting bourgeoise Parisian society.

In an interview with an Italian newspaper, the author describes how she was “interested in exploring the bearing that philosophy could really have on one’s life, and how”, the basis of her interweaving of theories throughout the text.

Her endeavour to apply philosophical ideas to the day to day movements and impressions of her narrators parallels their searching for beauty. Nevertheless, the philosophers made reference to are very accessible; the reader is given ample background information as the plot progresses. Dense theoretical references are offset by the comedy and charm of both Renée and Paloma’s voices, again a testament to how Barbery manages to balance her novel between an intellectually satisfying read and successful entertainment. The book has been a true publishing phenomenon, and is most certainly worthy of this.

Joe Nicholson

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Strings Attached

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y introduction to the Coffee Concerts was met with a sense of bewilderment: how had I been at Oxford for two whole terms without having heard about these awardwinning concerts? It seemed sad that it had taken a friend who was soon to leave for a year in Japan to lead me to discover this Sunday morning institution. Yet since my first attendance back in Trinity, I have often found myself wanting to do nothing else on a Sunday morning.

Since the first concert in 1986, the Holywell Music Room has played host to many of the best musicians and ensembles from both around the country and abroad. The concept itself is quite attractive. A ticket grants you a seat to the hourlong performance and a voucher for coffee afterwards (which is welcomed by both those who wish to come together to discuss the concert, and those who would rather ‘down’ their coffee and run.)

It is probably worth stating at this point that I know very little about music. In fact, my highest achievement is a lowly Grade I on the flute: the exam feedback for which recommended that I ‘quit’ playing the flute and transferred to singing instead. So I did not instantly recognise the pieces that the Tippett String Quartet were set to perform. Yet I like to think of this as a testament to the fact that there is something about the Coffee Concerts that renders them accessible to anyone (failed flautists included.)

The Tippett String Quartet, who have previously performed at the BBC proms, the Cheltenham Festival, and a myriad of other impressive venues, opened with String Quartet No. 17 in B-flat, appropriately nicknamed ‘The Hunt’. While the

opening movement ‘Allegro Vivace Assai’ is one of noble simplicity- establishing the forthcoming narrative of the piece- it was the third movement, ‘Adagio’, that stood as its emotional core.

It was the second quartet however, Tchaikovsky’s ‘String Quartet no 1 in D, Op 11, which proved most popular.

Present throughout the four movements was a tangible discussion on genre itself: how far the bounds of chamber music could be pushed. The accelerating conclusion of the first movement prefigured the finale, which opened with a soaring and lively theme. The pace also quickened towards the conclusion; meeting rich sonorities of a distinctly orchestral feel. With such vivacity at its heart, it is not difficult to see why the quartet proved immediately popular when it debuted in Moscow in 1871.

Even the aesthetics of the ensemble were compelling, with each of the four components moving in perfect harmony, and with such vitality, against the quiet backdrop of the Holywell. The final applause confirmed that The Tippett String Quartet had indeed excelled in their artistic approach.

Having attended a few times now, I often try to determine why I long to go back. The music is unquestionably great, as is the subsequent caffeine hit. Yet there is a further element that makes a Coffee Concert so appealing: it perfectly fulfils the need to sit back and relax that addresses every Oxford student at the end of a long week.

For further information, including this term’s performances, visit www.coffeeconcerts.com Elspeth Hoskins

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32 Photography: Mimi Kim

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Our Contributors:

We would like to thank all our contributers for making this issue possible. If you would like to contribute to the next issue please contact bullfrog@pmb.ox.ac.uk

Where is your favourite place to eat in Oxford?

Rusty Bicycle, feels like home!

Who would be your ideal dinner companion?

Django Reinhardt Most anticipated event in 2013?

Crossing the pond for a conference and hopefully some travelling!

What is the last film you saw?

Funny Games U.S. (and had to lock myself in before going to sleep) And a little quotation: “Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read.

One does not love breathing.” --Harper Lee Enrichetta Lucilla Frezzato

Where is your favourite place to eat in Oxford?

McDonalds at 2am after a night out. Some great drunken debates take place. I can also recommend Byron.

Who would be your ideal dinner companion?

I would say Morrissey, but he’d be such a fussy eater.

Most anticipated event in 2013?

Pembroke’s Summer Ball seems set to be a great night. And end of exams of course.

What is the last film you saw?

The original Swedish film for The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. Brilliant and brutal.

And a little quotation: ‘Be glad of life because it gives you the chance to love and to work and to play and to look up at the stars.’

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Adam Lowe

Where is your favourite place to eat in Oxford?

Edamame, the Japanese restaurant next to New College Who would be your ideal dinner companion?

Anybody who has a good conversation, is open-minded, and loves food. That’s why I hall-surf!

What was your favourite moment of 2012?

Obama’s re-election What is the last book you read?

‘The Children of Hurin’ by J.R.R. Tolkien, after seeing The Hobbit. Caught up in the Tolkien frenzy...

And a little quotation: “Do or do not, there is no try.” --A Green Wise Creature called Master Yoda Stephanie Sanchez Kuong

Illustration: ‘David, Christ Church Meadow’ by Emily Allison, with thanks to Magnus Rowbotham

The Pembroke Bullfrog Editor: Sub-editors:

Treasurer: Designer:

Elspeth Hoskins Madeleine Hartley William Clement Jack Ramsden Alexander Trafford Prerna Aswani

Advertising: 600 Pembroke students recieve a copy of The Pembroke Bullfrog, and over 4500 alumini an electronic version. If you wold like to advertise with us, please email bullfrog@pmb.ox.ac.uk Where is your favourite place to eat in Oxford?

I was literally addicted to Alpha Bar all last term. You know it’s bad when the people at the counter know your name.

Subscriptions: The Pembroke Bullfrog offers a subscription service to alumini and parents. Please contact bullfrog@pmb.ox.ac.uk for more information and details of our subscription package.

Who would be your ideal dinner companion?

Somebody who looks like Megan Fox and talks (or sings, the poetry’s the important part) like Lana Del Rey. All outraged feminists, please read response 5.

Front and Back Covers by Claire Rammelkamp

Most anticipated event in 2013?

Well, I mean, not much to look forward to except the fact that I turn 21 on June the 5th. Swing by Len’s on that day.

What is the last book you read?

I read Beckett’s trilogy of novels, Molloy, Malone Dies, and The Unnamable for class. I mean they’re great as far as literature goes, but you’ll just walk away from them feeling that life, language, and people are all meaningless.

I can’t go on, I must go on.

And a little quotation: “A little bad taste is like a nice dash of paprika” --Dorothy Parker Michael Restiano

Disclaimer: The views presented in this publications are the opinions of the named writers and do not represent the views of the college, JCR or MCR.

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