19.11.12
IMOGEN PALMER
SHOULD’VE PUT A RING ON IT I cried the day I found out that The Hobbit was going to come out in three parts. Not out of sadness, fear, or indeed because something was stuck in my eye. No - I cried with joy at the prospect that, at this particularly unnerving time in my life - graduation, what? - my winters were once again hotly anticipated. When The Lord of the Rings came out in 2001, it permeated most aspects of my life for the next three years. I owned a replica one ring - crafted in the fiery chasms of Argos - built a cardboard version of Helm’s Deep for a castle-making project and hosted a LOTRthemed party which included rabbit stew (jelly), Elven Lembas bread (toast) and the painstakingly accurate modification of my garden into Middle Earth. Thus, you can imagine my excitement at the news that it is now possible to visit the Shire in New Zealand (!) and a 13m model of Gollum has been constructed in Wellington Airport in celebration of the new films. Needless to say, I know where I’m going to spend the next three years ‘discovering myself’.
ZOMBIE NATION I don’t really know why the Bristol Zombie Walk happens but I sure am glad it does. Anything that gets people together in costume is fine in my book - bar cult-based racism. Moreover, the walk helpfully reminds us of the increasing probability of a zombie apocalypse and the survival plans we should all have in place. My favourite part of the Zombie Walk was reading the comments people had made on the Bristol Post website: ‘Why can’t these people put this effort into getting jobs?’ said one. Evidently, only the unemployed have time to dress like zombies, the rest of the population being too busy hobbling through the daily drudgery of filing, photo-copying and typing for a monotonous office job, behaving almost like…zombies? I wish I could have written this next comment on the website but I didn’t: ‘They should get a life!’ Hahaha. I like you a lot.
BRISTOL SO ALTERNATIVE Bristol so alternative they got their own mayor. And why’s that Jaya Chakrabarti, leader of the Yes Campaign? ‘When everyone else zigs, Bristol zags.’ Everybody now: ZIG: ZAG! ZIG: ZAG! Where others paint, Bristol graffitis; when everyone else says ‘Cor, I’m full’, Bristol opens the UK’s largest all-you-can-eat; when the rest of the country uses normal money, Bristol decides to release its own currency. Oh Bristol, you so alternative you probably spell alternative a different way to everyone else. Like you put a ‘th’ at the end or something. Or an ‘f’. Bristol so alternative SKINS was filmed here for crying out loud. Could you get more alternatif?
Kevin N. Murphy
flickr x-ray delta
BORDERLINE NEWS
Honey, I need some space Notting Hill is a bloody good film. A true classic. You know how it goes: boy meets girl, boy works in a book shop, girl is a famous movie-star, flat-mate is a weird, horny Welshman - it’s love at first sight. Unless your heart is black enough to make you a strong candidate for the next series of Tool Academy, there is no way that such a blossoming romance can’t leave you pining for something similar in your own life. Sure, they have their problems; maybe they won’t make it; maybe their lives are just too different; or perhaps the story-line has absolutely NO bearing on reality. In any case, the knowledge that things will inevitably turn out all right in the end is enough to make anyone jealous… before you know it, Julia Roberts is up-the-duff, Hugh Grant, looking very chuffed with his handiwork, is snuggled against her reading a book and the end-credits roll into view. Cue cooing from the females in the audience, whilst the men are begrudgingly appreciative of the fact that they’re almost guaranteed to be getting some tonight. Whilst I greatly enjoyed the film, I am left asking myself a few questions: does this wonderful tale set the relationship bar too high? And, more specifically, where can we mere university students situate our relationships in the context of such a modern love story? Forgive my generalisation as I define the typical university couple, who can be neatly slotted into one of two categories: the woebegone longdistance, inter-uni couple, or that annoying breed of lovey-dovey, ‘we met in our first year of university and now we do everything together’ couple. Bless the long-distance lovers among us. These couples are the greatest optimists, despite their somewhat glum façade. Generally involved in a preuniversity relationship, this lover naively believes in their ability to ‘make it’ through the hurdles of such a path. Alas, the student road is littered with the corpses of relationships that couldn’t quite cut it, who couldn’t affirm the age-old question: is it worth it? Resigned to continuously checking their phone to see if their other-half has replied; constantly questioning the loyalty of their partner at any opportunity; arguing incessantly during the tri-daily S k y p e
conversations. God, it’s a hard life, no wonder they wear such a look of melancholy all the time. In stark contrast to this rather tough lifestyle are the halcyon days of what I’ve dubbed the ‘Unbelievably Annoying Why-do-you-have-to-do-that-in-front-ofme-that’s-disgusting first-year Romance’. Catchy, eh? These couples have the good fortune of attending the same university, thus spending all available time in each others’ presence. In a whirlwind of banging headboards, creaking mattresses, shared food and in-jokes, it is difficult for those who find themselves encased in such a bubble of coupledom to detect any disadvantages. There are a few. The most pronounced being that the intensity of such company is a) weird and b) annoying. Be warned: if everything goes tits-up, you could find yourself with a bunch of friends who left you behind in the second week of freshers’ and the knowledge that you spent two years shagging ‘The One’ not out of true love, but convenience. It seems that in both situations, the problem of student relationships comes down to one of space – both physical and emotional.
“A whirlwind of banging headboards, creaking matresses and in-jokes” It’s not quite the Notting Hill story, is it? Big shock: relationships ARE flawed. Don’t get me wrong though, I’m not some cynical bastard laughing at abandoned puppies and proclaiming that ‘love doesn’t exist’. In fact, what I’m trying to say may make a lot more sense than it first appears. Part of the beauty of a ‘proper’ relationship lies, in a strange masochistic way I’ll admit, in the barriers you must hurdle along the way. After all, as a very wise man known as Dr Kelso from Scrubs said: ‘Nothing in life worth having is easy.’ There’s a satisfaction to be found in going through a tough time and coming out the other end in one piece and stronger because of it. Perhaps what is more important to remember is that university, for all its perks, can be a pretty hard beast to master - and sometimes it’s just nice to have somebody there to help you along the way. Whilst lamenting the pros and cons of space in a relationship may be perversely satisfying, either way you can’t underestimate the value of just having someone to rely upon. The happy ending, then, promised to us by Hugh and Julia in that great modern-classic isn’t in any way guaranteed. In real life, the story hardly ever goes like that. As students, rather than thinking in terms of some Hollywood romance, we should think in far simpler, less dramatic terms, have a breather, and see things for what they truly are.
Ben Winstanley