December 6th 2013
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CULTURE CULTURE 12-20 14-21
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'Tis the season to be spending Imants Latkovskis encourages non-commerical Christmas celebrations
Imants Latkovskis The most wonderful time of the year is here, and it’s worth taking a second to appreciate what this joyous time of Christmas is really all about - spending money. And lots of it. According to a report by HSBC, the average Briton spent £526 on their Christmas shopping in 2012, most of it in high street shops. Before you vomit in disdain over my cynicism, I will admit that Christmas is also about showing love and giving cheer, but somehow I cannot help but feel that the main recipients of our love and cheer are retail chains. Christmas is the end of the rainbow for any retailer, the perfect time to milk the consumers’ bank balance with flashy, tear-jerking, emotion-
ally manipulative ad campaigns. Be it heartwarming home footage of families being awkward during Christmas, a biologically impossible friendship between a bear and a hare or just Helen Bonham Carter on screen for 5 seconds - retailers will find some clever way to launch you off to shops and convince you that you’re a terrible person if you don’t buy some generic thing they have price matched with some other shop. If you’re not enthralled by this idea, however, here are some tips for breaking the spell and celebrating Christmas non-commercially. Not necessarily ‘on the cheap’, as that would imply being stingy or broke, but rather choosing to spend your money with a bit more care and thought towards your loved ones.
Organise a trip for your family or friends. Spend a few days hillwalking in the Highlands or spend a few nights at an inn on the Scottish isles, or even play board games and bake at your Gran’s house. If you can’t afford the time for a long trip, take them to a ceramics workshop or to see Nutcracker and get some mulled wine in town afterwards. A fun experience with your family and friends can be incomparably more worthwhile than a set of aroma candles you found next to the tills and thought were pretty cool. Do it yourself. You don’t need a certificate in cross-stitching, nor a Pinterest profile, but those can definitely be helpful. Make a personalized gift that shows your loved ones how well you know them. Make a hamper with homemade baked goods, record a vid-
eo, write a poem. Such gifts definitely say “I love you” better than a bar of soap or a tea cosy, and they will surely be remembered far longer. Large retail stores sell boring, mass-produced commodities which can, of course, be nice as well as useful, but they will never be as good as something a friend has sweated and moaned over, and never in a thousand years will they make you feel nearly as special. Go to an independent store. With anti-Tesco stickers plastered across the West End, supporting local businesses isn’t exactly a novel idea, but it’s one worth reiterating. You are more likely to find something unique and interesting in a boutique, a charity store or a thrift shop, so as to minimise the cold bucket full of awkwardness that falls over your head when
the recipient receives the same gift from someone else. And, of course, it is also a good way to support small business owners by giving them a pleasant Christmas in return. Don’t forget to say thank you. Christmas ought to be much more than a barter of gifts. During Christmas, the time is ripe to say thank you to people who have been there for you, helped you out or just been amazing company. Don’t just tick off names from a list like it’s a chore - getting something for people you know will be getting something to you. Instead, surprise someone who you’ve been meaning to say thank you to, so that no good deed goes unreturned.
Book review: Black Chalk Louise Wilson takes a look at Christopher Yates' debut novel Louise Wilson New author Christopher Yates released his debut novel, ‘Black Chalk’, earlier this year. Set at Oxford University and with the intriguing tagline “one game, six students, five survivors”, the book immediately piqued my interest. Without revealing too much, the novel is about six Oxford students who take part in a series of psychologically escalating dares - resulting in the loss of a life. One of the first things you notice about the novel is its unique narrative style, which creates a sense of foreboding from the very first pages.
Shifts in style occur rapidly; the narrative leaps from a third person account of events at the university, and then moves on to a first person account of the character's life after The Game. This technique works well for the book; the reader is slowly led down into the darkest depths of the human psyche, before emerging back into what is a seemingly normal student life. The contrast is stark. The novel often leaves you perplexed: what could possibly have happened to the character to cause such a shift from the confident student to the shadowy hermit he becomes? As with any thriller, all is revealed over the course of the book as you
piece the plot together, bit by bit. Whilst the leaps between past and present are sometimes confusing, all changes in tense and narrative are intentionally ambiguous to keep you guessing. Perhaps the most intriguing element of the novel, though, is the bits we are told very little about. The contestants of The Game are given funding for the top prize of £10,000 by the mysterious Game Society which, I think, holds obvious parallels with the exclusive Bullingdon Club. Does it really sound plausible that a group of rich students at Oxford would be willing to shed an excessive amount of money at the risk of
others livelihoods, all in the name of entertainment? Surely not. Yet even right through to the end, we are only given fragmentary information about Game Soc, and this plot point remains shrouded in secrecy. However, the promise of a revelation is enough to keep the reader going. However, the story wraps up all too quickly. Once it is revealed who of the six contestants died, the only plot point left is the final round of The Game between two of the players, fourteen years later. The winner comes as no surprise to the reader, and the book ends rather abruptly. It left me disillusioned - the rest of the novel had enticed me with its secrecy
and the constant guessing, and whilst I knew the ending had to come sooner or later, I just wish Yates hadn't performed it so bluntly. Overall, ‘Black Chalk’ was a decent read with some interesting caveats and style choices, but the ending let it down significantly. The shifts in tense may cause some irritation (particularly if you are, like me, a late night reader), but they help keep a firm grip on the reader. I would still recommend reading it if you like the thriller genre, but it's hardly the most brilliant read of the year and one maybe best left for those lazy days when you don't have a great deal better to do.