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indigo

winter abroad + Durham’s food banks + An interview with The Ting Tings + Healthy eating tips

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Kate Wilkinson (dept. Sraddha Venkataraman) - indigo@palatinate.org.uk

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INDIGO

3 FILM & TV Catch up on the biggest film releases of Jaunaury with our reviews of Birdman and Foxcatcher 4 & 5 FEATURES Make a difference with your New Year’s resolution, and find out more about reducing wealth inequality in Durham 6 &7 MUSIC Catch up on what you missed over Christmas 8 STAGE Find out how costume deisgn threads the prodcution together 9 V I S UA L ARTS The most anticipated exhibitions of 2015

1 0 FASHION The best of this seasion’s fashion campaigns 11

C R E- A T I V E W R I T I NG A ‘parade’ of student poetry 1 2 & 1 3 TRAVEL Mountains and the cityVancouver has the best of both 1 4 F OOD & DRINK Explore some fit food options 15 BOOKS We draw your attention to one of the literary canon’s most disparaging scrooges

For more arts and lifestyle articles please visit www.palatinate.org.uk www.facebook.com/palindigo @palatindigo Cover photo byVenus Loi Illustrations by Mariam Hayat

Epiphany term is now well underway but what an eventful festive season. Two of our Travel writers were exploring the globe this Christmas and have some stunning photography to show: from the Northern Lights in Sweden to the snowy peaks of Calgary (p.

12&13). Palatinalps eat your heart out.

Wherever you were on the planet this holiday, no one could fail to be touched by the shocking attacks on Charlie Hebdo in Paris.

I was in the rather surreal position of being present at The Guardian’s editorial board meeting the morning after the attacks when they were debating how best to cover and comment on the events. Even among likeminded people, the political issues surrounding those events have split opinion. Should we republish the cartoons? How can we best show solidarity? The debate has now become a bit of a media whirlpool and I hope that we will remember this time for more than just whether or not certain publications republished the cartoons.

While I wasn’t doing work experience I was having a lazy time at home with family, booze and (most importantly) a hell of a lot of food. mmmmm.

What are you thinking about now? I bet it’s food. Food is on a lot of people’s mind at this time of year and not just because hunger is both a natural human urge as well as a common feature of independent student living. No, this is January and I hope you’ve all made a bunch of wildly unrealistic New Year’s resolutions. We all need unattainable goals to keep us going in life and this is where the annual list-making fervour comes in. The more extravagant the better. Or you could read Ellie Miles’s rather more sensible analysis of the phenomenon (p. 4).

If you need any help keeping your foodie resolutions, Food and Drink provide some realistic ways of eating healthily on a student budget (p. 14). Apparently we’re allowed to eat ice cream!

Nice food is a privilege that a lot of us take for granted. It’s easy to forget that not everyone has enough to get by and this edition Features have explored poverty in Durham and how organisations can help (p. 5).

Have a great term and don’t let the January blues get you down! KW

INDIGO EDITOR Kate Wilkinson

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DEPUTY INDIGO EDITOR Sraddha Venkataraman BOOKS EDITORS Atifa Jiwa Florianne Humphrey CREATIVE WRITING EDITOR Celeste Yeo FASHION EDITORS Jessica Ng Megan Magee FEATURES EDITORS Zosia Eyres Ellen Finch (deputy) FILM & TV EDITORS Jonathan Peters Caroline France (deputy) FOOD & DRINK EDITORS Anisha Mohan MUSIC EDITORS Anastasia Symecko Will Throp (deputy) STAGE EDITOR Amy Price TRAVEL EDITORS Oliver Collard Naoise Murphy (deputy) VISUAL ARTS EDITOR Frances Marsh WRITERS Jared James Georgia Dodsworth Ellie Miles Rebekhah Coomber Patrick Joseph Brennan Ollie Goodman Hannah Fitzpatrick Amy Price Frances Marsh Alexandra Webber-Isaacs Celsete Yeo Cecilia Villgcis Ingrid Anderson Janie Hui Oliver Collard Nancy Mitford Francesca Bull Ottoline Spearman PHOTOGRAPHY / ILLUSTRATION Naomi Stevens Mariam Hyatt Celeste Yeo Alissa Cooper Samuel Kirkmen Jacob Parker Francesca Bull Cecilia Villgcis

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Jonathan Peters (Caroline France - deputy) - film@palatinate.org.uk

F I L M & TV

winter film releases

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Georgia Dodsworth and Jared Isaacs review two January highlights Birdman

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lejandro G. Iñárritu’s Birdman begins with a shot of Michael Keaton’s Riggan Thomson sat cross-legged at his dressing room window, in his pants. Oh, and he’s levitating. Similarly, the film itself has risen up through the swirling frenzy of awards season, lavished with unanimous critical praise and widely whispered as the movie to see this year. Similarly, it’s also quite mad.

Riggan is a Hollywood actor well past his prime, made world-famous by his portrayal of the eponymous Birdman in a well-loved but decades-old superhero franchise (sound familiar?) and now staging a last-ditch attempt to take a more meaningful direction in his career with a theatrical adaptation of a Raymond Carver story. As opening night approaches, he is beset with mounting problems: difficult actors, financial worries and cynicism from the press threaten to derail the entire enterprise.

The plot may not sound wildly innovative, but Birdman is absolutely anything but ordinary. Shot and edited to appear like a single continuous take, we are marched around Riggan’s barely stable life, set to a restless score of jazz percussion (and the gravelly disembodied voice of ‘Birdman’ taunting him inside his own head).

The casting of Keaton is nothing short of genius; yes, he is indeed “one of the few guys who have truly worn that cape,” says Iñárritu, but his performance is genuinely remarkable even without factoring in the other B-word. Sometimes

angry, sometimes exasperated, sometimes manic, he is always wearily driven, charging head-on into what may end up a resounding success or a full-on mental breakdown. We see every hairline crack in Riggan’s face when he frowns, and in every frown the dissatisfaction that has sunk its talons deeper and deeper with every passing year of fame for a role he now despises.

In fact, the entire cast barely puts a foot wrong.

Mike Shiner (Edward Norton) is the toast of Broadway, procured for a hefty sum to revitalise the show but with a habit of taking method acting a little too far. Zach Galifianakis is scene-stealing as Riggan’s lawyer Jake, proving he is even funnier when not playing the fool, and Emma Stone is endlessly watchable as the caustic, wide-eyed Sam, Riggan’s daughter and assistant. Lindsay Duncan excels in a very brief but acerbic performance as the powerful New York Times theatre critic, and her eventual clash with Riggan is one of the film’s most intense scenes. The only character who feels slightly offkilter is Riggan’s girlfriend Laura (Andrea Risebor), whose presence feels a little superfluous.

But such a small flaw falls by the wayside in an otherwise impressive film. If Alfonso Cuarón’s Gravity was last year’s pinnacle of technical achievement in cinema, Birdman is undoubtedly a contender for this year’s accolade. Emmanuel Lubezki was at the cinematographic helm of both films, but while Gravity concerned itself with the vast depths of the cosmos, Birdman’s genius is in

navigating the claustrophobic spaces of the theatre, up and down staircases, in and out of dressing rooms, across the stage, and soaring out onto the New York streets outside with seamless ease. The single-shot aspect is so much more than the gimmick it sounds like – the rapid pace of the film never relents, and the effect is disorienting but in a wonderfully entertaining way.

Alongside some surreal strands of magic realism (see the aforementioned elevation scenes), the film poses numerous questions about modern life, about the nature of art and fame in a world in which the internet is king. After Riggan is filmed pacing through Times Square in his pants after being locked out of the theatre, Sam shows him that the video has gone viral. “Believe it or not, this is power,” she tells him, and we know it to be true.

But where does real power for Riggan lie? In Broadway or in Birdman? With commercial success or cultural integrity? The movie itself seems to have performed that rare feat of combining both; scarcely does a film so dizzyingly and delightfully odd make such an impression on the commercial market, so go out and see it before it’s too late.

You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll believe a man can fly (you might get a headache too, but you’ll be happy about it). Whether Riggan succeeds or not, you’ll have to watch to see. But Iñárritu? Well, he may have just ascended.

By Georgia Dodsworth

Foxcatcher

Images (left to right): Fox, Sony, Fox

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ere’s a sentence I never thought I’d write: Steve Carrell’s performance was fantastic.

Here’s a second sentence I never thought I’d write: Channing Tatum was also great.

This true-story drama follows Mark Schultz (Channing Tatum) and his wrestling career, which changes when he is invited by Du Pont, (Steve Carrell as the ornithologist, philatelist, philanthropist and wrestling fan) to train at his new Foxcatcher facility. The story is less driven by the events of the plot but by the interesting cast of characters and their personalities. Specifically we are focused on the bizarre relationship between our protagonist and his benefactor, and the strain it puts on his relationship with his brother Steve, played by Mark Ruffalo.

By the start of the film both Schultz brothers are Olympic gold medallists, but Steve, as the more personable older brother and Mark’s trainer, has been given more of the spotlight. This makes Mark eager to take Du Pont’s offer to train at his facility.

With two fantastic supporting performances

Tatum has his work cut out for him, but for once I think he works as a screen presence. Bennett Miller is known for getting career-best performances from his actors and I think he gets that from both Tatum and Carrell, the latter especially, and there is no doubt that Carrell will be nominated for awards for his performance. Like the rest of the performances, I never felt like I was watching Channing Tatum, for he really sold the image of the skilled but downtrodden wrestler.

Relying mostly on physicality, Tatum’s portrayal of the awkward Schultz fits the subject matter perfectly. Throughout the film is a strong emphasis on this physicality: the Schultz brother’s relationship is mostly physical, their opening scene together says much with only a handful of words; whilst Du Pont is very wordy, both in his relationships with the brothers but also with his overbearing mother (Vanessa Redgrave).

On the whole, the film is very quiet, which lends it a very foreboding tone whilst making the loud moments very shocking and impacting.

There is very sparse use of music and dialogue, making what music and dialogue there is very

meaningful.

To some extent this is a sports movie – the wrestling is key to both the characters and the plot; but as per Miller’s previous film Moneyball, this is really about the personalities, what sports represent, what it really means to be American, what it means to be a patriot. It also reveals different sides to the sporting world, such as showing how much egos are at play when it comes to sport. It is the very fact that Mark wants the limelight that drives him to Du Pont. Also key is the money, which is a side rarely seen in sport-drama; the fact that athletes need to also need to provide for their families and make money as well as win medals.

Compelling from start to finish, Foxcatcher uses sport to facilitate a twisted reflection on America. Tense, well written and packed with great performances and character relationships; it is gripping from start to finish and definitely one to watch this awards season.

By Jared Isaacs

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Zosia Eyres (dept. Ellen Finch) - features@palatinate.org.uk

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new year’s resolutions: help or hindrance?

Are New Year’s Resolutions bound to be broken? Ellie Miles tells us some of her goals for 2015 and thinks about whether they’re a good thing in the first place

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very January 1st for the past seven years, I’ve diligently made a comprehensive list of New Year’s Resolutions, and just as diligently broken most of them within about three days. I dare say it’s the same story for a lot of you out there; we’re barely two weeks into the year and I’m already noticing tweets bemoaning the collapse of New Year’s diets, seeing Facebook statuses complaining that a new exercise regime has gone pear-shaped, and reading various articles claiming that our annual resolutions are always doomed to failure.

I’m going to finally remind myself what a fresh vegetable looks like, and stop classing lemon cheesecake as one of my five a day The truth is, January is probably the completely wrong month to be attempting any kind of meaningful change. It’s cold, the weather is usually miserable, the telly is rubbish, and the prospect of returning to the daily grind of uni after a month off is usually met with dread. It’s this atmosphere of misery that makes so many people’s resolutions so seemingly unattainable; all you want to do is jump under a duvet and hibernate for the rest of the winter, not start a vigorous gym regime/no-carb diet/ drinking detox.

However, against all the odds, this year I’ve been attempting to keep to my more realistic set of resolutions. I say “attempt” because, as expected, I haven’t

100% managed to stick to them; even in the time I’ve spent writing this article, I’ve eaten enough Quality Street to completely destroy my resolution to eat healthier in 2015. Let’s face it, the student diet isn’t the healthiest- while I’m blessed with a metabolism that keeps my weight in check, I could practically feel my arteries weeping every time I broke out the chicken nuggets last term (which was more often than I’d like to admit). This year, things will be different - I’m going to finally remind myself what a fresh vegetable looks like, and stop classing lemon cheesecake as one of my five a day. I’m going to at least try to keep a balanced diet but we’ll see how well that goes during summative season. Which, now that I think about it, is most of next term. Oh dear.

A lot of my resolutions are the fairly bog-standard, run-of-the-mill promises that most people will have made to themselves on January 1st. Along with the healthy eating, exercise definitely needs to feature more prominently in my life considering my last trek up to a hill college genuinely nearly finished me off. Besides, it’s a lot easier to dash to Klute before 11pm if you can walk more than two steps without getting out of breath. Another more Durham-specific goal of mine is to stop complaining as much about the fact that my house is in Neville’s Cross (where, I hear you ask? EXACTLY.) Yes, it’s up a massive hill, and yes, I have to set off at some ungodly hour to get to my rare 9am lectures, BUT AT LEAST IT’S NOT GILESGATE. Oh, the joys of living out.

Will I keep to these resolutions? Who knows. In fact, if I’m being honest, probably not; self-control isn’t one of my strong points and my deep love of complaining, Maltesers, and laziness is probably going to shoot my resolutions in the foot. In fact, maybe it doesn’t really matter if we stick to our res-

olutions; maybe it’s enough that we make them in the first place. A new year can bring a lot of change and a lot of uncertainty, so maybe we need to set these goals for ourselves to at least have something to motivate us through the slightly tricky beginning stretch of the year. It’s better to at least try to make a positive change than to sit around letting things drag along as they are; who knows, maybe you’ll be one of those few strong people who stick to their guns and actually meets their goals! However, if you’re not one of those people, don’t worry about it - I, and a large chunk of the human population, completely understand.

Illustration: Mariam Hyatt Photograph: Magnus Johansson via Flikr

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Zosia Eyres (dept. Ellen Finch) - features@palatinate.org.uk

F EAT U R E S

Durham’s hidden wealth inequality

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Rebekhah Coomber bursts the university bubble by exposing poverty in County Durham and showing how students can help by volunteering with organisations who are trying to make a change

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henever I mention which university I attend amongst friends, I’m generally met with a derisory snort. With students renowned for their proclivity for Hunters, Jack Wills, and chinos, and as a place where the phrase ‘my daddy owns a yacht’ would rarely be given a second thought, Durham is labelled as a university for posh and wealthy Southerners. Durham students obviously aren’t all really like this but it still begs the question, what happens when you step off the cobbled streets of the city centre and burst the delicate student bubble?

Although students at this university, and many who live in the city centre, enjoy a comfortable lifestyle, it seems that the same cannot be said for the rest of the county in which the university is situated. The disparity of wealth within this region is significant and many students in Durham will be unaware that 19% of households in the North East live off just £150 a week. Even more shockingly, 26% of children in County Durham live below the poverty line. That’s 1 in 4 children in this county living in deprivation. Poverty is not merely a detached issue occurring miles away, perhaps even on a different continent, it’s right on our doorstep, here in Durham (statistics from Barnardo’s).

It’s not my intention to make anybody feel guilty.

Rather, I hope that increased awareness and information on this subject will spur people into action.

Some people have already begun efforts to change these statistics. With this wealth disparity in Durham, people have begun to rely all the more on resources such as Durham Foodbank and the Durham Money Advice Centre, both of which attempt to help those who are unable to support themselves financially.

Poverty is not merely a detached issue occurring miles away, perhaps even on a different continent, it’s right on our doorstep, here in Durham With recent austerity cuts, the use of foodbanks has exploded in recent years and Durham Foodbank is an organisation with a particular vision to see the disparity of wealth in this region reduced; they aim to simply provide food for those who don’t have enough. Since opening in 2011, Durham Foodbank

has grown in its coverage and the amount of people it has been able to feed. In 2013, 11,684 people were given food through the organisation and numbers have since been increasing. It seems that despite the bleakness of wealth inequality in Durham, the wheels of change have been put into motion.

A further example of these steps toward change has come in the shape of student-led Christian organisation, Just Love Durham. Started in April last year, the group have been making efforts to show students the reality of wealth inequality in Durham by working alongside groups such as DUSTOPS, Sanctuary 21, Junction 42, and the Durham Foodbank. At the end of last term, Just Love helped to organise the collection of food for the Foodbank’s Christmas appeal and have been involved in other events such as an ‘Alternative Freshers’ Fair’ in an attempt to increase students’ awareness of the is-

sues people are facing in the county in which we reside.

Josh Smedley, co-president of Just Love Durham, told Palatinate that “we encourage students to look beyond the ‘Durham Bubble’ of affluence and privilege and engage with and befriend our local and global neighbours.” Nell Goddard, the organi-

I hope that increased awareness and information on this subject will spur people into action sation’s other co-president, then added “if people are interested in getting outside of the ‘Durham Bubble’ and getting stuck in with local charities and community projects, then we would love to hear from them. Like Josh said, we want students to realise that their reality of life, and their lifestyle isn’t often the lifestyle of those around them in Durham.”

Durham is an incredible place to live; with stunning historical landmarks, a vibrant city life, and a strong student population, it seems odd that I’d suggest leaving the comfort of university life.

Yet with this inequality amongst us, how can we possibly ignore it and stay huddled within our snug college world? Perhaps volunteer for Durham Foodbank or Food Cycle, get involved with the work of Just Love Durham, buy a Big Issue, or just involve yourself in the lives of those non-students around you. When you leave the city centre and peruse areas a little further afield than the seemingly distant land of Gilesgate, I guarantee that you’ll encounter a wealth far beyond that which money has to offer.

Photograph: Naomi Stevens, Durham FoodBank

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the tour...

Patrick Joseph Brennan

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he Tings Tings recently finished touring the UK, and will be kicking off their North American Tour at the Virgin Mobile Mod Club in Toronto on the 19th of January. The bus, at that point located outside the Cluny live music venue in Newcastle, was hard to miss, it was orange and had ‘BUS’ on its licence plate – as brightly coloured and blunt as any Ting Tings single.

And I was in it. Katie White, Jules De Martino, and I shook hands, exchanged smiles, and began to chat next to a dozing crew member.

I understand you’ve just started touring again. How are you finding it?

Katie White: It’s great, we’ve just finished Europe.

We really wanted to do small venues because for our first album that’s what we did, and if you’re crap in a small venue there’s nowhere to hide. So every night we’re like “Ooh, that felt great and that felt a little bit crap!” so then you build it and build it and build it until it becomes a really strong live show.

How would you say your sound has evolved since the first album?

Jules De Martino: Every record’s different. The first album we recorded in Salford, the second we were in Berlin for a year and a half, and for the third we were in Ibiza. We don’t want to make the same record twice: we go through, like, transitions in a different city or a different country, challenge ourselves, and I guess we become better musicians because we’re touring so much. In this latest album we were influenced by studio 54, later 70s/early 80s funk.

We happened to meet Andy Taylor in Ibiza – he’s worked with Duran Duran – and we just matched with him, he co-produced the record with us.

Anastasia Symecko (dept. Will Throp) - music@palatinate.org.uk

MUSIC We got into his little stone room with all our equipment and didn’t leave there for nine months. We were all into the same thing. We’d say things like “There’s this great club in New York, and this band were breaking out there in the early 80s…” and he’d say “Yeah, I was there.” It just solidified this whole new record.

You clicked?

KW: We never thought we’d be able to work with anyone in the studio, because we’re quite introverted. We did our first two records on our own, recorded them in a little room and that was it. So for us to have someone in the studio, we had to feel really comfortable with him. We didn’t want to leave!

What’s it like being a two-piece. What are the advantages and disadvantages? You’ve got a lot of stuff going on in your songs, how does it work in a live setting?

JDM: You use loops, they’re all triggered by our feet mainly, pedals, and by our DJ on stage who loops a lot of stuff live. There’s no backing track. Being a two-piece is good and bad. The good thing about it is that if we have a dispute or disagree over something, we know instinctively how far we can take that. But imagine you’re a four piece band and two members kind of bust up, the other two will help pull it all back together because you’re a four piece band and you’re all mates. When there are just two of you, if you have a break or a bust up, it’s over.

There’s no one else in the band to…

KW: …mediate JDM: We’re always aware of that. You know when you’ve got to leave it I wanted to mention Klaxons, who have recently disbanded. They are regarded as the fore-fathers of New Rave, and you guys were sort of contemporaries. Do you consider yourself part of that whole scene?

KW: We came after all that. We were saying that New Rave was all over before we’d even started. It’s so shitty where they go “That’s New Rave and now it’s dead” within like a year. I think we’re more New Wave? The whole Klaxons thing was definitely about a year before us, I remember thinking “God, they’ve written that genre off already.” What was nice though was to meet a band that weren’t egotistical.

JDM: They’re cool, they were really cool.

KW: Sometimes when you meet bands, they’re really awkward with other bands. If you’re backstage at like a festival or something, there’s this weird atmosphere where everyone’s trying to out-cool each other, and we don’t like that, we’re all like “Hey, how you doing?” and then you’ve got some twatty band, like, death-staring you. Klaxons were really nice and down to earth.

JDM: Yeah we had a beer with them and hung out a bit.

When you get nice

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cool artists that just want to hang out, on a level with you, it just makes it so much more fun.

KW: The thing is, when you’re a band, you have to kind of build yourself up to go onstage. I do, I get slightly more obnoxious just before I go onstage, I go kick a bin over or something… It’s not the best place to make friends because everyone’s in their own little bubble of insecurity.

what

I really like your use of colour and bold designs in your video and in your artwork. The artwork you have for your latest album, Super Critical, is less blocky, it’s a bit more brown and hazy. How important is the design element to your music?

KW: We love the kaleidoscope. If you step back from the cover, it just looks a bit brown and turdy.

But generally I think we do go for colour, definitely primary colours are quite big to what we do.

JDM: The title ‘Super Critical’ came out of a bag of weed we had in the studio, and then Katie was like “It’s a really nice word.” It’s a great word, we played around with it. There’s also a track called green poison on the album, which is also a bag of weed…

You can see where this is going! When we started to make the artwork, we teamed up with these designers, and they were complete potheads, so they completely latched onto this whole thing! We weren’t making a weed album, they just…

KW: …they were like thirteen year old boys!

JDM: We ended up with limited vinyl in a freeze bag, like you get your weed in. You just write what kind of weed it is on the bag, and the actual vinyl is just like a picture disc of weed. And then the artwork was a kaleidoscope of weed. And everything kind of went, you know…

I like how all the designs and ideas you have just suddenly become… weed.

JDM: Yeah and then we stopped smoking weed.

We’d had, like, nine months with Andy just getting really high in Ibiza, because there’s really cheap weed and it’s like have a drink, have a puff kinda thing, and then we stopped that, got on tour, straightened up, got fit because it’s hard work on tour. And now we’re looking back at the artwork, like, “Oh my god…”

KW: Thing is now people are looking at this like “What’s the meaningful album title?” and I just feel like a thirteen year old boy going “Ha, weed!”

JDM: Right. And you’ve just hit on a really important point. Now I’m never going to look at the album cover the same way, because we do love all the patterns we’re making, all the African colours and stuff, but now I look at the album, it is kind of a murky browny colour…

KW: Looking into patterns, there’s, like, African prints you can get where each print is a story, and I love that idea that rather than making something that just looks graphically good, you have a story within it that only you would really know. I now have this great mental image of you guys, all sitting in the studio with the munchies and a massive bag of Doritos.

JDM: Or M&Ms. Primary colours etc.

To finish off: would you rather fight one horse sized duck or twenty duck sized horses? I need an honest, concise answer.

KW: I’d say one horse sized duck, because then when I eventually kick its arse and kill it, I’ve only killed one thing rather than twenty things.

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Anastasia Symecko (dept. Will Throp) - music@palatinate.org.uk

MUSIC

you missed this christmas the event...

Ollie Goodman

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It’s not every day you get to see noise music performed in an 11th century chapel,” a friend remarked shortly before the performance started. He was right. But Norman Chapel in University College, built around 1080, was, for one night only, hosting three artists part of the thriving avant-garde music scene in Newcastle: Posset, Forest of Eyes, and Witchblood.

This was the second commission by Hazel Donkin, Arts Secretary of University College SCR, in a series of events intended as an artistic exploration of the unique and mystifying space within the Norman Chapel. The event took place on Friday 5th December and was curated by Ant Macari, the visiting artist to University College during Michaelmas, also responsible for the brilliant play Eustace’s Loop a week prior to this event.

One of the most remarkable qualities of this space is its transformational character; its ability to absorb the aura of events taking place within it. Posset’s performance – the first of the night – shattered the inherent tranquillity of the chapel, Images courtesy of AMG and East West Records

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emember Boyzone? Apparently they’re still recording. I had no idea either. Anyway, the boyz – or let’s face it, men, they’re not kidding anyone any more – are now in their 21st year together, and released a new album just in time for the Christmas market. I’m not going to spoil my review now, but I wouldn’t recommend you rush out and purchase a copy.

Boyzone’s sixth studio album features a variety of Motown covers, ranging from a poor imitation of ‘What Becomes of the Broken Hearted’, to an unlistenable version of ‘This Old Heart of Mine’.

It’s perhaps appropriate that two of the album’s eleven track titles include the word ‘tears’. I’m never going to be able to hear the opening bars of

It’s perhaps appropriate that two of the album’s eleven track titles include the word ‘tears’ ‘You Can’t Hurry Love’ again without an involuntary shudder.

Being a Christmas release, there’s an obligatory feel-good seasonal track to close the album. Unfortunately, Stevie Wonder’s ‘What Christmas Means to Me’ sounds like the band sat down over an eggnog, brainstormed ‘Christmas song’ and included absolutely every idea they wrote down. Jingle bells, Ronan Keating crooning lines about caroling and mistletoe, all over a misguided brass section – it’s the musical equivalent of ‘Nativity 3’. This version

transforming it into a menacing, almost disturbing, place. Crackling, staggering noises emerged from a series of tapes, and the performer responded to these noises, first with the curiously rhythmic squeaking of balloons and then with contorted, visceral, unnerving growls (a vocal technique referred to as ‘improvised singing’). With the peculiar harmony of this fierce aural battle sounding around, one’s thoughts sank to perceive something darker within, a personal response that Posset would have been pleased to have caused, I’m sure. The spontaneous character of the performer’s growls, as well as his instinctive interference with the sounds of the tapes, enabled him to draw on a power and mystery within the chapel, bringing its spirit to the fore of his performance. As the piece ended, Posset held up the quietening tapes, their alien sounds puncturing the room one final time.

Forest of Eyes – a haunting one-piece folk act – was the next to perform, his initially soft vocal textures providing a contrast to what had come before. The deep, booming timbre of his voice filled the space and enveloped the audience, before a crescendo of discordant guitar shocked us out of this hypnosis. The tension between Forest of Eyes’ soothing, folky voice and a series of contrastingly discordant instrumental sounds – played on guitar,

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violin and various medieval instruments – was a constant theme of the performance, one made more mysterious by the piece’s lyrical content. At the beginning some words were slurred, inaudible against a background of instrumental noises, but by the end of the piece the diction became markedly and intentionally clearer, revealing the content of its rural and nostalgic narrative. This narrative imbued the chapel with a similar character, and attested to its rich history also.

Witchblood – my personal favourite – were a two-piece drone act, featuring taped guitar sounds, a violin, and a harpsichord. Trudging guitar chords emerged from the tapes that were placed around the front of the chapel, the violin and harpsichord slowly building upon this to produce a harmonic droning sound which lurched forward with tepid but warm energy. This drone formed the backbone of the performance, and eventually facilitated rhythmic and noisy improvisation from the harpsichord, which gave the piece a suffocatingly whimsical, swelling, free folk-like quality.

As the noise tapered out, the audience held their breath, and the chapel was plunged into a haunting silence: a fittingly introspective end to a magical and unique evening.

& the really bad album...

Hannah Fitzpatrick

In a press release...there’s also a horrible threat to perform the album ‘live for all our great Boyzone fans around the world’. is inevitably going to end up as the backing tune to an unpopular Santa’s grotto in a soulless shopping centre in Rotherham. The most exciting feature of this album is the cover art, simply because Shane Lynch (previously best known for his appearance on everyone’s favourite ITV-celebrity-romancethemed-reality-show-set-on-a-tropical-island, ‘Celebrity Love Island’) is now sporting an enormous beard. Perhaps the record company is trying to trick consumers into thinking it’s a new Mumford and Sons album.

In a press release, the band have gushed that they feel “very lucky to have been given the chance to record such an amazing collection of songs.” They should feel lucky, I can only imagine that Chico wasn’t available that day, and the record company had to make a call at the last minute. There’s also a horrible threat to perform the album “live for all our great Boyzone fans around the world”; and whilst there are no confirmed gig dates for 2015, the band will inevitably be getting on the road again to perform at such great venues as Durham Cricket Club, where they appeared to a crowd of literally dozens in June last year.

To give Boyzone their due, worse mistakes

have been made in the record industry; Shayne Ward, bafflingly, thought it was a good idea to release a Nickelback cover in 2010. At least you can argue that the original artists covered on ‘Dublin to Detroit’ have some musical credibility. Maybe, if you try really, really hard, you can just about imagine that The Temptations were just having an off-day in the studio; but overall, no matter what you read elsewhere, Boyzone’s ‘Dublin to Detroit’ is a terrible album.

2 2 J A N

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Amy Price - stage@palatinate.org.uk

STAGE

dramatic design

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N D I G O

Second Year Law Student Alissa Cooper talks to Amy Price about her love of theatre design, and how being involved in DST isn’t all about the spotlight.

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o how did you get involved with costume design in the first place?

Well I did GCSE Drama at school, and that involved a bit of thinking about costumes, and the overall design of plays. Then when I came to Durham as a Fresher I got involved with the Hatfield Pantomime doing costumes for that…. Then everything led on from that, as I got involved with Hatfield’s Lion Theatre Company, through which I met other DST members from around the university! It’s not just the costumes though – I love making the posters et cetera as well! It’s all the arty stuff that I enjoy.

“everyone is always so excited to see their constumes and that feeling is infectious.”

Had you acted before then?

Not really, no! It was never really my thing. I really enjoy going to the theatre though, so this was a good way to get involved with it.

What kind of costumes have you seen that inspire you?

I went to see a production of ‘A Midsummers’ Night Dream’ in Oxford, which had a modern twist that was done so well. Fairies in fishnets was just an ideal way to bring Shakespeare to life a bit.

What would you say in your favourite bit of the process?

Well the end is the least stressful… when it comes to the show, it’s largely left to the actors to do what they need to do, and I can just enjoy it! But really, it’s great to see everything come together in the later rehearsals; everyone is always so excited to see their costumes, and that feeling is infectious.

You’ve been involved in ‘Blithe Spirit’, ‘Waiting for Godot’, ‘Our Country’s Good’, and you’ve got ‘The Government Inspector’ coming up. What has been your favourite production that you’ve worked on so far?

The best bits have been all the experiences actually working in the theatre – I’ve enjoyed meeting all the interesting people, without any preference between the shows themselves! I was probably most proud of my pantomime costumes though, as the director didn’t have any boundaries for me: they just wanted the costumes to be spectacular. I think its important that costumes are intricate, with a lot of attention to detail, and the panto costumes reflected that! Plus they were all made by hand…

Do you have any hints or tips for someone interested in doing what you do?

I think its mainly about knowing where to get the costumes from! Charity shops, Ebay, Asos Market-

place are all really useful for locating stuff. It makes it more expensive if you leave everything to the last minute, so keep that in mind as well. Plus budgeting is obviously very important. When I did the panto costumes, I had £100 to organise 25 costumes! It forced me to think outside the box (or even ‘in the box’, making costumes out of cardboard)! I do sew things on to costumes a lot myself, as that then gives it all the necessary details!

What’s the one thing you couldn’t live without when doing a show?

A needle and thread. I don’t have a sewing machine in Durham, so I have to make lots of my costumes by hand. I’ve often had to sew people into costumes as well, as it’s actually easier that way. Plus, when I was working on Blithe Spirit last year, one of the main characters came off stage with a broken dress strap, and we had to fix it before she went back on again!

Alissa’s design skills will be in action in the upcoming production of ‘The Government Inspector, 29th – 31st January, in the Assembly Rooms. She has worked on this show in conjunction with her good friend Shahnaz Ford.

Illustrations & Poster: Alissa Cooper.

Photograph: Samuel Kirkman.

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Frances Marsh - visual.arts@palatinate.org.uk

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V I S UA L A RT S

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palatinate’s pick of the 2015 exhibitions Get your new 2015 calendars at the ready to mark the dates of these upcoming exhibitions. From master painters to more contemporary living artists and lots of modernist highlights in between, there is something for every taste. Frances Marsh chosen a selection of sculpture, fashion and photography as well as some brilliant local exhibitions in the North East in 2015.

‘Adventures of the Black Square’ at the Whitechapel Gallery, 15th January - 6th April 2015 Kazimir Malevich’s radical painting of a black square is the starting point of this exhibition which features over 100 artists who took up its legacy.

Their paintings, photographs and sculptures chart a century of Abstract art from 1915 to the present.

‘Eduardo Paolozzi: General Dynamic F.U.N’ at Durham Art Gallery, 31st January - 10th April 2015 One of the pioneers of pop art in the UK, Paolozzi ‘transformed the mundane, derelict and mass-produced into images that zap with electric eclecticism and impress with their dynamic complexity’.

This is an exhibition of fifty screenprints and photolithographs described by J. G. Ballard as a “unique guidebook to the electric garden of our minds” ‘Rubens and His Legacy’ at the Royal Academy, 24th January - 10th April 2015 Masterpieces by Picasso, Rembrandt, Van Dyck, Delacroix, Constable and Gainsborough are displayed in this Rubens exhibition alongside those of the “prince of painters”.

‘Human Rights Human Wrongs’ at the Photographer’s Gallery, 6th February - 6th April 2015 The 1948 Declaration of Human Rights is the starting point of this exhibition which, using more than 300 original prints depicting political struggle and suffering, asks whether such images work for or against humanitarian objectives.

‘Victor Pasmore: In Three Dimensions’ at the Hatton Gallery, 6th February - 9th May 2015 This exhibition examines Victor Pasmore’s move from 2D figurative painting to 3D abstract reliefs between 1940 and 1965, a move which renowned critic Herbert Read described as ‘the most revolutionary event in postwar British art’.

‘Henry Moore: Back to a Land’ at Yorkshire Sculpture Park, 7th March - 6th September 2015 A fresh approach to

Moore is taken by this exhibition which considers his relationship with land, both in terms of his radical notion of placing large scale sculpture in the landscape but the influence of earth to his creative thinking and visual vocabulary.

Cornelia Parker at the Whitworth Gallery grand reopening on 14th February 2015 The Whitworth Gallery in Manchester reopens with a commissioned piece by Cornelia Parker which uses microscopic pencil fragments from drawings by Picasso, Turner and Blake turned into graphene by Nobel Prize-winning scientist, Kostya Novoselov.

‘Inventing Impressionism’ at the National Gallery, 4th March – 31st May 2015 This exhibition lifts the veil on the art dealer Paul DurandRuel: a key figure that discovered Monet, Pissarro, Degas and Renoir, immediately buying their works when they were still largely ignored or ridiculed. ‘Without him we wouldn’t have survived’, said Monet.

‘Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty’ at the Victoria & Albert, 14th March to 19th July 2015 This will be the largest retrospective of the work of Alexander McQueen, one of the most innovative designers of recent times. His designs will be displayed dramatically to capture the sense of his spectacle of his runway shows.

‘Milk Snatcher: The Thatcher Drawings’ at the Bowes Museum, 14th March - 31st May 2015 The satirical cartoons of Gerald Scarfe followed Margaret Thatcher’s political career from days as a member of the shadow cabinet through to her tenure as Prime Minister and political decline.

The exhibition will prove the huge contribution Gerald Scarfe has made to both political commentary and graphic art.

‘Damien Hirst: New Religion’ at The Lightbox, 28th March - 5th July 2015 This exhibition deals with issues such as belief, mortality, love, seduction and consumption in a se-

ries of silkscreen prints, paintings and sculptures that address Hirst’s belief that “science is the new religion for many people.”

Barbara Hepworth at Tate Britain, 24th June – 25th October 2015 This major London retrospective of Hepworth’s sculpture will be the first of its kind for over 50 years and will emphasise her often overlooked prominence in the international art world of the 1930s.

Van Dyck’s self trait will be touring from the National Portrait Gallery following its purchase by public appeal and a Heritage lottery Grant. It will begin at the Turner Contemporary in January 2015 and visit the Laing in Newcastle during its 3 year tour.

p o r-

‘The World Goes Pop’ at Tate Modern, 17th September 2015 – 24th January 2016 The traditional story of pop art and western consumer culture is exploded in this groundbreaking exhibition which shows how different cultures rethought the movement and became a subversive international language for criticism and public protest.

Ai Weiwei at the Royal Academy, 19th September - 13th December 2015 “Visionary, iconoclastic and increasingly political”, this is the first major survey of Ai Weiwei’s work in Britain.

‘Alexander Calder: Performing Sculpture’ at Tate Modern, 11th November 2015 – 3rd April 2016 Calder invented the mobile, bringing movement to sculpture and this exhibition explores how movement, performance and theatricality underpinned the practice of this key figure of modernism.

‘Jackson Pollock: Blind Spots’ at Tate Liverpool, 15th November 2015 – 20th March 2016 This exhibition focuses on Pollock’s ‘Black Pourings’, a less well known but extremely influential part of his practice and departure from his signature technique of action painting.

Photographs: Flickr, Aaron Weber, Ana Toledo, Ancient Cities, smuconlaw,

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Jessica Ng & Megan Magee - fashion@palatinate.org.uk

FASHION

campaign wars

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N D I G O

Durham might still be in the midst of its annual ice age, but in the world of fashion Spring/Summer has officially begun. Alexandra Webber-Isaacs explores the best of this season’s fashion campaigns

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elebrity-fronted, major fashion campaigns have been the norm since the end of the supermodel era in the late 1990s, and Spring 2015 is no exception. The coming season is particularly rife with such collaborations, with varying degrees of success.

Arguably, it is the more minimalist campaigns that have tended to be the most effective this season. Julia Roberts for Givenchy, for instance, is a masterpiece, unforgettable not only because it is so different to the smiling, American sweetheart image we are used to seeing of her, but also because the French fashion house chose Roberts over Kendall Jenner, whom the fashion crowd most expected as campaign star, set against a dark, luxurious, storyboard backdrop, as the sexed up Spring 2015 collection seemed to demand. Happily, it could not have been more different. Roberts was apparently make-up free, urban and androgynous in a masculine cut jacket and straight cut trousers, perfectly embodying the label’s refreshing Parisian coolness.

The same mood was seen in the other campaign photos, shot by Mert Alas and Marcus Piggott. The models, Imaan Hammam, Mica Arganaraz, Stella Lucia, and Alessio Pozzi, redefine biker by a combination of ingénue appeal and 70s/80s erotica.

However, you still can’t escape the Kardashians.

Kim and Kanye West headline Balmain’s Menswear campaign, unfortunately making it look like another piece of Kardashian-West PR instead of a bona fide high fashion campaign. The brand’s womenswear campaign, however, is a definite success. Olivier Rousteing’s manifesto since he joined the company seems to consist of regaining the 90s supermodel-era vibe, and this campaign, bursting

with Victoria’s-Secret-patented big names (think Adriana Lima, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley and Isabeli Fontana) is no different. The scene: models converging over the pop culture icons of today fast food, television and video games. The clothes: a new take on Piet Mondrian. The result: fabulous.

A little less fabulous, however, is the decision to have Justin Bieber posing for Calvin Klein (Jeans + Underwear). He looks a little prepubescent alongside Lara Stone, the brand’s ambassador. A male with a stronger look was most definitely required to balance out Stone’s femme-fatale magnetism, and Bieber’s pout doesn’t exactly help. The contrast stands out even more to anyone familiar with the Fall 2014 campaign fronted by Stone and Matt Terry.

The male model combined playful sensuality with masculine vigour (in all its carved muscular glory), the very essence pervading Calvin Klein campaigns throughout the years (Moss and Wahlberg anyone?). On a more positive note, the ever-present Mert and Marcus duo is always efficient in convey-

Sex wasn’t the mot d’ordre in some of the best campaigns of this season though ing a sense of sexy dynamics inherent to the brand.

Sex wasn’t the mot d’ordre in some of the best campaigns of this season though. Brocade was captured in all its dark, austere elegance by Steven Meisel for Prada. The campaign star? None other than Gemma Ward, who came out of retire-

ment in order to take to the catwalk for the brand’s spring show. Austerity was also present in the Dior campaign, albeit a floral, playfully askew version.

These brands present the Spring ‘15 woman as untouchable, though possessing a touch of delicate softness, embodying the clothing of this season - all strict, defined cuts in soft, rich materials.

On the other side of the spectrum we have the very sensual, but not so in-your-face, campaigns of Louis Vuitton, Saint Laurent and Gucci, which all share a 70s mood. There is a distinctive Veruschka feel in the styling of Freja Beha Erichsen for one of Vuitton’s spring campaigns - yes, they can afford to have two - photographed by Annie Leibovitz.

The real genius lies in the shoot’s backgrounds: three buildings that are still in construction in New York City, symbolizing, perhaps, retro nostalgia in an ever-changing environment. Contrary to the hands-off feel of Dior and Prada, the Gucci woman, photographed yet again by Mert and Marcus, is soft, clothed in feel-me fabrics in suede and fur.

The most effective campaign though is Saint Laurent’s, simply based on how much it embodies the street style mood of the season. Already – and you don’t have to look far, the streets of Durham are in fact enough - the rock-chic, all-black vibe is doing the rounds. So when you’ve got a campaign called ‘Psych Rock’, fronted by Grace Hartzel and shot by Slimane himself (who just embodies everything the label is about), you know the contemporary crowd in vogue are going to come flocking to your boutique – and high-street copies will abound.

Photographs courtesy of models.com and ny.mag.com

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Celeste Yeo - creative.writing@palatinate.org.uk

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C R EAT IV E W R IT I N G

2 2 J A N

Illustration: Cecilia Villacis

‘parade!’

Cecilia Villacis: On Laika

‘And if you hear the whistling Of a whizzing star whiz by,’ They sing from underneath the banners, Drunk with hope and pride.

‘Look up, and you will see a comet Shooting through the sky.’

They crowd around the hero, All throughout his final climb, Up to where they’ll shoot him Up to where the planets chime.

They climb on stilts to catch a glimpse Of glory passing by.

‘It is he you’ll find above,’ they chant, ‘His spirit flying high, The dog of knowledge, freedom, fame’ In the dark, where alone, he dies.

Ottoline Spearman:

Sedentary, listless, swathed in black, they stand.

Heads are bowed, some in respect, others in lackadaisical apathy. Is it wrong to ask whether half of the poppy-adorned congregation understand?

A trumpet marks the beginning. Thirty veterans stand to attention, tunics emblazoned with medals. The atrocities of war are long forgotten, and so the glorification begins. We praise them for their determination in the face of adversity, their ability to forge a path away from calamity. We will never truly comprehend, but at the going down of the sun, and in the morning, we will remember them.

Celeste Yeo:

The waters recede. I watch you move your knees forward as you curl into a foetal position. Between the folds lie currents of memories tucked in neatly, perilously. “We can be an island apart from a ceaseless war on our heart” Before you opened your mouth to speak I had sank into the depths of those dark pupils. I had no words for you. For the colours we lost, for the blizzard we shared. With each long exhalation a ripple dances into moonlight. we don’t move, and I hear the gush of water fill my ears.

Ingrid Anderson: Pieces of fabric lay strewn on the ground. Shredded paper. This is how we Allay the desiccated remains of worn bodies, wreaked souls Redeeming the flights of fancy we thought would be destroyed forever.

Ashes with sparks illuminate a glow in Dubitable: cleansing, celebratory.

Entering the final scene before a standing ovation justifies it all.

Will you applaud?

Will you bask in the cheers, Will you Hold up that torch against the rinsing clouds, putrid skies Or would you put out the bonfire Mangling all rhinestones of banded glory Eschewing the torment of a lumbering Illustrations by Mariam Hayat

pride Photography: Celeste Yeo

2 2 J A N

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Ollie Collard - travel@palatinate.org.uk

T RAV E L

winter wonderlands

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N D I G O

Janie Hui witnesses the Northern Lights at Tromsø

t is 4pm, but night has fallen hours ago here in Norway. With the help of headlamps, we trudge through fresh snow and away from the road to avoid light pollution from the odd passing car. I switch off my headlamp, and for a moment, I am plunged into complete darkness, unable to even make out my outstretched hands.

Suddenly, I look up and see the brightly glittering sky overhead, as if a tapestry of sparkling stars. As my eyes adjust to the darkness, I take in my surroundings – we are on the bank of a calm lake that stretches far out to the slight glow of a small settlement, and the imposing hills on either side shelter us from the winds.

The wait for the aurora then begins. Luckily, it is a perfectly clear day with cloudless skies, and it is

not long before we catch our first glimpses of the aurora. It starts out very faint, as an almost indiscernible grey band across the sky, and then strengthens into a silvery glow.

Within minutes, it intensifies before our eyes into the unmistakeable, vivid green streak that we have longed to see. It is much larger than I could have ever imagined, a massive arc extending from behind one mountain to another across the water.

It moves animatedly, widening and shrinking with every second. A second arc appears, followed by another streak, and one each from opposite ends after that. In a matter of minutes, they all merge into a large band, and the striking green shines even more radiantly than b e fore, accompanied by a rare tinge of red.

While enraptured by the stunning show, hours have flown by unknowingly. As midnight approaches, the aurora ends with a spectacular flourish.

The solar wind and particle interactions seem to flare up, rewarding us with a dramatic dis-

play that even coils up into a spiral at one point.

Finally, the aurora twists and bends with fiery energy as it dances across the sky one last time, before vanishing as quickly as it appeared. We are abruptly left with a night sky illuminated only by stars and constellations. I head back to Tromsø, tired but immensely happy and grateful to have witnessed one of nature’s grand displays.

mountains and the city: Jacob Parker visitsVancouver

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Ollie Collard - travel@palatinate.org.uk

T RAV E L

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2 2 J A N

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2 2 J A N

Anisha Mohan - food@palatinate.org.uk

FOOD & DRINK

fit food

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N D I G O

H

appy New Year to all of our wonderful readers!

There’s plenty of anticipation surrounding a new year and something exciting about a fresh start. So many of us pledge resolutions, especially when it comes to changing our attitudes about food and drink, here at Palatinate thought we’d help with some encouragement by starting a “Fit Food” series! Here’s hoping it helps you, whatever your goals maybe, remember to share your 2015 food and drink photos to our Instagram: @Palatinatefood.

Photos: Francesca Bull

10 tips for keeping your healthy new year’s resolution at university Francesca Bull kicks off our “Fit Food” series to keep you motivated with top tips for meeting your healthy eating goals whilst being a student

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tatuses about healthy eating as a new year’s resolution are in no way alien to Facebook, and I’m sure that good nutrition will go hand in hand with happy studying and focus… unless you crunch really loudly on carrot sticks during lectures.It can sometimes be difficult to maintain balance when you’re juggling deadlines, cleaning the pans, and Jimmy Allen’s.

As a healthy lifestyle blogger (www.cescapesca. com) I love finding out about and jazzing up my daily routine with simple things to keep me happy and healthy, so here are ten things which could help to keep both your motivation and fruit and veg count nice and high!

Zizzi actually serve wholegrain pizza bases!

3. Love your breakfast! Why? Because A. It is your motivation to pull yourself away from your duvet. B. It is your essential energy to walk to lectures. C. It is the best meal of the day as it is acceptable to eat it in your jim jams and choose either sweet, savoury, or smoothie!

1. Tick off each day in your diary that you manage to eat wholesome meals, by the end of one week, it will be incredibly satisfying to look at. I actually recommend using the good old gold star method for extra sparkles and encouragement.

4. Get on board the healthy snack hype! We’ve all had that moment during studying- or procrastinating- where we’ve reached for a sugary snack, and then maybe not felt so great afterwards. It’s time to turn the Student Snacking Syndrome into something positive! You can still lead a healthy lifestyle with snacks included in your day. As well as the obvious healthy apple, I like to keep my cupboard stocked up with super snacks like nuts, crunchy peanut butter, Ryvita, Greek yoghurt. Also, fill your freezer with grapes for the tastiest gems ever!

2. Look into healthier versions of the foods you love, such as opting for dark chocolate or whole grain pizza. If you don’t have time to start getting complicated in the kitchen, then restaurants like

5. Convince a friend to join you with your healthy lifestyle fever. It is 100% essential to have someone to Snapchat or text whenever you visit Holland & Barrett to buy fancy seeds or energy bars.

6. Prepare your lunch the night before! This is much easier done than said- simply make a double portion of dinner and put it in a Tupperware in the fridge for the next day.

7. Get yourself a cute notepad so that you can jot down your goals and motivational quotes. What to do when you feel like quitting? Make yourself a herbal tea, write your thoughts down, and then don’t quit!

8. Hydration is very important, so create a strong relationship with a pretty and practical water bottle which you can easily slip into your uni bag.

9. Get enough snooze. Sleep is essential as it is the time when the body repairs itself… your muscles, your skin… and most importantly: I find that a good night’s rest keeps me feeling optimistic.

10. Treat yourself! Balance and moderation are at the heart of a healthy lifestyle. Take it easy, and appreciate that salted caramel cupcake from BeTempted every now and then!

... and you can have your ice cream and eat it too

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magine if you could indulge in your favourite ice cream every day, knowing that it was good for you.

Well, I am going to tell you a secret, you can make your own healthy ice cream with essentially one, yes one, ingredient: a banana.

‘Banana IceCream’, ‘nanaicecream’, ‘nicecream’, call it what you wish, is possibly the simplest and

quickest recipe, after toast, and so is perfect for students.

All you have to do is pop a chopped banana in the freezer overnight, blend it, and then enjoy your bowl (or cone) of goodness! The fun doesn’t stop here, though. Try adding a spoon of peanut butter to the blender, now you really have something special. The same goes for cocoa based ingredients.

I think it is time to add some colour, don’t you?

1 frozen banana + a handful of frozen raspberries = pink ice cream!

Alternatively, 1 frozen banana + a handful of frozen mango = sunshine ice cream!

These will be the sweetest equations you will see this term, I promise you!

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Atifa Jiwa and Florianne Humphrey - books@palatinate.org.uk

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BOOKS

2 2 J A N

christmas with patrick hamilton Oliver Collard draws attention to one of the literary canon’s most disparaging scrooges

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or most of us, Christmas is a time of excess: one too many mince pies, one too many superfluous gifts, one too many days spent in the company of our nearest and dearest.

For Patrick Hamilton, it was no different.

The man liked a whisky or two, so God only knows what he was like in the festive season. At the height of his addiction in the 1940s, Hamilton was knocking back as many as three bottles a day. Surprisingly, given what must have been his almost permanent state of intoxication, his writing is some of the most interesting to come out of the era.

Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky is a trilogy of novels that has as its very locus, you guessed it, a pub called The Midnight Bell. Hangover Square is a novel about a man who spends much of his time in various states of stupor. In The Slaves of Solitude, about a spinster living in a dreadful wartime boarding house, the drinks also

For Hamilton, Christmas merely forms a gaudy backdrop for the deepening misery of his characters’ islanded existences. keep flowing. Perhaps a drunken tongue really does betray sober thoughts. This certainly appears to be the case with Christmas, where his gloomy prospect on festivities makes him the inebriated ghost of the feast, should we choose to acknowledge that he’s actually there. For Hamilton, Christmas merely forms a gaudy backdrop for the deepening misery of his characters’ islanded existences.

In many ways, it is a time where tensions boil over.

In The Slaves of Solitude, the heroine’s

aunt takes a turn for the worse: ‘among other things, then, she was probably going to lose the only living relation of whom she was fond and with whom she kept in touch. In this manner the season

Photograph: Nigel B

of goodwill came, for Miss Roach, to an end’. This is all expressed wonderfully prosaically just a couple of chapters after losing out on a slim chance of marriage, perhaps the only way out for her.

Even the recovery of Ella the barmaid’s dying stepfather on Christmas Eve is no opportunity for renewed celebration in The Plains of Cement (the final novel of Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky). After all, only moments earlier she was reflecting on his probable death and the freedom that his savings would bring her that maybe, just maybe, ‘it would not be such an unexciting Christmas after all’. On Boxing Day, the man she has loved leaves her forever. Merry Christmas!

It is on the big day itself in Hangover Square that we find the schizophrenic George Harvey Bone, who should be snuggled up in the domestic contentment of a modestly decorated country cottage – as per his recurring fantasy – instead walking along the cliffs of Hunstanton, at the sheer edge of the island, a locale which only enhances his dangerous isolation, vowing to kill his lover, Netta.

Hamilton is clearly a writer who disavows the Christmas miracle. Christmas brings only loss and further entrapment. In line with the concerns of his era, he is preoccupied with the gap between the ideal of Christmas as a season of togetherness and the deeply divided realities of social existence in his time.

The ramshackle community of The Slaves of Solitude is living proof of this. Hamilton, a gifted expositor of that time-honoured Christmas tradition, the good-old domestic, gets across a powerful sense of mutual resentment, charting the rising tension and coiled bitchiness between the inmates.

Minute acts of language are construed as acts of aggression, ‘she did not like that tone in Vicki’s voice, nor that little pause before ‘ – and understanding.

It is the way his characters obsess on the minutiae of things other characters say to them that brings home the fact that this ersatz family would very much like to kill one another, which is more or less what happens (I won’t spoil the plot totally). The collapse of community: it’s a major sticking point in the politically charged 1930s, and one that is underscored by the ironic echo of A Christmas Carol at the end of the book, the phrase ‘God help all of us, every one’, rolling around in Miss Roach’s mind, alone in the dark, as she tries to sleep.

Hamilton was writing before Christmas was the big corporate spending spree it is today, and if his detractors argue that he is merely a writer of his time, then it is telling that the compressed anxieties of his work occasionally resonate with our own. It’s just a shame that so few people get to experience it, consigned as he is to immersion at the bottom of the January Sale bargain bin.

Mini Review Word of the Week

Charactonyms: A name that reflects the character’s personality. Charles Dickens was particularly fond of them.

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Love in a Cold Climate Nancy Mitford

ove in a Cold Climate is one of those books that succeeds in being both quintessentially English and mocking of the English stereotype. It is almost autobiographical: the protagonist Fanny, like her creator Nancy Mitford, is in the throes of the egotistical decadence of the interwar period, rubbing shoulders with the Bright Young Things. It is similar, in terms of setting and genre, to Evelyn Waugh’s Vile Bodies, except it is considerably more light-hearted and the characters felt more real. Star of the show is glittery ‘dragonfly’ Cedric Hampton who, every time his elders hurl him the question “so when will you be getting married?” he deftly answers, “oh, I don’t think marriage is for me.”

Photograph: Penguin

comic by Mariam Hayat