IT’S BACK!
TR AVISTY Issue #1
Sunday 29 January 2017
MALLARD RETURNS DUCK ROOSTS AGA IN IN H A LL
I
floreat pica
kin—he flew in one morning to judge the souls before him. Attempts to find any twoleg aiders have also failed. This week’s Short Introducer Adrian Poole, when consulted, responded only with a vacation automessage, and a promise to get back to the author later. Sleuthing among the younger members of the college also proved futile, Ubiquitous Nerdy Fresher (UNF) and Ubiquitous Fresher Who Went To A Single Sex School And Tries Too Hard (UNSSSTTH) reporting that they too saw nothing. Ubiquitous Inaccurately Titled ‘Fresher’ who Never Discovered Lynx as a Teenager (URGH) heard whispers around the college about ‘life in plastic, it’s fantastic’, but thought everyone had discovered his sexual awakening and didn’t want to talk about it anymore. Attempts to consult the College Rat (the Fellowship moved the College Cats out last year, so we now have a College Rat living under the Fountain instead—life will find a way, suckers) proved similarly futile. So shrouded in total mystery though his life is— although his email address is trinitymallard@ outlook.com—let us raise a glass, and an eye, to The Mallard, cousin of His Majesty the Bird, Lord of Hall and the Undergraduates. And to celebrate, a verse from none other than ex-Trinitarian Lord Byron, who turned his mighty penis (oh lord, a Freudian slip) to the Noble Drake in centuries yonder:
t was on a frosty morning in, let us call it Lent – for as the author has realised, are we not all living on borrowed time? – that, and not for the first time in these hallowed halls, a discovery was made. Shocking as a blow beneath an apple tree, the apprehension of the double helix, or the knowledge that more people had probably been fingered under that bench than the author has in the past year, it struck this writer, like piss on a urinal on an English student who’s just realised that their subject can be boiled down to ‘we like sex and death and unlike the French don’t have the decency to call it all a mass orgasm with free wine occasionally provided’. Thus, reader, it struck. And if one were to sit at the far side of hall, one too might see it. For were one to pause, mid-meal, fork raised halfway to the mouth, non-descript hall meal sliding, plopping gently back into the primordial ooze from whence it came, it is possible that one may have discovered one of Trinity’s lesser known secrets. That, second beam from the end, second triangle from the right, the Mallard has returned.
seated at the right hand of God. Some say the Mallard has a narcissistic personality disorder, and its body —plastic, not wood—is the result of extensive surgery undergone in Los Angeles during the early two-thousands. When it comes to the Mallard, we all are become proverbial Jon Snows, lost in a thousand winters of discontent, struggling blindly in a metaphor with a thousand thousand doors revolving wildly on a hill in a storm.
But who, one asks, is this Mallard? A mysterious figure, certainly, silhouetted in black, tail raised in jaunty defiance to the beams above. Even the Wikipedia article is scant. Yet over the years, rumour has grown as to its origins. When Isaac Newton discovered gravity, some say the Mallard pushed the apple. Some even say that the Mallard orchestrated gravity itself,
A NEW ERA FOR BIRDWATCHING IN COLLEGE
CO-CONSPIRATORS STILL AT LARGE
HOW? ASKS MASTER Yet some things, Khaleesi, are known. We know that the Mallard has been in Trinity for decades, put up in the rafters by daring students, and occasionally blown down again by gusts of wind—or, in 1996, a pigeon. He is famous enough to have his own section in Trinity’s Wikipedia page, and infamous enough to have disappeared entirely for two decades, until 2016 when he was reinstated, by persons and forces unknown, noticed hereafter by the author of this piece. How the Mallard got there, in his lofty perch, the author does not know, but speculates that—like his featherier
He squawks in beauty, like the night, As up above in Hall he flies, And in his nest of beam and light, Shits on your curry from the skies.
Travisty has heard whisperings in Whewell’s, murmurs in the master’s lodge, squawks in S staircase, that the Fellowship is becoming concerned about the rise of avian influence in college. Sources say that a key complaint that led to the tragicousting of the college cats last year was their disrespect for college lawn rules. Ironically, their absence has emboldened the Cambridge geese to flock to Great Court, to waddle (and shit) about undisturbed. Upon hearing this news our patron, His Majesty The Bird, remained especially motionless.
COLLEGE WELCOMES BACK BELOVED NEWSPAPER This Sunday marks the return of an institution: Travisty, Trinity’s very own student-run, student-written, student-stapled newspaper. Launched in 2007, Travisty has weathered changes in format, college scandals, and unscrupulous editors, in the name of quality student reporting writing words on a page. At times a newspaper, at times a magazine, at times a bold experiment in the nature of print journalism, Travisty must admit that Travisty has not always enjoyed the most
"WE HAD A NEWSPAPER?" FRESHERS ASK stellar of reputations. Revived after a hiatus and placed under the guidance of the Magpie and Stump, aiming to realise a bold vision of a Travisty that is funny, informative, and—most importantly—yours. Turn to page 2 to read this week’s Letter from the Editors, in which they outline their pledge to Make Travisty Fun Again.