The University Times Magazine - Vol. 4, Issue 2 by The University Times

zine 21.10.14

The Outsiders There’s a key scene in the 1930’s movie Freaks, when the various different members of the freak show ensemble are sitting around the table with their newest member Cleo and begin to chant ‘Gooble gobble, we accept her. One of us, one of us.’ It is one of my favorite movie scenes and part of the inspiration for this month’s theme, ‘The Outsiders.’ Of course, who doesn’t long to sit at the head of that table, to be told you are alas, accepted by them, whoever ‘they’ may be. Does it really matter? After all, acceptance is what we crave, sometimes no matter what the cost. In Trinity, the groups this scene most reminds me of are the societies. Societies play a very strong role in the social culture of Trinity, stronger I believe than in many other universities. Here, you can find your own little freak show, just like you and whatever random hobby you want to take up for a week, four years or life. It’s all there waiting for you, there’s a society for everyone. The problem is finding the right table for you. What I have found, is while the rich array of societies are available for your every whim, the society format means that the social scene is inextricably linked with committee politics. Thus to be a part of the social scene or to do the hobby you love you must buy into both the social aspect and the political one. These are things, however, that should never really mix. Sometimes, especially in the more competitive ones, lines get crossed. Friends get crossed with colleagues; silly ideas of status gets confused with genuine popularity and decency, people’s genuine intentions become suspect. Is he actually a nice guy or is he just a social climber? Are these people my friends or am I just a necessary accessory until they can tick ‘auditor and great leader’ off their C.V.? It’s a strange tapestry but with so many societies in such a small place, everyone gets embroiled in it at some point, be it sci-fi or SU. It seems in our attempts to become accepted at the table we forget the very reason we joined and the hobby or interest becomes irrelevant. This is exactly what happens to Cleo, who in case you are unaware, is actually a big scheming bitch who was only dating poor Hans for his money. When she’s finally accepted by the group she loses sight of her original motives and can’t hide her true self anymore, screaming ‘slimy, filthy freaks’. I felt this way recently, although perhaps less in the context of being an evil gold-digger and more in the realization I no longer belonged, when, after four years desperately seeking acceptance from one particular society, they finally accepted me onto their committee books and alas, I finally felt accepted at the table. But when I looked around me I realized, I didn’t really like being there anymore. I was so caught up in gaining acceptance that I realized, not only did that acceptance when it finally came prove fickle, but I had forgotten the whole reason I joined. I knew these people were not my friends, they never had been. And though I steadfastly told myself all along my commitment to the society’s interest was all that was relevant, it really didn’t matter without a decent group of people to do so with. But surely it was worthwhile in finally becoming accepted? Surely it was better not to be an outsider? We explored these themes of being an outsider and being accepted all throughout this issue. In our first ‘Big Question’ of the series we asked ‘does Trinity have a class problem?’ examining who the outsiders amongst us are and what do outsiders think of us? We went to Lisdoonvarna’s LGBT matchmaking festival, what one punter referred to as ‘the oddest gay pride in the world’ and, in that, not only did we become the outsiders ourselves, as the only straights in the village, but we came to question who the outsiders really were. Jane took a trip to Ireland’s most haunted castle for a spell of ghost-busting, in order to investigate those outside our own worlds, or more importantly, the people who were looking for them. And this month Clementine kicks off the new society column, in which we’ll take a look at those societies and events happening in Trinity often outside the popular radar. In the end I decided that perhaps being an outsider isn’t the worst thing in the world. And so I quit, not quite as dramatically as Cleo and certainly not as cruelly I should hope. And although I felt relief, I also felt huge guilt, for spending four years pursuing acceptance from people who I didn’t really belong with. If I could go back again I would join the society based purely on the people and potential friendship I saw there, even if it meant exercising with a sports team weekly. There is certainly a place for everyone in Trinity but sometimes it’s good to remain the outsider, and hold out in pursuit of a better, more genuine table with your very own kind of freak.

EDITORIAL | RACHEL LAVIN ZARDOZ ILLUSTRATION | LAURA FINNEGAN FRAME ILLUSTRATION | CAOILAINN SCOULER

What’s inside... 4

The Big Question: Does Trinity Have A Class Problem Rachel Lavin examines the economic diversity of Trinity College, Dublin

What do Outsiders think of Trinity?

We repeated a survey down in 1964. Can you guess the differences?

From Homelessness to Trinity Jane Fallon Griffin interview Liam Duggan

LGBT Lonely Hearts in Lisdoonvarna

We visited the world’s only LGBT matchmaking festival in Co. Clare

Ireland’s Most Haunted

Horror Couture

An interview with Vann Music

Credit where credit is due:

Jane Fallon-Griffin investigates paranormal activity in Ireland’s most haunted castle.

A fashion shoot inspired by our favorite vintage horror films.

Orla Conway caught up with Dublin’s favourite electro-snyth pop band.

Festive Feasts

Gun Culture

Rachel Lavin Editor-in-Chief

Jane Fallon Griffin Deputy Editor

Caelan Rush Creative Director

Benedict Shegog Photography & Illustrations Editor

Orla Conway Music Editor

Robert Greene Food Editor

Carla King-Molina Fashion Editor

William Bailey Film Editor

Clementine Yost Contributing Editor

What to do with all your pumpkin gunk

Clementine Yost takes up shooting with rifle soc 3

DOES TRINITY HAVE A CLASS PROBLEM?

WORDS RACHEL LAVIN

In a poll last year conducted by the Trinity identity Initiative, 72% of Irish people said they regarded Trinity as ‘snobbish’. This led me to question: do we still fulfill the traditional Trinity stereotype still much held by Irish society? Having reflected on my four years here since, a large majority of students I have met have more often than not fit the one stereotypical profile. Privately educated, with middle-class backgrounds. Most of my friends here don’t have part-time jobs and live comfortably. This means that positions in societies, that are the lifeblood of Trinity’s social scene, or participation in demanding academic institutions like Schols exams – even running for SU elections – are far more accessible to those who are privileged. This is made obvious by the fact that one of the biggest societies, DU Snow Sports takes a ski trip every Christmas costing more than 700 euro, a cost unthinkable to most and at the most expensive time of year. Yet it’s one of the most popular society trips of the year. Culturally speaking, an elite social scene exists through the numerous ‘private clubs’ – not just relics from the past like the Knights of the Campanile, but new ones are always forming with each new batch of students: ‘Team England’, the frat, ‘Made in Dublin’ etc. It is prevalent too in the eagerly grabbed society positions, which are a marker of status within the community. The attitudes behind this elitism have often baffled me. When a colleague once remarked how ‘The Gonzaga Mafia’ (Gonzaga is a Dublin private school) seemed to be dominating all the society positions, I replied perhaps that was true for all of those from private schools in Dublin which is not widely unlikely. If you already have a large network of people before you enter college you’re more likely to get involved and elected to different societies. But his response was simpler:

‘Maybe we’re just naturally better’. A snobbish attitude no less, but then such attitudes I have encountered regularly. ‘Knacker’, a term to denigrate those from working-class backgrounds, is thrown around lightly. In fact at one ‘Take me out’ charity event, hosted by a society designated to helping the poor, two contestants turned up dressed as ‘skangers’, acting up to a northside working-class caricature, much to the audience’s apparent amusement. I’ve also heard the term ‘quality of people’ thrown around in casual conversation. Such slurs and fancies go largely unchallenged or even noticed. Of course, this is just my experience and I accept the experience of everyone who walks in the doors of Trinity is different. So I decided to investigate. Just how economically diverse is Trinity in 2014? Are we still a university for the wealthy and elite? And if so, how does it affect our culture in Trinity? How do we change that? Ultimately, I am asking, does Trinity have a class problem?

DEMOGRAPHICS First of all, let’s look at the demographics of a sample of Trinity’s current undergraduate student population. Although hard to gain, Trinity communications supplied me with a list of Irish schools, and the number of undergraduate students who came from each of them, to Trinity last year (13/14). Of last year’s first year students who entered through the CAO, there is a sample size of 459 schools and 2516 students (excluding 369 students who had

no school details and 27 students who were external candidates). From these figures we can deduce that 35% of the Irish students who came through the Leaving Cert last year came from fee-paying schools (private or grind schools). That’s approximately one-inthree Irish students coming from a private education. As a private education is a common indicator of one’s economic class, we can fairly say that, according to these figures, nearly one-in-three Irish undergraduate accepted into Trinity last year came from privileged economic backgrounds. Geographically speaking, approximately 35% of the students from the listed feeder schools are from Dublin schools. Although Trinity is based in the center of Dublin, the majority of Dublin city students on the list are from the generally more affluent Southside, with 66% (702) of those Irish educated undergraduate students who sat the leaving Cert last year coming from feeder schools South of the Liffey, while only little more than a third are coming from the North, at 34%. (297). This relates to national statistics released this year, which found that while 99% of 18-20 year-olds from affluent Dublin 6 went on to third level, only 15% of school-leavers living in Dublin 17, which includes areas of significant social disadvantage, made it to university. Thus, it appears, from these stats at least, that the clientele of Trinity is far more weighted in favor of the middle classes. This is not entirely surprising given Trinity’s historical reputation, but given how we’ve now had nearly 20 years of “free fees”, which supposedly levels educational access, why is this class imbalance enduring? I sat down with TAP representative Lisa Keane to discuss what she thinks are the causes.

ASPIRATION To begin with, she says those from disadvantaged backgrounds simply aren’t applying. What Trinity refer to as ‘non-traditional’ students don’t think Trinity is for them. As John*, a student from a lower socio-economic background explains: ‘I come from an exemplary non-third level traditional background. None of my family or extended family have attended third level education. In my own family I am the third of eight children and so far the only one to progress to third-level education. My peers certainly have not aspired towards Trinity or any comparison, a lot of my friends dropped out of school after the Junior Cert’. So without the apparent possibility or established route of being accepted into Trinity, most students don’t even apply in the first place. Lisa, however, is trying to change that. As she explains: ‘Our mission is to increase access for socio-economically disadvantaged students who are under-represented at third level either because of the areas they come from or the level of education their parents have had.’ ‘One of our ambitions is around raising aspirations.’ To raise the aspirations of non-traditional students, TAP reaches out to link schools in disadvantaged areas, mainly in Dublin and offers guidance, day trips to Trinity and summer schools. ‘So from a very very young age we are getting students to see that “I can do whatever I want to do” and that “Trinity as an institution is accessible to me and a place where I should feel I can go when I am 18 years old”. We try to help in supplementing that and the type of educational guidance that is required to steer them in the right direction.’ Indeed, if it wasn’t for TAP, John might never have applied here, as he explains ‘The reason I came to Trinity is strictly because the Trinity Access Program was recommended to me by tutor in school.’

CULTURE Of course, another reason students with poorer backgrounds aren’t applying is because they simply do not want to. If the public perception of Trinity as an elite space is to be believed then Trinity may seem a daunting and unwelcoming place. In coming to Trinity they risk becoming the outsider, with fears of being looked down upon for a different economic background and different identity. “I wouldn’t speak out in tutorials for fear of being judged for my accent”. John recalls struggling with these things during his first year in Trinity: ‘I certainly was shocked by the cultural dynamics of Trinity and I did indeed struggle upon entering, I was self conscious about my accent which saw me too fearful to speak in tutorials for fear of being judged.’ Some students may also experience imposter syndrome where they feel as though they aren’t deserving of being a student in the college. John explains: ‘I also held an inferiority complex. I remember sitting in the exam hall in first year in the RDS thinking every single person in this room has gotten more Leaving Cert points than I had and more than half probably got twice as many points as I did.’ Certainly the perception of Trinity as an elitist institution is off-putting to non-traditional students but whether or not that culture actually exists within Trinity is debatable. John says: ‘I do think there is an elitist culture but I think its only confined to certain departments and societies, but mostly it is okay. At the beginning I thought it to be all elitist, but it is certainly only confined to a small percentage of departments and societies.’ However, whether or not it exists within college is, as Lisa explains, individual to each student who walks through the gates although she does admit: ‘Obviously we have an institutional culture which I think is very good but we have subcultures within our institution and some of those will suit students better than others. It may be more prevalent for some than others but it will not happen everywhere’. It is not just their identity within Trinity that is compromised, but outside of college and back amongst their own community too. Lisa admits: ‘one of the difficulties they face is their experience of straddling different world, that maybe their experiences in their

own community and where they fit here in trinity can be very different. It can be difficult for people to marry the life they have here and the experiences here with the experiences they’re having outside. And there is a responsibility and an onus on the institution to narrow that gap.’

FINANCIAL & EDUCATIONAL SUPPORT Of course once admitted, a different cultural atmosphere may be the least of a TAP student’s worries. But by far, it is financial difficulties that inhibit the TAP student’s ability to stay in college once admitted. A recent Bank of Ireland survey has estimated that the annual cost of attending third-level education is as high as €13,000, while the average student grant payment is €3,025 per annum. Meanwhile, Dublin has one of the highest costs of living in the country and it is only getting higher. Between accommodation rising 13% and a city center location required to be near to Trinity, you’re looking at an average of 500 euro a month on rent, amongst the highest in the country. That’s one deterrent to applying to Trinity specifically, especially if you are from outside of Dublin. While many Trinity students have the luxury of not having to work through college and purely focusing on their studies and society involvement, those who struggle financially often have to work through college in order to stay afloat. They may find themselves completely financially independent at 18, something alien to a lot of their more privileged Trinity peers. “I have held various jobs mostly giving 20–30 hours per week so I never really got the chance to get involved with societies.” In John’s own experience, he says: ‘I suppose I couldn't afford to enjoy student life as much as I would've liked. I and many other TAP students I know have to work quite a bit. Since the Trinity Access Program I have held various jobs mostly giving 20-30 hours per week so I never really got the chance to get involved with societies and organisations as much as I would've liked but I've done okay.’ Although not experienced by John, these demands can also impact their educational experience in Trinity as well as their social and personal lives. As Lisa explains: ‘There can be issues around balancing work and home. Most of the time both young adults and mature students have multiple roles. They may be in a position that they are supplementing the income at home – work is a key part of what they do. This can be difficult in terms of balancing that with their academic schedule’. TAP aims to counter that by offering a variety of education supports such as providing a math’s help room, a writers resource center, a computer room and a laptop as well as additional classes or tutorials for those who require them. But despite all these obstacles that non-traditional students face, TAP is progressing and their numbers within Trinity are increasing. ‘We took in 221 this year. Our first year in 1998 would have been around 10. The growth has been exponential’.

ECONOMIC ACCESS While the gains in terms of TAP’s work have seen exponential increases in the future admittance and maintaining of lower-socioeconomic students, it however still faces significant difficulties. Will we be able to keep increasing while wider structural obstacles are at play? ‘The free fees scheme hasn’t improved number of students from certain socio-economic groups to third level at a national level. Most students can’t live accurately on the grant.” Lisa identified one of these obstacles while I was talking with her. ‘While fees is one part of the issue, the grant system is a bigger question. If you had a proper stratified grant system that truly supported those who needed it most, fees are less of an issue. Most students can’t live accurately on the grant. It is not what I would call stratified as there is a very sharp cut-off’. Fees should be part of broader discussion of renewed support for grant students. What is the best way of distributing funding available for third-level education in a way that we have the most equitable access for all? The key question is, does treating everyone the same equate with treating everyone equally? Statistics would show you that the free fees scheme hasn’t improved number of students from certain socio-economic groups to third level at a national level.’

MERITOCRATIC ADMISSIONS SYSTEM Another structure contributing to unequal third-level education access is the CAO points system. Because of the high points only those who do well in secondary school will make it, but for those who receive an elite education in a private school, they are far more likely to get a coveted CAO place in Trinity. Patrick Geoghegan, the former Senior Lecturer who pioneered the Trinity feasibility study does admit that this limits the diversity, both geographically and economically of Irish students. This is something Geoghegan has set about tackling with the Trinity Feasibility Study which begins its pilot scheme this year. Although not directly aimed at lower-socio economic students, his plan for a more rounded admissions scheme would likely see a more economically diverse student population in Trinity. Geoghegan explains that with the current points system: ‘Something is wrong there because, ability isn’t linked to what you’re home address is because if the college admissions were accurate it would mean that say “all the intelligent people live in the even number Dublin postcodes and the stupid people live in the odd ones” whereas we know that that’s ridiculous. So, there is something unequal there so we had to try and see if we could balance it’. He acknowledges that the economic background of students can give them a huge advantage in their Leaving Cert saying: ‘Someone who goes to an elite school could also have their parents paying for grinds whereas someone from a disadvantaged school mightn’t have the option to study higher maths and miss out on the extra 25 points.’ He explains the Leaving Cert also only measures a certain type of intelligence, that can sometimes be learnt off. ‘Sometimes even though students who are great at learning off prepared answers but don’t underneath know what it really meant. You know, we’d rather have students who were independent creative thinkers.’ His scheme which begins it’s pilot year this September will see 25 students in history, law and medieval history and archaeology admitted on three facts. Their leaving cert score, their relative performance rate, which ranks their leaving cert performance relative to others in their school and therefore puts into context the level of their education. And a personal statement, further contextualizing the type of struggles they may have had and achievements outside of school, in order to get a grasp of that person’s whole character. Although the TFS’s selection is anonymous Geoghan does hope that it will allow for more lower socio-economic students to get accepted into Trinity. ‘Ultimately what everyone wants, is the students who are the right fit for the course, the right fit for the college and who will be the best possible student for that. Someone who is enthusiastic about learning, someone who is passionate about the subject, someone who will brighten up the class. We know from the success of TAP that that person isn’t always the person with 600 points. Some of our best students who have gone on to lecture and gone on to do PHD’s are people who came through that foundation year on TAP. They had a hunger and a determination and a passion because it really meant a lot to them. College I think benefits from having a wide mixture of students from all different backgrounds. Trinity is meant to be a university for the whole island. If Trinity could say that we got the students with the ability and potential from all over the island, every county, I think that’s much better than just getting a lot of students from the same school.’ The scheme has been received very positively and Geoghan hopes that in the next few years he may see it expanded alongside the Leaving cert into the other seven leading universities. Geoghan also hopes however, that this variety of students both geographically and economically will break down the reputation Trinity has as an elitist and exclusive institution: ‘What we want is the people who have the right fit for Trinity, academically able, great potential, involved in the wider activities in the college, we would love to get the students from every county on the island and break down that kind of prejudice like ‘don’t go to Trinity, they’re all snobs.’ We want to make sure on the domestic front that we’re getting in the best and that they’re not put off by the negative connotations of Trinity.’ The benefit of mixing students from different economic background cannot be underestimated. Lisa believes economic diversity is not just important for TAP students but for Trinity as a whole. ‘We looked at experience of our graduates. Last year we did a piece on family and community impact, and while hugely transformative, both at personal and community, we cannot underestimate the value of these students to trinity community’. Trinity is striving for more diversity, be it through TAP or the ground-breaking feasibility study. Hopefully with initiatives like these lead by people like TAP’s Lisa and Professor Geoghan and more importantly by students like John, Trinity can become a truly diverse melting pot of students.

In 1966 Trinity student journalists, our predecessors, decided to gauge public perceptions of Trinity and its students. This month we took to the streets to find out whether or not these perceptions have changed. See if you can tell the difference between then and now...

“I think it’s a very good university. One of the top. Isn’t it?”

“I think it stinks of protestantism.”

“A little bit of Heaven in Holy Ireland.”

4 5 6

“It’s a breeding ground for affectation and social snobbery.”

“Trinity’s getting tamer. Students don’t do the wild things they used to do. It’s a pity.”

“They’re nice but they just have a lot of money”

“It doesn’t have enough influence in Ireland. We ought to have a bloody government from it, instead of that crew in Leinster House.”

“Smart people, like loads of points.”

“It’s no different from any other University. Everyone’s trying to be more eccentric than everyone else.”

“Arrogant”

17 “Well I hope everybody from all walks of life and religious persuasion avail of the opportunity to go to Trinity which wasn’t always the case.”

“It’s lovely, well I’m homeless so I don’t go a lot they seem alright they’re all nice people never bothered me.”

“Well, they are a race and a law unto themselves.”

20 “Posh. It’s kind of a museum”

“They are a lot of snobs. You get an Irishman going there and coming out talking with an English accent. It’s still a symbol of British rule.”

“Wankers”

“Before I lived in the city I would have thought privileged people but they had to work hard to get in there so”

“It’s a good well , world renowned university, well recognized, artsy more than sciencey”

2014: 1, 6, 7, 8, 10, 13, 15, 18, 19, 20

“Well, they’re snobs and anti-Catholic, but education is a rare enough Commodity in this country, so I suppose they are worth the space they take up.”

1966: 2, 3, 4, 5, 9, 11, 12, 14, 16, 17

“Some students in there have more money to spend on themselves than I have for my whole family, and there are five of us, I think it’s bloody unfair”

From Homelessness To Trinity WORDS JANE FALLON-GRIFFIN PHOTO BENEDICT SHEGOG Liam Duggan is a first year Bess student but his journey to Trinity is outside the norms of many of his peers. Having overcome homelessness, mental illness and addiction Liam Duggan spent nearly twenty years trying to make it to Trinity. It wasn’t originally like this, however. In 1988 he had just completed his Leaving Cert and hoped to be accepted to college. While he waited for his results, Duggan spent the Summer working in London as a labourer and as a team member in Sainsbury’s head office, before visiting the Greek island of Paros for a holiday. Here, however, things spiraled out of control, impeding the school leaver’s path towards higher education and impacting greatly on his immediate future. Duggan became immersed in the drinking culture and recalls spending his time sleeping on beaches with two other low cost travellers and existing on a diet of shop bought vegetables softened in boiling water using their small stove. By the end of the two week holiday, Duggan suffered a mental breakdown. Having lost his travel documents and money Duggan stowed away on a ship to Athens before eventually returning home extremely ill, suffering from psychosis.

The relationship between cannabis and mental illness, as with all drugs (alcohol included), is a complicated one, fraught with temptation and challenge. Between spending some time in a mental institution and becoming sober, education remained an attractive prospect. Liam says “ My goal was to get back into education but I knew I wasn’t capable of that.” The ten years that followed were tough and he notes that “I wasn’t relapsing. I was frozen in time. I wasn’t really recovering either.”

The incoming first year BESS student explains this experience of psychosis as having “a different reality.” Never having acquired a taste for alcohol, Duggan had also began smoking cannabis at the age of seventeen, feeling that as he did not drink that this would act as his indulgence, one he did not think posed as much of a threat as alcohol. While his peers accepted their university places and started tertiary education without Duggan, although he had obtained a place in Thomond college, he began a different journey of his own; recovery.

He spent two years studying in the National Learning Network in Bray where he achieved his ECDL (European Computer driving license) and level five FETAC in informational communication technology. His success and diligence was noted by the staff who put him in contact with the Trinity Access Program (TAP). Duggan says of the TAP open day “”I was privileged to even go to the open day…. Walking along the cobble stones in front square it’s almost a dream university the way its laid out “. Having completed an excellent interview the TAP staff were convinced of his commitment to the program and he was allocated a place in TAP. TAP he says was a

Duggan was encouraged to begin a course in the National Learning Network in Bray after he decided that he “needed structure in the day” He spent time working a few hours in his father‘s taxi, which he refers to as “occupational therapy” as it allowed him to stay connected with friends and made the transition back to education less strenuous. For Duggan the opportunity to gain admittance into transition housing with two reformed alcoholics gave him the break he needed. Transition housing allowed him to escape the uncertainty of nightly hostel stays and gave him stability.

“challenge but he [I] enjoyed the challenge.” Although he admits that his brain “isn’t as spongy as it was at eighteen” he continues to embrace the learning process expressing a desire to participate in the wider college community rather than just attending solely for the sake of a degree. He hopes to join both the Phil and the Psych society, as well as other large societies. He credits his girlfriend Suzie as having been instrumental to his success in supporting him as well as assuming the role of the important aspect of his life that he did not want to lose and had to work for. “She brought me out of a very dark space and I’m right in the light at the end of the tunnel” Duggan says speaking fondly of his girlfriend. Liam and the marketing student are together three years and he delights in what he refers to as the “clarity” of his drug free life. His mother attended his TAP graduation and he recalls a very enjoyable day during which his parents were extremely proud. Like all incoming undergrads, despite having graduated from his prior educational institution, Duggan felt that he could not relax until had his CAO offer in his hand. He was delighted to receive the offer and repeatedly mentions the “clarity” he received following giving up cannabis and he repeats how it has been worth the struggle and is no longer of any interest to him. Along with three others Duggan recently started a charity koinsforkids.ie which aims to buy equipment to help treat children in the liberties hospital. The group has raised five thousand euro to date and hope to raise more in the coming months. Despite having spent a considerable amount of time in hospital himself Duggan says of the project “It isn’t really a personal thing but I know what suffering is.”

The World's Only Lonely Hearts LGBT Festival WORDS RACHEL LAVIN PHOTOGRAPHS ANNA MORAN

Lisdoonvarna is a small village situated in north county Clare, and has the kind of quintessentially traditional Irish look that has American tourists coming in their droves to take postcard-perfect photos of the pub filled streets, wooden-frame fronted shops, and quaint hotels that were built in the 50’s, and have names like ‘The Ritz’.

suggestion of adding an L.G.B.T. element to the traditional festival, that ‘The Outing’ was born. Since establishing a local connection, Eddie spent a year planning the festival with as many friends as he could possibly rope in as well as the famed Panti Bliss, who agreed to host it. This is the second year of the festival, and it is the only one of its kind in the world. ‘I’m already planning next year’s one’ he says enthusiastically, and with the last drop of the pint glugged, Eddie is back in action. ‘We’re bringing you to the picnic’, he says and off we go.

The town, of course, is famous for its matchmaking festival, which serves as a sort of a mecca for lonely rural bachelors and single women teetering on the edge of their prime. Every year, for the month of September, these lonely hearts descend on the small town to seek help from the town’s famed matchmaker, Willie Daly, in order to find that ‘one true love’.

With a lifesize cut-out of Panti and an eight foot rainbow flag crammed into his small car, we head up through the winding rural roads to the Cliffs of Moher. There, we meet about twenty or so guests for the weekend and after a quick tour of the awe-inspiring tourist attraction, we sit down outside the centre for some food. The group consists of mostly middle-aged and older men, all telling stories, joking and gossiping between mouthfuls of salad and cake.

The clientele this weekend, however, would be a little different to the festival’s one hundred and fifty year history. For, on this glum rainy weekend in October, this rural tourist town would become host to the world’s only LGBT matchmaking festival.

Amid all the banter, Eddie introduces me to Darren, as ‘the first successful hook-up of the LGBT matchmaking weekend’. Darren is a friendly, good looking guy in his early thirties, who is bi-sexual. He explains why ‘The Outing’ appealed to him.

To get to this small rural village from Dublin, it takes three trains and two buses over the course of five hours. But even the nauseating bus ride through the winding hair-pin roads was worth it, in order to witness the beautiful, if a little surprising, mix of Ireland’s most progressive community with such a typically conservative setting.

‘I’ve only started asking people out on dates recently and even though the gay scene has a strong hook-up culture, I think the elements of traditional romance still appeal for those wanting to settle down. That’s why the matchmaking was such a big selling point. I like how they are taking something so traditionally Irish and adding a modern twist.’

Arriving in the village at noon on the Saturday, we find that the town’s square is all dressed up in its best rainbow colors. Bunting hangs from every available height, streaming from one telephone pole to the next, and zig-zagging down every street that is visible from the town’s central junction. The universal LGBT rainbow flag is hanging from the windows of each local business. Large, and endearingly kitsch, pink cardboard hearts, that say “All you need is love”, have been individually taped to each available signpost for about a mile outside the town.

Darren thinks that the festival is not just good for the gay community, however, but for the local community as well. From personal experience, he thinks exposure is an important factor in getting society to accept the LGBT community. He explains, ‘When I came out to my father, he went and sat in silence in the next room for three hours. His whole paradigm had shifted. Once the three hours was over, however, he had faced up to it. He just needed to be presented with it, and now he has no problem. So, that’s why it’s great to see an event like this because it forces people to think about it, and eventually to realise what a non-issue being gay really is’.

We make our way up the main street, where we pass Willie Daly’s matchmaking bar. It has an orange wood-paneled front, and, if that wasn’t eye-catching enough, on the central wooden panel there is a painted mural of Willie himself, surrounded by clouds and angels, below which it says “Marriages are made in heaven…but most people meet in the Matchmaker Bar’.

For the most part, as an openly gay man living in Dublin, Darren has found ‘nothing but good experiences’ and he has ‘never had any issues.’ But he does admit that his experiences are coming from someone who lives in Dublin’s city center and says ‘We all have known someone whose been beaten up because of it. And that’s in Dublin, a supposedly modern city.’ His friend Jason adds ‘Certainly where it’s safe to hold hands is an open question in the gay community’. But Darren is still positive ‘I do think these are isolated incidences though. This country has come a long way’.

We keep walking to the edge of the village and find ourselves outside The Hydro Hotel which is covered in more rainbow bunting than the entire town combined. This is where the main events of the weekend will take place. Inside, there is a decidedly hungover atmosphere at the moment, as punters nurse litres of water and lounge silently on the couches, clearly recovering from the events of the night before. The room, however, is quickly brought to life by Eddie McGuinness, one of the chief organizers of the event, who greets us with a warm welcome. While stopping for a quick break to have a pint, Eddie has us cracking up with stories of his career as a world champion hip hop dancer, and all the juicy gossip from the night before. Eddie explains how he was always active in organising gay pride events, but it wasn’t until he was contacted by Maurice, the owner of the Hydro Hotel, who made the

Later, while touring the museum I strike up chat with Gerry, a gentle Cork man in his early fifties who tells me why he decided to come for the matchmaking. ‘I suppose I just came for the social element and to meet gay men my own age. The profile here is probably older guys.’

Of course, Gerry is right about the generation gap. A lot of the male guests here are middle-aged and above. This seems emblematic of a wider cultural trend among the gay community. Those who have settled are nowhere to be seen but the reason there is still an older crowd looking for love points to something deeper. While there are those who are reaching the age where they just want to settle down there are also many older men grew up in a more oppressed society, and thus, came out later in life when being gay was more accepted.

lesbian partner. As a gaggling pile of hens pass us Bernadette makes the point that, ‘I worry that an awful lot of people might treat this festival as some kind of zoo, to look at us as if we are novelties. We are not novelties, we are real people and we want to be taken seriously’. Bernadette works as a psychotherapist, specialising in helping young LGBT people with coming out and coping with the animosity they face. She says they ‘see an awful lot of damage done by suppressing their sexuality. Young men especially’.

‘When I left school in Cork there was no gay culture or scene, no nightclubs nothing. There was no space for someone to come out. It wasn’t even legal in the 80s.’ Gerry says.

When I enquire why there seems to be fewer women punters present, she remarks,‘well I do think there are less women but that may link to typical patriarchal reasons, be that economics or childcare. Women may not be able to afford to come, or may be looking after their children, or both. Although, another side to that is women aren’t here because they have children to look after in the first place. Unfortunately for most gay men, having children in this country is still not an option’.

Because of this hostile culture, Jerry did not come out until he was in his thirties, and only because he was motivated by a dramatic event. ‘What motivated me to come out was that my first cousin had a brain tumour and although she survived, I realized life’s too short. But when my cousin got sick, her misfortune was my fortune.’

Bernadette leaves to meet her partner while I head back into the hallway, distracted by all the information from my interviews, when all of a sudden, in walks the matchmaker himself, Willie Daly. He has a wild head of grey hair with a full beard and a sort of mystical twinkle in his eye, but perhaps that is just my imagination. I approach him for an interview and we find a quiet corner where he leaves down an old book consisting of old yellow documents bound with string.

‘Coming out was difficult. Someone once said to me it’s something you wouldn’t choose. You wouldn’t choose to put yourself through the difficulties but you can’t ignore it.’ However Jerry is hopeful though for the next generation. ‘I think younger generations are free from a lot of the animosity toward being gay I grew up with.’ It’s time to pack up to leave and I take this opportunity to cajole Eddie into a photo in front of the cliffs. Breaking the rules he hops onto a grassy knoll that slopes down to the cut-off of the cliffs and begins waving his rainbow flag enthusiastically as we snap away. As we head back through the center on our way out the locals working at the museum are jokingly harassing Eddie for free tickets to the Hydro tonight. This gets me thinking about how the Lisdoonvarna locals are responding to the festival’s new LGBT twist. As we drive back into town we pass one pub conspicuously not displaying the rainbow flag and decide to approach it later.

‘This is my lucky book’ he explains. ‘It’s about 160 years old, and belonged to my father and my grandfather. If you touch it, you’ll be married within the year.’ Willie is a third generation matchmaker and along with the magic marriage book, has been passed down the gift of matchmaking. Willie claims to have 3,000 matches under his belt, all made possible through his one tried and tested procedure. I ask Willie how matchmaking has changed over time. ‘When I grew up the needs of marriage were different: women just needed a roof over their heads, a home to feel safe and secure. But I didn’t like that that much. I felt that when introducing people I’d like them to say when they first meet ‘God, that’s the man I want to spend the rest of my life with’ and that you couldn’t take your eyes off him. So, I always try to create a bit of magic in my introductions.’ “When I started 40 years ago my success rate would be about 100% married but it has gradually decreased. Today it is perhaps about 23-24%.’ Why is this? ‘It’s changing times. In the early days a woman or a man would never say no. They wouldn’t change their minds once a match was made. There are more options now and people have a different set of priorities. But it is still down to finding that perfect love. Everybody wants the perfect love and everybody should be in love and everybody needs love to be in a better place mentally and for their life to flourish.’

When we arrive back to the hotel it is clear the hangovers have subsided and the foyer is abuzz with punters drinking, chatting and flirting. Two drag queens gracefully descend the stairs in full-on glamorous attire as a few sheepish locals drift in and out curiously. A hen party dressed as fifties housewives have joined the celebrations and some unsuspecting hotel guests sit in the foyer’s couches amidst all the excitement, looking a bit put out. In the main bar the tea dance is starting. On the dance floor Mr Gay World and Mr Gay Ireland are leading a same-sex ballroom lesson. As the lessons begin, the rowdy hens join the class. Meanwhile, locals are milling in and out. They watch the same sex couples salsa-ing silently, peering around at the clientele curiously, neither overly warm nor disdainful, although all seem a little reluctant to comment when I approach with my notebook in hand. Outside I join a group of women in the smoking area where I meet a very elegant older woman called Bernadette Kenny. Bernadette is a local and has a

On that note, I ask Willie why he thought it was so important to incorporate the LGBT community into the matchmaking festival? ‘If I can say anything it is that love is for everybody. They asked me to match-make for it so I’m doing it tonight. I think everybody’s a human being and everybody deserves love. I’m working on that basis now.’

I get the impression Kate and her husband hadn’t realised this weekend would be an LGBT event, as he rhusband, looking slightly grumpy, reading the paper, intently ignoring the shenanigans around him. But Kate doesn’t seem too worried. ‘Everyone seems in good form. There’s more craic than anything. I ask her does she think it’s important to accept the LGBT society into society with events like and although she was softly spoken and had told me when I started taking down her words she wasn’t very good at interviews. But now she begins to talk very passionately, saying ‘I think it’s good to incorporate. I have a beautiful nephew, he’s gorgeous. He had a terrible few years when he was not able to tell that he was gay, he was too afraid of being different. It was quite traumatic for him. And it made me think about things’.

But how are the locals responding to this upgrade? ‘Well I’ll be very honest about it. There’s definitely a certain amount of older people that don’t like it, but I have spoken to no younger person under 45 that doesn’t think it’s a good idea. I’ve always been different from a lot of people, I think it deserves a chance. It has existed in cities for a long time, there was places in Dublin over 50 years ago for gay people so its going on a very long time. In the next couple of years I would feel that it’s not going to come back from where it is.’

Before that, we hadn’t known many. I live in a small community and before that I didn’t fully understand what it was like. It completely opened my mind. I would know people with strong views but people are getting more understanding. They know they have no control over it. Now, if people are saying things against it, I’m more inclined to defend, having seen my nephew.’ She admits her husband had more strong views, but they’re slowly changing. ‘It’s not as terrible as we thought it is. In my youth it was seen as absolutely terrible. There were all kinds of faces on it. Most things of course came from the church. You went to hell if you had any thoughts that they didn’t; want you to have. There wasn’t much love in the Catholic church in those days. Of course, it’s changing now.’

And has there been any local LGBT response? ‘I think there are plenty of people in rural places that are gay and haven’t had an opportunity to be out. This is an opportunity. If anything surprised me last year it was that some people, where there was a murmur that they were gay or lesbians, came. When I saw them here and I gave them 100% of credit for coming out and having the courage to walk in here, you know it’s not simple. I thought they were marvelous for it. They came in, they were searching for something and they were able to identify with it.’

Her husband starts shuffling getting ready to go and as she leaves, her husband inquires suspiciously ‘who was that?’. Open but hesitant, perhaps there is hope in older generations after all, as this gentle old woman had shown me. They’re going out for the night. While they’ll accept their gay nephew, a night of drag performances and gay matchmaking may be too much too soon.

But what about the local non-LGBT people who seem to be steadily trickling in and out all day? ‘There will be plenty of that.’ he explains. ‘Plenty of onlookers. A lot of people are ringing me about trying to get in, this and that. To try and get passes even though I know they’re not gay. Mostly they are just curious.’

While in the foyer I start talking to Jason Heartford, a 30 something lecturer in Maynooth. I ask him what he makes of the local response, especially by the older generations.

Willie explains he hasn’t actually made an lgbt match yet but he’s hopeful tonight will be the night. However, when I as; if these matches for marriage Willie is non-committal. ‘For me now Rachel, I can’t go saying anything. I’m only starting this at this late stage in my life. I haven’t done it before, been matching man to woman for nearly 50 years. So this is all new. I’m working on the basis that I met quite a lot last year and they were nice people.’

‘I think the response has been overwhelmingly positive.We asked them (the villagers) politely if we could use their village and they said yes.You see this festival has to be integrative on their terms too. It’s good for the gay community to come and be welcomed, to see that the countryside not as demonic as portrayed, that most of the people here are not against them.’

Despite his kindness and obvious effort Willie is still non-committal when it comes to speaking out about gay rights. I decide to find out more about of the local opinion.

Perhaps Jason has a point. I am beginning to reconsider the real value of this festival. While I had spent all day thinking the festival was about how it breaks down the gay bogey man’ myth for here in the rural community there was also a flipside to it’s value. It was helping to break down but the ‘conservative country bogeyman’ for the gay community too.’

Outside I happen to come across a group of such onlookers as they leave. Three women in their fifties looking slightly disconcerted who I had seen a few minutes earlier with their backs to the wall of the pub, all wearing anoraks and stap-across handbags, looking slightly nervous. They explain they’re ‘passing through Claire’ and decided to pop in. They’re clearly curious but resistant to my questions. ‘When I ask them what they think of the LGBT involvement in the festival the best I can get is an ‘each to their own,’ and as for same-sex marriage, they simply repeat ‘Oh I wouldn’t know anything about that’.

As I head back to the bar one last time, I see Panti getting ready to take the stage. Approaching her, she agrees to a quick interview. I’m a little speechless, so in awe of her in all her real life, 6 foot tall, tiny waisted generally formidable glory, but nonetheless she had something interesting to say on the festival.

Feeling slightly exasperated, and with the same-sex salsa dancing looking like it will be going on for a while inside, I decide to seek out some dinner. As I make my way through the rainbow bunting clad streets as dusk begins to fall, I notice one pub without any rainbow bunting or flags, does fairly priced evening meals. It is a typical Irish pub, with some really decent lasagna, but when I approach to pay I can tell the manager who served me is suspicious. I ask him about his thoughts on the festival. ‘Best of luck to them.’ He says gruffly, ‘ It’s not my cup of tea. I won’t be going up there.’ I press him for more comments but realizing this is bad press for the pub, he starts backtracking. ‘Oh yeah’, he defaults to a jokey sarcasm. ‘I’m going up later on. I’ll go up and have a look’ he laughs.

‘Lisdoonvarna is an excuse to have a good time and find love so we all recognise its all the same.’ she explains ‘It’s all about the love.This has the Potential to be huge. It’s so Irish yet also entertaining to all sorts.’ She explains how the festival serves to unite different Irish communities. ‘There are still pockets that believe you can’t be properly Irish if you’re gay. This is a way of redefining Irishness. To show you don’t have to be GAA-playing, Aran jumper-wearing, Guinness-drinking man. It’s a nice illustration that we are all just the same.’

Over in the corner three old-fashioned men in their 60s and 70s with diamond pattern jumpers, grey dress pants and tweed jackets sit in what looks like their usual spot. I approach them, and although a little defensive they introduce themselves as Paddy, Jack and Pat.

And with those wise words she takes the stage to her adoring audience. Handing out witty comments and putting all the audience in their place. (Including the hen party to whom she says ‘stop rubbing your marriages in our faces’)

‘Are you here for a husband?’ one of the loudly enquires. They’re checking to see if I’m gay. ‘No ‘I admit. Their defense softens a little but my notepad still has them on edge.

As the music section takes over and two singers serenade the crowd with traditional irish love songs, it really could be any pub in Ireland, merely with a lot of balloons and a drag miley cyrus waiting to take the stage.

All questions are met with a tight-lipped and non-committal response. What do you think of festival? ‘Great, best year yet. It’ll be quiet when it’s over.’

Feeling exhausted after the 5am start, I take this as my time to leave and stop annoying all the punters with questions and let them enjoy the night. Out in the foyer I say goodbye to Willie one last time. He’s in good spirits and is happily posing for photos with several gay couples, with all of them reaching out and touching the magic book.

But what about the LGBT part of the festival? Paddy-’good’ Jack-’good’ Pat-’good’

Heading back through town there are lots of older couples sitting in cars watching the goings on. They’re They’re not ready yet to go in, but they are watching it all and they are certainly curious. Although keeping a careful distance it doesn’t seem to be hate, just trepidation and nervousness of change. Meanwhile crowds of local young people are heading in their droves toward the event. The Hydro is full and getting fuller, at bursting point. I watch one worried looking mother in a hoodie inside a 4x4 dropping her daughters off who are dressed up to the nines. She and all the other watchers, look on at a distance as the next generation heads, full throttle, into the fray.

The atmosphere is a bit testy. Despite their positive answers, their frowning uncomfortable faces give their opposition away. I realize I’m not going to get anything more out of them, so I go to leave, politely smiling as I turn when they offer that I ‘come back early September, get a good man’. As I head back through town I’m annoyed by the response I’m getting, feigning ignorance and non-committal replies. This seems to be the general tone of dissenters. I pop into the match-maker bar where Willie was meant to be hosting a match-making session but it is near empty. Making my way to the Hydro on the outskirts of town where it is full of music and activity, it seems not only are the locals avoiding the LGBT community, but the LGBTs are avoiding the locals too. It’s disheartening to say the least.

I ask him how the days been and he launches into an impassioned speech ‘There’s a few things I was thinking today. People have gone to the moon you know. And that’s a very big change for people. Another thing, people weren’t around to eat before receiving Holy Communion then they got rid of that. Everything, I think goes. It’s a bit of a thing, there’s no question that people will take a bit of getting used to it all right. There are still a few people that are not with it and don’t approve of it now. But I must say I’ve met no-one under 50 that doesn’t say it’s okay. There’s more saying to me it’s a good idea than saying it’s a bad one. Like you know, it’s there and it’s going to continue.’

Back at the hotel I bump into Darren who I’d met earlier and he enquires as to why I seem annoyed. nodding understandingly and unsurprised he offers an interesting thought ‘But you do realise’ Darren offers, ‘the fact that they know not to be vocal or outspoken in their opposition is a sign of progress.’

I leave Willie as he gets crowded around for pictures and happily poses with several gay couples,all of them reaching out and touching the magic book.

Some progress. I’m not entirely convinced but he has have softened my mood. I sit down in the comfy chairs of the hotel beside quiet nervous looking woman and we begin talking. Her name is Kate. She is a 60-ish year old woman from Cork who is here on a little holiday. `I ask if she is here for a match? ‘No. I got my match,’ she says nodding toward her husband who is sitting reading the paper on the opposite couch. ‘Just here for a bit of fun. Everyone here is so friendly and chatty. I like the match-making festival because there is no other place as social for older married people. It is nice to meet people and exchange ideas.’

Ireland’s Most Haunted WORDS JANE FALLON GRIFFIN

For the vast majority, ghosts and ghouls do not concern us aside from the odd ill-advised horror movie, lone nights at home in the dark or visiting that one house who fashioned themselves as the Adam’s family every October. However, one Irish group has made it their business to work with those with unfinished business by travelling around the country in search of active spirits. Established in 2004 by founder Ian Murphy the Paranormal Research Association of Ireland (PRAOI) aims to investigate claims of paranormal activity confidentially and free of charge. Lead investigator, David Wenger, explains how they take “a logical approach to their [our] investigations.” “Our primary goal is to either conclusively prove or disprove the existence of the Paranormal through verifiable means, and, as a consequence, we do not employ Psychics or Sensitives in our investigations as this would conflict with our scientific ethos”. He says of Ireland “is steeped in ancient history’ and is optimistic for the development of paranormal investigation, saying ‘people are openly talking about the paranormal over the past couple of years. compared to when such things were never talked about outside the house’. Since emigrating, their founder Ian Murphy has set up sister groups in Boston, New Hampshire and Colorado. Feeling that an article on a paranormal group gave me license for organising my own personal ghost-busting adventure, I rang David asking for the best starting point. This investigation needed to be real. I wouldn’t stand for any of this namby pamby Scooby Doo style hauntings which, I was always devastated to discover, were mere mortals in disguise. Chatting to David on the phone he was definite

in his choice, the place the group keep coming back to, where it all started for him on his first investigation: Charleville castle. A few weeks later, one bright but cold Wednesday October afternoon, I found myself in Tullamore, Offaly with two others in tow. The designated driver lost their courage somewhere along the Kildare-Offaly border and so two of us found ourselves outside the castle gates. Having ditched the car along with the third member of our band of novice ghost busters, we set off walking down a long winding avenue cloaked by low hanging branches of drooping old trees. The avenue was dark and extremely long and offered no reassuring signposts but rather numerous dirt tracks veering off to the left. I couldn’t help but feel that this was in fact very similar to the start of a horror movie. A pair of student journalists complete with fancy camera and recording device, walking along a dark woodland trail in search of a lesser known castle, essentially sitting ducks for a Blair Witch style haunting. Eventually the trees parted, revealing the dark outline of the stone castle. Two thick turrets flanked the entrance to the castle and on its grounds a church roof and other small stone structures were visible. At the door I looked up and saw a large metal bell attached to the oak door. I pulled down hard on the thick rope and released it. The sound startled me and I stepped back just as the door began to creak. It opened slowly before jolting to a halt at the end of the latch’s tether and an elderly eastern European woman looked quizzically out of the crack. I managed to stammer student journalist and Trinity, before the door closed again and the woman disappeared. Admittedly I had taken the spooky castle idea very lightly, but as I exchanged a glance with my accomplice it had to be said, this was way eerier than I had planned. Then came the scrape of the latch being pulled across the wood and the oak door was flung open.

Stepping into the castle foyer was like stepping back into a different time. Unlike other Irish historic monuments, this castle lacked the traditional educational displays, the glass cased objects, the numerous fussy information boards and most notably the velvet ropes tracking the visitor route. This was a castle as raw and historical as I had ever seen it. The third floor is dilapidated, there are dungeons too unsafe to enter, the first floor is in the process of preservation by volunteers while the current owner occupies the second floor. A tanned dark haired man appeared introducing himself as Mateo, an Italian volunteer and student of languages and tourism in Italy. Mateo lead us from room to room, each more detailed than the last, offering tidbits of both historical and supernatural information. Regardless of your beliefs, or lack thereof, in the supernatural, the castle itself is well worth a visit. We passed through music rooms, ballrooms, breakfast rooms even a boudoir with masonic décor. Finally, he led us to Harriet’s staircase – what we had been eagerly anticipating. A wooden staircase ascends up the right tower and wraps itself around the inside of the structure. Looking up, the bannister can be seen to continue to rise for what seems an eternity. If someone were to climb to the top they could look straight down to the bottom of the tower, or they could fall. There is a reason that this is thought to be one of the most haunted locations in Ireland and Europe. In 1861, when she was almost eight, Harriet Bury, the third daughter of the third owner of the castle, fell to her death from the top of this staircase. The young girl with blonde curly hair is said to have heard her cousins playing downstairs and to have mounted the bannister in order to slide down to meet them. In the process she fell to her death just before her eighth birthday. Various incidents have occurred since. Volunteers and visitors alike attest to have heard singing on the staircase as well as a loud, childlike scream. Children in particular are said to interact with the spirit of the little girl: the owner’s son went missing as a young child and was discovered on the staircase. He placated his concerned mother, telling her that the little blond haired girl had been singing and helped him down the stairs. The same child also had an imaginary friend as a child: her name was Harriet. The organizer of the Castlepalooza festival, which takes place on the estate’s grounds annually, once stayed in the volunteer’s quarter in the castle. Waking up in the middle of the night, he rolled over to find himself face to face with a blonde-haired child standing stationary beside his bed. Thinking it was a grandchild of the owner, he asked her to wait while he dressed and that he would take her home. When he returned she had vanished. He ran to the owner to tell her that her grandchild was wandering the castle, possibly sleep walking, but none of her grandchildren were staying that night. The organizer left the castle at once in the middle of the night seeking out accommodation in Tullamore town and he and many of his staff now continue to refuse to sleep in the castle. With all these ghost stories leaving me sufficiently creeped out, I joined the rest of the volunteers outside. While the idea of a paranormal society conjures up some fantastic notions regarding the lives of those involved I found them to be surprisingly normal and friendly people. Lead investigator David Menger was well-spoken, with an accent that represented his roots in America, and told me he works in airport security. I also met Traze Shallow, a young woman with jet black hair, delicate tattoos and a Dublin accent not dissimilar to my own. Traze is a Charleville Volunteer and former team case manager of the PRAOI.

Sitting outside the castle on a picnic bench she admits to having been skeptical at first, but she explains that what drew her to the association was the approach they took: avoiding psychics and preferring instead to either prove or disprove something using more scientific methods. While I visited the castle armed with little more than a camera and accompanied by a fellow Trinity student, the organisation tends to visit in large groups and bring a suitably large quantity of equipment. David Menger introduced me to some of the instruments that he and his team use. The team depends on infrared cameras, which record in both light and darkness, environmental tools that resemble thermometers to investigate temperature and air pressure, digital voice recorders and hand held cameras and triggers – objects which are likely to cause a supernatural response. They use these machines to measure the of environment of a room. If there is a change measured in the location they attempt to find a logical explanation for it, and Traze herself says that “99.9% of the time it’s a plumber, not a priest, that you need”. Indeed, what strikes me about their approach was the lack of snap judgments made among the team and their insistence on actual evidence. They do not simply visit locations already deemed haunted by others spend the night listening out for things that go bump in the night to support the claim of a haunting. No, David and his team approach new sites with a skeptical mindset, refusing to take the word of those gone before them, and instead use their equipment in an attempt to first find logical explanations. I liked this way of thinking, something about it made the group seem more legitimate, as though they themselves would happily dismiss rusting old creaking pipes as nothing more than rusting old creaking pipes. However, the group are convinced the haunting of this particular castle is legitimate. Traze refers to the spirits present in the castle as “The Others”. Both Traze and Dave have had unusual experiences particularly with the recording devices. While there were no audible voices during their investigation, a playback revealed voices that did not register at the time. Traze recalls one such instance where she and three others investigating in the left turret commented that it was

so cold that they would love a hot whiskey. Later listening back to this interaction on the recording device Traze discovered another voice which rasped “Me too”. For David, on first entering the castle, he explains “I heard what appeared to be a small girl bouncing a ball and running up and down the hall while I was house sitting for the trustees one night”. Traze, who will often stay in the castle with other volunteers, says they too report seeing people walk into rooms that subsequently turn out to be locked and, when opened, reveal no inhabitants. Distant conversations have been heard and, most frequently, the sounds of a small child laughing and singing.

have had many experiences from hearing my grandmother call my name who past away a few years ago to more sinister events where items in my bedroom have been thrown through the air”. These events seem like they might be quite traumatic, but David has embraced these experiences and found a group of people with similar experiences in the P.R.A.O.I. Rather than distancing themselves from these experiences, they continue to try to seek out the source of them. When I ask why they keep pursue hauntings despite their past experiences, David explains “we all have our own personal reasons for searching for answers”.

The investigators are not afraid of this though. In fact, they seem to even have developed a friendly relationship with some of the ghosts. Whenever David visits, he always greets Harriet upon entry to the castle who he says he hears giggling from a distance. As Traze explains “if you respect them, they’ll respect you.” Traze has put this motto into practice during the many nights she has spent in the castle. She remembers one night feeling someone stroke the side of her face. Assuming it was her duvet she tossed and turned where upon she felt it again. She then felt the pressure of someone sitting at the bottom of her mattress and heard the door open. She called out in the darkness “I acknowledge you are there, please leave me be and let me sleep” and with that there was silence – no movement against her face, no slamming of a door, no pressure on her mattress.

There is of course a metaphysical element to their investigations. I was curious as to what the team thought that the purpose of those they encountered was. David explained that the vast majority of the team would, in fact, believe in some form of afterlife. In terms of the ghosts, they offer a number of explanations as to why they have not passed on, or simply why they have appeared. David states that there are different kinds of hauntings: in some cases he maintains that ghosts merely come to pay a visit to a location once important to them. Then there are residual hauntings, in which the location haunted was the setting of a traumatic incident for an individual and that, rather than haunting it, part of them stays there and acts out similar things when interacted with – like a reflex action. But, in the case of Charleville Castle, this is an example of where they believe that the person did not pass on, due to the frequency with which she is heard and seen. This is the case of Harriet.

When I ask Traze where her belief in the paranormal began, she explains her first experience was as a child in her parents home, but she doesn’t elaborate. Like Traze, lead investigator David joined the association as a result of childhood experience. For David, it was during his childhood in Boston with his twin brother where he first encountered paranormal activity and he has been fascinated ever since. He and his brother regularly heard unexplainable footsteps, saw objects move of their own accord and even experienced night terrors, which are a form of sleep paralysis. Such terrors convinced him that his childhood room was on fire and resulted in David leaping out of the window to escape. Since his childhood, David has continued to experience these terrifying yet unexplained things: “I

Walking back down the avenue I felt as skeptical as ever about the existence of ghosts, ghouls and poltergeists, yet I felt an empathy with the investigators that I hadn’t anticipated. While I did not relate to the belief in paranormal activity, I did relate to the very kind and genuine men and women that I found driving the Irish paranormal movement. While I, along with the vast majority, may have little time for paranormal investigations, it seemed important that the people I met that day have an outlet in which to meet like-minded people who have, for whatever reason, had similar experiences. And even despite my rigid skepticism, I must admit that, a few nights later, a little girl with blonde curly hair kept walking in and out of my dreams.

Horror Couture For this fashion shoot we took inspiration from our favorite Horror films and TV Shows. From American Horror Story: Coven, The Addams Family and Hitchcock’s ‘The Birds’ to the 80’s cult classic, Carnival Magic. Using a mix of vintage pieces and high street gems (that you can still get your hands on!) We wanted to pay tribute to these films and more importantly to their amazing costume designers – particularly Edith Head and Lou Eyrich who seamlessly turn our screens into a wearable runway. I hope you enjoy pouring over these whimsical photos as much as we did bringing them to you!

COVEN

CARNIVAL MAGIC

HITCHCOCK GIRLS ADDAMS FAMILY

“All that power . . . I just took it, poured it back into myself, and dressed it up in Chanel.” - AHS

“Fashion is not about buying a second skin. Fashion is about having a fantasy” - Albert Elbaz

STYLIST

“What a costume designer does is a cross between magic and camouflage. We create the illusion of changing the actors into what they are not. We ask the public to believe that every time they see a performer on the screen, he's become a different person.” - Edith Head

Carla King-Molina

Ciara Kummert

MODELS

Claudia Kinahan and Heather Moore

Becky Gygax and Bose Allen

CLOTHES

Claudia, Bralet-Topshop Choker-Topshop , Skirt and jacket Stylists own.

STYLISTS Emily Waters and Laura Mulcair

STYLIST Fionnula Egan

MODELS Alona Matvejeva and Alisa Snow

CLOTHES Stylists Own

MODELS

Carmel Conerney. For enquiries contact, carmelconerney@gmail.com

Clementine Yost and Ciara McEvoy

CLOTHES

Heather:Shirt-Topshop Skirt - Stylists own.

PHOTOGRAPHER Grace Nuttall

“Black is such a happy colour” - Morticia

Clementine, Dress,Gloves and Bag, Penneys all else stylists own. Ciara: All Vintage.

MAKE-UP Megan Oliver

HAIR Eimear Quaid

SPECIAL THANKS Lisa Nally and Courtney Brennan

music Following Somerville that same night, headlining at The Button Factory, was I Have A Tribe. A lot of people would have caught glimpses of this young maverick during his months touring with Anna Calvi, Villagers, and Slow Skies during 2013/14. During his show, his confessional pop-folk metamorphosed into a volcano of catharsis that built to explosive highs before falling back to captivating and heart-wrenching lows. Two of his songs are available to listen to online, but I Have A Tribe’s sound is one that simply must be experienced live, and his set at the festival was surely testament to this. His live performance of Monsoon, in particular, demanded a silence of the audience that wasn’t heard at any other point during the weekend. Moving onto Saturday night, taking place on what was a bar illuminated in bright magenta lighting, with a shallow protruding platform, the quaint but ever-so-slightly sleazy Bad Bob’s saw Dublin Beach-Rockers Jet Setter deliver a set to get heads bobbing and hips grooving. Despite the volume being arguably too loud for a venue of Bad Bob’s size – to the point that individual melodies and catchy hooks couldn’t be singled out among the wall of sound –, the band still put on as sunny a show as always, leaving the crowd exhilarated and beaming in the midst of their sensationally minimalist indie-rock vibes.

Hard Working Class Heroes Leonard Buckley Ireland (and Dublin in particular) has always had a thriving live music scene, with new artists sprouting incessantly every year. However, it goes without saying that with such proliferation, what ensues more often than not is vast amounts of mimicry with only a handful of originality. In the last few years, however, there appears to have been a growing impetus for progression and innovation in the Irish pop music scene, and this year’s Hard Working Class Heroes festival certainly had a lot to show for it. For over a decade now, Hard Working Class Heroes has acted as a platform through which upcoming Irish acts can showcase their talent for a crowd of enthusiasts on the lookout for new music. This year’s line-up – despite its occasional fluffs – was incredibly strong, and exhibited some of the best music to have emerged from the

Hozier Hozier Áine O’Connell Despite his meteoric rise to fame, it’s hard to envy Hozier. After filling the fields of Longitude and Electric Picnic on the basis of six songs, the excitement around his self-titled debut album reached fever pitch. Appearing on TV every five minutes and performing left, right and centre, it seemed as though his album could never reach the impossibly high expectations set out for it. However, the 24 year old Wicklow native has actually pulled it off – ‘Hozier’ is ambitious, well-crafted and simply gorgeous. The album opens with – what else? – Take me to Church, that utterly mesmeric tune that went viral last year. While many have professed to feeling sick of the song, it’s undeniable that it gives the album a confident feeling; this, it seems, is an album one should take seriously. And take it seriously I do. Angel of Small Death and the Codeine Scene is all drums, gospel tinges and James Joyce references. “There’s a feeling of doing whatever you can…to find yourself” ac-

Irish music scene in a very long time. Beginning with Somerville, the young Galway-based singer-songwriter’s music was one that much of the audience may not have encountered before on account of the fact that she has yet to release anything. Joined by a band on stage, her unhurried and hushed melancholic folk became inflected with what was at times an unrelenting electronic quality. This provided an almost paradoxical contrast and counterpoint in her sound that worked remarkably well and proved to be crucial to her originality. Despite her set being cut short due to time constraints, the spectral quality of her music had the capacity to lull the audience into a trance of mesmerisation and leave them pining for more at the announcement that she was finished after four short songs.

cording to the man himself, stating that A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man was a major influence on the song. Whether these literary references pass you by or not, this upcoming single deserves to be singled out. Excellent, too, are Jackie and Wilson, a cheerful, bluesy ode to love, a topic Hozier seems pre-occupied by on the album. His love songs have an edge, though. Someone New sounds more like an ode to lust more than love– and it’s refreshing to hear a romantic song that isn’t about love eternal. Someone New is a standout on the album, showcasing everything that makes Hozier as popular as he is. If there is one complaint to be had, it’s that the album seems to be strictly divided. The first seems like the “singles section”; the songs are much more upbeat, with obvious pop sensibilities. The album quickly gets very dark after the first five or six songs and it jars slightly with the listening experience. Songs like To Be Alone and It Will Come Back are extremely strong additions to the album, but it all gets a little…heavy after a while. While a purist will no doubt disagree, I think ‘Hozier’ almost sounds better on shuffle, as the end seems to weigh much more heavily than the start. Minor criticisms aside, based on the strength of this album, the future looks even brighter for Hozier. His influences; from blues to pop right through to traditional Irish music; strengthen his songs. His already distinctive voice and ability to craft numerous melodies to stick in your head for long after the album has ended.

Following this, over in The Button Factory, after a few years of dormancy, eclectic Alt-Rock Dubliners Cloud Castle Lake put on one of the more impressively phantasmal shows of the weekend. Generally speaking, when a band is fronted by a male falsetto vocalist like Daniel McAuley, it can very often lead to a disappointing live sound (given the difficulties of staying in tune and not allowing oneself to be drowned-out by the music on stage). In the band’s remarkable live set, however, McAuley proved himself more than capable of carrying it off in the dizzying heights reached vocally in Sync, or among the boisterous climaxes of pounding tribal drums, synth and shoegaze guitar in A Wolf Howling. Finally, of the range of acts on offer throughout the weekend, Meltbrains? were perhaps ones to stand out the most. Their unquestionably chaotic and avant-garde live sound is one that Dubliners will have encountered time after time over the past year at their performances at Knockanstockan, Electric Picnic, and supporting Slow Magic in The Button Factory. It’s difficult to describe the goings-on of a Meltybrains? live show. It is a music of miscellany that pushes the audience’s visual, auditory, and even kinaesthetic perceptions to the very limits of experience and comprehension. Their performance at the festival was comprised of moments of intense techno, ethereal post-rock, and at one point, some sort of choreographed jungle-beat pop music, and made for an altogether exhausting experience for band and audience alike. This is undoubtedly one bunch of lads who are at the very heart of the new wave of music welling up at the present moment, and are a group worth keeping an eye on as they continue to flourish in their bold experimentation.

VANN MUSIC Orla Conway

Ahead of their set at Meeting House Square as part of the Hard Working Class Heroes festival, Aaron Smyth (vocals) and Phil Costello (guitar) of VANN MUSIC had a chat about their journey thus far and their writing process. After meeting through the internet, the Irish foursome set out together and they've been busy playing their synth-pop to crowds across the country for nearly two years. Their single Tina really took things to another level, getting plenty of attention and opening them up to a whole new audience. “Tina was one of the first songs we put together as a band and I think we always thought it was special.” Aaron explains, “We really wanted to put it on 'Electro Shock Dreams' which is our first EP, but in the end we ran out of time [and] we also felt it wouldn't really fit on the EP with the other songs. We made a decision to leave it off and to maybe put it on another EP or just release it as a single. Then just how everything went we just decided to put it out.” With one EP and Tina under their belts, VANN MUSIC are far from slowing down, with an EP coming out in February next year, for which there's already 25 songs written, they promise that the new songs have something new, without swaying too far away from the sound that has gotten them here, Phil elaborates: “It’s still VANN MUSIC but we’ve gone at it with a different vision than we did with the last EP. We’ve put more of a groove in to the music .” Aaron continues by saying that they’ve “slowed it down a bit, the other stuff was very french-house, it’s bangin’. And we love doing that,it was built for festivals really. When me and Phil were working on tunes, the first batch for the band it was always “We’re going to be playing festivals,” and that's the kind of atmosphere that their music captures. Aaron goes on, “This [next EP] has more groove. But I think as a band you develop, and your other influences start to bleed through. Otherwise you don’t really progress as writers or band.” With “a lot more guitar going into this EP. There’s a lot of synth obviously but we’re putting a lot more guitar.” adds Phil. Their sound is a bit different to other things around at the moment, when asked if they ever set out to sound a certain way, they explain how it just happened: “It just kind of falls out. There's a song that me and Phil started writing called 'Neon', [I don't know if it will make the cut but] we were having a pretty serious conversation about a couple of things that had been going on, and we sat down to work on something else and then within 45 minutes we had a start, middle and end. We've found that the songs that we put a lot of time into, that we're trying to make work – they're the ones that fall by the wayside and it's the other ones that just naturally happen in the moment, that just come together, they're just leading the race for the record.” Phil agrees and says that “It's all about excitement. It is. If Aaron started playing something and it was boring I'd be like “fuck that” and we'd move on. And vice-versa. Aaron will play something or I'll play something and the ears perk and it's like “this will sound good there”...[…] it's like building blocks, we'll add something, it just grows until we've got like 3 or 4 or 5 or 10 minutes of something that we're like “yeah, let's knuckle down on this one”.It just comes together.” Aaron then points out “And then we don't bother going back to the other one that we spent six months on.” Which Phil agrees with “Actually that's what happens a lot of the time! We'll go in with a task like “Let's finish song A” and we'll come out with like 2 songs that have nothing to do with it. It's a good process, it makes it fun.” With regards to the writing process, everyone in the band contributes, as Aaron clarifies, “We all write. Music comes first all the time. With this EP, everyone is bringing songs to the table and we’re getting through them one by one.” Phil continues that “9 times out of 10, one person has an idea whether it’s a synth line, a guitar line or a bass, whatever and then that usually incites someone else in the band and then… it comes together and gets developed.” VANN MUSIC do have a pretty signature sound already and even if everything happens pretty naturally, Phil points out that there are sounds that

they're aware they use more than once, “we have one or two particular synth sounds that we’re really fond of. I’d go as far as saying we love them. And we try to implement those into whatever we’re doing because it’s part of us since day one. “ For the up and coming music, Aaron explains that there is a range of themes but it's mainly to do with experiences that the band have had whilst knowing each other “ I think the theme that's running through the record at the moment is... it seems like a series of speech in that each song tells a personal story of something. So it's kind of like, it's a collection of incidences or situations over the last while. Each person or each song has a story to tell about a certain point in time. That's the theme that's running through most of the songs when they come together. […] As a band we've kind of lived through some of those songs together, even in two years. So that's what I think it's more of a band record. It's more of a VANN MUSIC record than anything else because everyone can take from the experience and can take from the history of what's happened. “ VANN MUSIC have been building up a steady following in the last two years and this summer they had a decent festival run and they mention that Electric Picnic was a highlight, “Picnic was amazing, we got a really big crowd in the tent. It was mind blowing. It was great, the crowd worked with us, they were really receptive to the new songs.”

They also mention that at Electric Picnic, meeting fans afterwards it was the new songs that people were talking about. As far as new music goes, their latest video for 'Gold & Silver' was released at the start of October, and it's pretty different from their previous videos in that the band feature in it and there isn't a storyline. This was a very conscious decision explains Phil, “It’s a performance. it was to get across who we are as a band. Because one thing we found was that people who liked ‘Tina’ didn’t know anything about the band. They didn’t even really know the band name We thought we’d make it to put a face to the band. I think most bands go through that, they go “Right, people need to know who we are,” and what the band is about and stuff… It adds a character.” Aaron continues in saying that the video shows who they are in rehearsals, “We just don’t stand around watching each other play. It’s a representation of the energy that we have when we’re in a room or n a stage. And like Phil said, we put two videos out and there’s a story behind it but no one knows the band behind the stories. So we just thought “Let’s just do a video where we’re doing our thing”...And there’s lots of flashy lights… we brought the festival to the video”. The video definitely shows the band as they are and you can check it out on their YouTube page as well as their previous two. Here at Utzine, we suggest that you check out these videos and get to know VANN MUSIC sooner rather than later, because it looks like they're on to big things.

food & drink The Woollen Mills - from buttons to burgers

Previously the one stop-shop for buttons, needles and thread, the Woollen Mills is now home to a unique eating house. The historical building, which overlooks the Ha’penny Bridge and in which famous Irish novelist James Joyce worked as a salesman, has been taken over by Elaine Murphy of The Winding Stair restaurant and transformed into an eatery comprising of a restaurant, bakery and takeaway.

Niamh O’Sullivan

After a careful read of the menu, I opted for “Pigs on the green pork shoulder” which was served on a wedge of iceberg lettuce with caramelised onions, “Young Buck’s Blue Cheese dressing” and crispy bread. My friend chose the sweet potato and quinoa burger with

The industrial style decor has an Ikea feel to it, simple but practical. The kitchen is open so you can see the chefs at work and at one end of the room there is a deli serving freshly baked cakes and coffee. The menu is split into four section - meat, fish, vegetable and Gruel. The latter is a tribute to the former Dame Street restaurant known for its comfort food. There is also a section on the menu for sambos, soup and salads as well as a vegetarian section, which boasts an array of appealing dishes.

beetroot dip, whipped feta, pickled red onion and baby gem on a “London Bath bun”. The pork shoulder was very nice, although it wasn’t as flavoursome as I had hoped. That said, the buttermilk blue cheese dressing added a nice sharpness to the dish. The sweet potato quinoa burger was rather crumbly making it messy to eat. The “best part”, according to my friend, was the whipped feta and beetroot dip. The pork dish was €10 and the burger was €11, quite pricey for lunch, but a nice treat all the same. Though we passed on dessert there were plenty of sweet treats that caught my eye, including an Oreo, peanut butter and chocolate tart and a blueberry meringue pie. I will definitely be back to try something sweet the next time, perhaps for the morning special: cake of the day and tea or coffee (€4.95). With its cool vibe and comfort foods revisited, there is nothing “ordinary” about The Woollen Mills. Although pricey (especially for students) it is a nice treat and makes for a change for anyone suffering from restaurant fatigue! The Woollen Mills: 42 Ormond Quay Lower, Dublin 1

Cornucopia: Outsiders only! Robert Greene

Vegan, raw, coeliac friendly, sugar-free… at Cornucopia the only real “outsider” is the Centra chicken fillet roll buff. Welcome to the home of “wholefood”. And home is exactly the sense you get when crossing the threshold into the pokey, yet cosy café. The decor is what I like to term “country chic” – with all the comfort of a fireplace and couches, and all the glamour of floral wallprints and chandeliers. It is quaint yet contemporary. And with ambient music humming in the background and the gentle buzz of people conversing over lunch, the atmosphere is unmistakably homey. And then of course there is the food. From fresh salads to tasty soups, and from homemade baked goods to heart-warming mains, the selection at Cornucopia lives up to its name. With such an abundance of choice, I was more wavering than the Irish weather. Luckily my “dinner date” was running late, so I had a much needed five minutes to deliberate. As a lover of gazpacho, I finally settled on the chilled avocado and carrot soup (raw food) as well as three side salads: a chili chickpea and green bean salad, a beetroot and apple salad with a mint and yoghurt dressing, and a carrot and poppy seed salad (all gluten free). I also helped myself to a slice of spelt bread with sunflower seeds. The verdict? A bona fide gour-gasm (that is gourmet orgasm if you were wondering). The soup was sweet and silky, the bread was nutty and wholesome and the salads were heavenly, especially the beetroot and apple salad. My “date” was equally full of praise – her aubergine ragout was, quote, “absolutely delicious”. For dessert (yes, we still had room for more!) it was a slice of pumpkin and coconut cake (gluten free) to share, a creamy and rich mousse-like cake on a sweet biscuit base. Decadent? Yes. Divine? Of course. With fantastic food, friendly staff and a cosy atmosphere, the only real drawback is the price. At €13 for a hot dish, it is a far cry from a “sub of the day”. But then again, Cornucopia’s fresh food ethos is a far cry from Subway’s “eat fresh” motto. Plus there are less costly options at Cornucopia, such as soup and bread (€5), as well as lunchtime specials (12-3pm) and student discounts (10%). And with the ruthless return of cold, dark, blustery evenings, who could say no to potato, leek and courgette gratin with a pumpkin seed and basil crust? Cornucopia :19/20 Wicklow Street, Dublin 2

The House of the Rising Sun Venina Kalistratova Easy to overlook in the heart of Dublin's emerging Chinatown lies a secluded and humble restaurant with painted doors. 119 Capel Street, also known as Arisu, is the Room of Requirement when it comes to restaurants; not hard to find once you know what you are looking for, yet easy to miss amidst a multitude of Asian stores. I only found out about it thanks to Fate and of course from typing Korean food on Yelp. This week, I decided to stop being an “outsider” to all things from the Far East and give Arisu a try. The place itself is cosy and welcoming, once you brave the awkwardness of staring at a menu and trying to figure out what everything means. The staff are smiley and attentive. They promptly take you to your table, which is fitted with its own barbecue set

in the middle and what looked like elephant trunks suspended from the ceiling. In fact, this unusual looking and complicated mechanism turns out before concocting wonderful meaty creations right in front of your baffled gaze. The menu is very complete, comprised of both traditional Korean meals, such as Dulgogi Dup-Bap, Kimchi and Pork Zige, Dolsot Bibim-Bap, and a vast array of culinary creations which offer a wide range of spiciness for the adventurous diner. I would recommend the sushi, which I shared with my friend Srujana for a very reasonable price. For those of you on a tight student budget, a Korean Bento Box is a fabulous option as it is both tasty and affordable (plus you get a free welcome soybean soup and cabbage kimchi!) If you miss taking part in the cooking process, you can sit back and observe the preparation of your own barbeque feast, with a little help from your “personal” cooking set and the mind-boggling "hoovers" hanging from the ceiling. Overall, Arisu surpassed my expectations, not only with its cosy, relaxing atmosphere and its student-friendly prices but especially with the authenticity and genuine passion reflected in the food’s fantastic flavours. There is no doubt, I will soon be back to repeat the amazing experience. Arisu: 119 Capel Street, Dublin 1

Autumn is finally upon us, the season of comfort foods and “warm” spices. This month’s theme is “the outsiders”, so I decided to look at foods that are not that common here in Ireland. At this lovely time of year, pumpkin is very popular in the United States, for both decorative and culinary purposes. However, it is something that is not often used here in cooking. I have substituted pumpkin for butternut squash, its sweeter cousin, to concoct two great tasting, heart-warming recipes.

Pumpkin Pasta This is a quick and simple recipe. It is vegetarian, nourishing, and heart-warming. Perfect for this time of year.

Róisín Power

Serves 4 INGREDIENTS 1 butternut squash or pumpkin (peeled and deseeded) 2 tbsp olive oil 200ml crème fraîche 75g parmesan (grated) 400g tagliatelle Salt and pepper

Butternut butter This sweet spread is a great treat that keeps well for up to a week in an airtight container and makes for a healthier alternative to Nutella on toast.

INSTRUCTIONS Preheat the oven to 180° C Cut the squash into small cubes, place on a baking tray, drizzle with olive oil and then bake in the oven for 15-25mins (until soft) Boil the water for the pasta and cook according to the packet instructions Remove the squash from the oven and coat with the grated parmesan and crème fraîche. Season with salt and pepper. Place the tray back in the oven and allow the cheese to melt When the pasta is al dente (with bite), drain it and return it to the pot. Stir in the creamy squash mixture and divide between the bowls Tuck in!

INGREDIENTS

MIX IT UP

Once cooked, puree the squash with a hand blender or potato masher. Place it in a pot over a low heat Add the sugar and spice Stir occasionally until smooth and silky Allow to cool completely before placing in the fridge Pop on the toast and start spreading!

1 butternut squash (peeled and deseeded) 4-6 tbsp brown sugar 1-2 tsp mixed spice (not all spice!) INSTRUCTIONS Cut the squash into 4-6 chunks Place into a microwave safe bowl. Microwave the squash for 20mins or until very soft

Feel free to sub in other types of squash or pumpkin or even a mix. Also if you prefer something more tangy, try natural yogurt instead of crème fraîche. Finally, if you don’t have parmesan at hand, any strong cheddar or hard cheese will do.

film & tv Mr. Turner Ian Eglington Mike Leigh’s new film Mr. Turner, a biopic of English landscape painter J. M. W. Turner (an unforgettable Timothy Spall) shows the director and writer in fine form at this mature stage of his cinematic career. Having garnered international acclaim in 1993 for his film Naked, Leigh has carved a name for himself as a creator of socio-realist British cinema that never falls victim to the usual kitchen-sink dreariness. His films, always impeccably stylised with performances of the highest calibre, deliver cutting, but never cynical, portrayals of contemporary British life. In his recent films, style has taken a back seat to fine performances in female-centric stories. The Oscar-nominated Imelda Staunton and Sally Hawkins shine in Vera Drake and Happy-Go-Lucky respectively, while Lesley Manville’s career defining performance in 2010’s Another Year set the standard for perceptive and nuanced screen-acting this decade. With Mr. Turner, however, Leigh returns to a male-lead story that is all about style, similar to Naked which made a star of David Thewlis (Lupin in the Harry Potter series). The film tracks the later stages of Turner’s life, his many lovers and his artwork. Timothy Spall gives probably a career-best performance as the artist whose vocation knows no limits. His beautiful marine seascapes reflect not the sometimes tumultuous personal life of the artist. He mingles with the artistic aristocracy, has many lovers (one being his ever-loving maid played quietly but powerfully by Dorothy Atkinson) and, in a scene that hints at surrealism, ties himself to a ship’s sail in an effort to find inspiration. He wheezes, grunts, flirts and paints his way across the film’s two-and-a-halfhour running time. Spall’s Turner is despicable and endearing, outrightly refusing to acknowledge the existence of his two children

but also exercising biting humour and a healthy cynicism towards the echelons of the painting world. Spall deservedly won the Best Actor prize at the Cannes Film Festival this year but the most praise belongs to Dick Pope, the film’s cinematographer. He composes each shot in the vein one of Turner’s paintings. Some may criticise this approach as unsubtle but the sheer beauty and compositional verve on display will leave you marvelling at every frame. Scenes set in rooms have the actors positioned in such a way that a freeze-frame would recall any Romantic painting. It is only Lesley Manville, returning here as hyper-active “natural philosopher” Mary Somerville, whose energy

and movement sets the balanced frames of some scenes off-kilter. Such a move seems necessary as the film, in its later stages, runs the risk of becoming a simply visual treat. Its 149-minute running-time becomes tiresome towards the final act as we begrudgingly follow Turner (after whom the Turner Prize for art was named) to the end of his life. The film needs some trimming to merit a place atop Leigh’s filmography and the abundance of British character actors seems, at times, to be an exercise in name-checking. Still, you’re not likely to see a more gorgeous and engaging film this year. Nor will you ever see a funnier scene that revolves around the merits and failings of the gooseberry. One of the year’s best.

Unbreakable: The Mark Pollock Story Lee Jones The film opens with a couple waltzing in a room lit up in fluorescent hues of purple and green. They stumble and laugh, staring into each others’ eyes as the music slows. It takes a few minutes for me to realise that the man who confidently leads, is blind. Suddenly, the scene seems more poignant; knowing that this is the man that will face paralysis and severe depression in later life. For many Irish people, Mark Pollock’s journey is familiar and utterly inspiring. His courageous adventures have led him to become the first blind man to reach the South Pole and he is now a ubiquitous sight on The Late Late Show and Irish radio. However, in 2010, four weeks before his wedding day, Mark fell from a balcony in a hotel room at the Henley Royal Regatta and his way of life was transformed dramatically again. Unbreakable chooses to focus on the impact that Mark’s accident has had on his relationship with his fiancé Simone and his own mental health in a heartrending and deeply personal design. The documentary’s title could be changed to the more aptly ‘The Mark and Simone Pollock Story’ because Mark’s fiancé and later wife plays an equally important role. It is her sensitivity and optimism that drives Mark to seek out the cure to his seemingly incurable injuries and it is also with Simone that most of my sympathy lies. There are any scenes in which her fragility shines through body

language and expressions but her voice remains strong for the sake of her husband. In this sense, it struck me while watching how artificial acting can appear, especially when juxtaposed with a real life person’s emotional spectrum. Mark’s whimsical humour also manages to rescue the film’s tone from descending into a dreary, cynical abyss. Accepting his Irish Person of the Year Award, Mark’s speech steers clear of a weepy, self-pitying route and very much like the documentary itself, adopts a suitably uplifting note. That being said, the director lacks a linear narrative that at times, makes the viewing detached and tedious. The initial few scenes jump around to show some of Mark’s previous achievements, then his meeting with Simone and how he became blind in a disconnected jumble that lasts only a handful of minutes. While it is the relationship of the couple that carries the documentary through to the end, I struggled to stay seated for the last half hour, when Mark’s search for bionic limbs became repetitive and lugubrious. Unbreakable is most certainly not a perfect film, often edging into saccharine territory, but it does effectively illustrate an incredibly moving story that left quite a few movie-goers teary eyed.

societies

GUN CULTURE WORDS | Clementine Yost ILLUSTRATIONS | Ella Rowe

It was a cold, rainy night. The type of night that horror directors adore, where little effort is needed from the audience, or perhaps just me, to expect something sinister is about to happen. After nearly interrupting a rehearsal for Player’s co-op, I began pacing anxiously back and forth, unsure where the rifle club was, worried my boots might flood and nervous I might get hypothermia and die here in this puddled alleyway behind the rugby pitch. I was told this was the largest inner city shooting range in Dublin, so where exactly was it hidden? After messaging Stephen Ennis, perhaps a psychotic amount, I saw the smallest, green oompa-loompa sized door opening outward towards me in the darkened alleyway. Hallelujiah, praise the Lord!, it was indeed my rifle club savior, rescuing me from impending frostbite to usher me down this mysterious rabbit hole and into the rifle club’s underground layer.

hunting rifle in the forest with a friends dad, not at anything, but I hadn’t a clue what I was doing and I suppose looking back the entire thing couldn’t have been anything short of highly illegal, in addition to being rather unsafe. After giving me the three cardinal rules of rifle club, most importantly, don’t point the gun at anyone and always keep the barrel pointing down the range, Stephen began demonstrating how shooting works. (Incidentally you’re allowed to talk about the rifle club.) I paid my very best attention and yet most of what he said went right over my head. When it was my turn to hold the air rifle, I sat in the folded chair and grasped the rifle, most of its weight supported by a stack of textbooks and a small beanbag. Stephen

However, I had heard rumors that Rifle Club was being kicked out of this clearly well-lived in and much-loved base In an earnest attempt at flattery, I addressed the rumor, asking if and if so when, they were being evicted from their layer. Stephen Ellis, my tour guide and shooting coach for the evening, said they have plans to stay past Christmas. Stephen said they “haven’t got a firm date,” adding, “in no way are we finishing” and would I mind not calling the range a layer because despite Batman being the best, the word layer only furthers the negative misconceptions surrounding the rifle club.

Aside from the occasional paintball or BBgun, this was only the second time I’d ever shot what felt like a proper gun. I once shot a

When asked about the competitions, Stephen went into considerable length about the wild adventures of Colors and Intervarsities. Like any other club at these events, the rifle club goes on the lash for a weekend of shooting and general debauchery with a good few cans in tow. In short, the rifle club is neither for the faint nor the straight-laced of heart. After my half hour slot in the range, it was easy to see how the rifle club has so many members. It annoys Stephen when “people think we are fringe” despite the fact that “we get lots of members every year.” I’ll admit to wrongly assuming it was a niche club. It’s so popular in fact, that last year, they ranked second in membership behind DU snow sports, a club which can’t practice locally and tends to include the word ski in ski trip to denote the likely presence of snow and not the mythical possibility of hoards of yoked trinity students actually skiing. Rifle club’s strong base is definitely strengthened by having a range on campus, enabling them to “run at full capacity all year” and not fall victim to the sways of trending or seasonal student interests.

Down the stairs into a cavernous expanse of gray concrete lies the shooting range and the club room, where amidst a smattering of kitbags and well-loved couches on its floor are numerous relics and memories of past championships; photos, medals and numerous foot-long trophies. It felt crowded with miscellaneous proof of rifle club’s popularity and success.

These misconceptions really drive them mad, just ask Stephen. What gets him is that “a lot of people have this idea we’re into ‘gun culture’ or ‘hunting’ and generally associate the sport with violence.” He explained how they “remind people that we are a sport,” and turning to me, noted “what you’re doing tonight is the beginning of an Olympic sport.”

explained how I should fit the rifle against my shoulder and slide my cheek against it just so, keeping myself, and the rifle, as still as possible. Stephen had little to no expectations of me. However, I am delighted to report that I wasn’t a complete waste of space and actually got most of my scores in the 10s and 9s, which I didn’t know at the time, but Stephen rather quickly explained to me, are the sort of scores you want in the competitions.

Rifle club gives loads of students the opportunity to try shooting, who would never have had the opportunity before, just by simply signing up online and registering for a slot in the range. My slot at the range was transformative. I arrived fearing an early death from my bone-chilling scuttle round the full metal camouflage of their entrance. Having never been there before, my first impression was eerily reminiscent of the set for The Lovely Bones. However, after thirty minutes of chatter with rifle club members and a fun little competition against my neighboring newbie, I realized the range was truly nothing more than an endearing fort for these athletes to mediate and enjoy their favourite sport.

Standard interview process

As I left, feeling enlightened and almost like I could actually be Katniss Everdeen, I was stopped and my fantasy bubble unceremoniously popped with the kind request that I wash my hands in order that I didn’t get led poisoning.