The Pembroke bullfrogTriniTy Term 2011

2 The Pembroke bullfrog 3front cover: Wittgenstein’s Dilemma (© Tom Phillips, photo by ben Drury)

eDiToriallife at Pembroke is replete with dilemmas, and never more so than

during Trinity term. Passing through the college in the summer months, it is not difficult to find many a student pondering whether to play a game – or three – of croquet, or laze on Chapel Quad to soak up the sun, or even, finals looming, whether to virtuously entomb themselves in the library. at this time of aestival quandaries, the front cover of this issue presents a conundrum of its own: Wittgenstein’s Dilemma.

This piece was created in 1999 by artist and former oxonian Tom Phillips, two of whose creations belong to our own emery gallery (to read more about Tom Phillips and rima’s Song, newly acquired by the gallery, go to pages 8-9.) Wittgenstein’s aphorism, ‘The limits of my language are the limits of my World”, is spelled out twice on each side of an acrylic cube. The cube simultaneously confirms Witt-genstein’s suggestive assertion – the cube relies on the words for its structural integrity – and refutes it, for the cube’s transparency, which allows the viewer to see into, through and beyond the world of the cube, demonstrates the limitlessness and even the non-existence, the

fallacy, of the cube and, indeed, the statement itself. above all, it shows an awareness of how language and art can be success-fully fused: this magazine has always made efforts to achieve that union, just as it owes the very etymology of its name to a work in the college collection.

in a similar, although perhaps less high-falutin’, way, the bullfrog attempts to draw attention to the importance of expression, whether the hand reaches for the pen or the paintbrush. This issue features writing on a wide array of topics by Pembrokians both at home and from all over the world; at this time of great change in college and around the globe, when events surrounding us seem to be altering at an increasingly relentless pace, the abil-ity to describe, reflect upon and chronicle the world in which we live remains perhaps the greatest lesson we can learn from Wittgenstein’s contention.

We find another one of Wittgenstein’s pronouncements - “i don’t know why we are here, but i’m pretty sure that it is not in order to enjoy ourselves” - rather unpalatable, especially in the midst of Trinity’s many delights. We can only hope that, were Wittgenstein here now, leaning back in a punt with a glass of Pimm’s in one hand and a copy of the bullfrog in the other, he might have revised his point of view.

enjoy the term ahead,

CoNTeNTSalex Joynes

margot arthur

Caroline Daly, Tilly Smith, abbie Williams

matthew byrd

ramya arnold

David bowkett

aneira roose-mcClew, alex Temple

rachel Wilson

Paul Seddon

genny edwards

lauren Clark-hughes

ally Doyle

aneira roose-mcClew

anya howe

Ziad Samaha

helen Pye

lucy Du

flo Walker

Charlie mcCann

The aNimaTioN geNeraTioN

18 DayS laTer

PorTraiT of The arTiST aS a maN

‘oN The iroNy of PaTrioTiSm’

The arT of STreeT liviNg

fuNDameNTally exPerimeNTal

The gulu - kigali DaSh

‘SleeP’

ParTyiNg beyoND The friNge

iN The Wake of The greaT Wave

ClaSS CoNTrol

eaTiNg To live or liviNg To eaT?

‘The PiNNaCle’

‘uNDerWaTer’

‘a beauTiful youNg girl goiNg To beD’

laSTiNg imPreSSioNS

‘uNTiTleD’

‘WiNDoW ShoPPiNg’

oN TraCk for SuCCeSS

468

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Charlie mcCannCo-editor

Paul SeddonCo-editor

one of Walt Disney’s abiding rules that constituted his philoso-phy of filmmaking was his belief that ‘[i]t’s kind of fun to do the

impossible.’ In the many decades that have followed, the films that most embody this, and Disney’s ethos as a whole, are those that have emerged from Pixar animation Studios, with their revolution-ary new approach to animation and the breathtaking visuals that this helped to create. yet in the summer of last year, the challenge that Pixar faced was of a rather different kind - some would say an impossible one. for Pixar were ready to release Toy Story 3, 11 years after the previous instalment and a full 15 from the watershed moment in entertainment when Toy Story was first broadcast to the world. The stakes and expectations were both equally high. for it is a fundamental rule of cinema that sequels, and especially ‘three-quels’, are dangerous territory: only a handful have succeeded, and none of the triumphant trilogies had been made after such a long stretch of time has passed. all fans of the previous two instalments, and especially those whose own age mirrored that of andy, the own-er of Woody, buzz and company, were naturally curious to witness the event, and so initial box office success was at least guaranteed. but Toy Story 3 meant much more than this. Toy Story was undoubt-edly the movie event of our generation, rivalled only in the literary world by harry Potter for the place it holds in the collective memory.

and so, Toy Story 3 arrived and so, in turn, did the reviews. it was described in equal parts as ‘hilarious’, ‘touching, ‘exhilarating’ and proclaimed to be a ‘masterpiece’, even a ‘modern myth.’ gary Wol-cott perhaps summed up the general feeling regarding the film best when he wrote, ‘Pixar produces the best movies on the planet. Pe-riod. Want proof? after Toy Story 3 the audience cried then cheered. and critics cried. Critics don’t cry. ever.’ once again, the movie-go-ing public was reminded as to why we had any doubts surrounding Pixar in the first place. With a dazzling combination of visuals, voice

artistry, their seemingly endless imagination and the great sweep of emotions that their films explore, Pixar once again affirmed them-selves as peerless masters of their craft and, indeed, the best film-makers working today, across all genres.

My first Pixar moment was in 1996 with the UK release of Toy Story. i remember being instantly attracted by the trailer, but found it difficult to comprehend or compare it to any other film, due to it being quite unlike anything i had ever seen. it lived up to my every expectation and exceeded many. The characters were instantly appealing, aside from Sid of course, and the colours so vivid and bright, a feast for the eyes. as the credits rolled, i immediately yearned for a collection of these toys for myself. and so began a new tradition of me visiting the cinema to be excited, thrilled and amused by Pixar: a bug’s life, monsters, inc., finding Nemo, all enchanting and enjoyable with their individual merits. The constant throughout these visits to the cinema was accompaniment by my parents, and my ever-growing confusion as to what it was that made them so enjoy these films, films which to my eyes were for children alone. Yet slowly the truth began to dawn on me, and it was confirmed with ratatouille and the mesmerising scene in which anton ego, a crusty and cold food

critic, is transported to his youth with one taste of ratatouille, his review instantly transformed from damning to glowing. What follows is one of the most glorious testimonies to the power of the arts, and the bravery of those who create, only to be rubbished or dismissed for their efforts. Here, Pixar was not only producing a stunning film about a rat with a dream, but also crafting their very own argument of art for art’s sake.

The profundity and depth of this scene is not a rarity for Pixar, it is a hallmark. Every parent must identify with Marlin the clownfish of finding Nemo, whose own tragedies means he stifles and shields his son to such an extent that he is unable to grow up like a nor-mal child (or, indeed, a fish). Similarly, monsters, inc. has a scene in which Sulley realises the effect that his ability to scare has on young children when confronted with an image of boo, the hero of the film, quaking with fear at the sight of his aggression. It is a blis-teringly honest depiction of self-realization and the ugly depths we sometimes plumb for reward. one of the key Pixar moments that defines this ability to engage with its audience is Jessie’s Song, of Toy Story 2, which charts the relationship of Jessie and her owner: from the days when they were inseparable in the child’s youth, to Jessie’s eventual abandonment and the loneliness which came with it as her owner grows up. The means through which Pixar commu-nicate these themes has, over time, become yet more daring and bold. The opening montage of up, depicting the everyday lives of an everyday couple, is accompanied by music alone. Their salad days, their hopes and ambitions, their tragedies and losses are communi-cated in what is perhaps the most affecting and startlingly realistic three minutes of film I have witnessed. This, to me, is one of Pixar’s greatest feats: their ability to explore complex issues is something to be celebrated, but it also follows in the great tradition of many children’s films. What sets Pixar apart is that they unflinchingly show

the seemingly banal aspects of life; as seen in up, Carl and ellie’s life together is seemingly punctuated by incidents of little cause for excitement. yet Pixar elevates these moments, glorifying them. rus-sell, the hopelessly naive adventure scout who accompanies Carl on his journey, says it best when he says of time spent with his father, ‘I think the boring stuff is the stuff I remember the most.’ The late ellie’s last message to her husband is the line, ‘Thanks for the adventure. Now go have one of your own.’ Pixar show that all life is to be celebrated and enjoyed, and is consecrated and defined by those who we share it with.

leaving the cinema after Toy Story 3 was much more than the feel-ings one experiences after having seen a particularly special film: it was the sense that i had somehow just witnessed my own transition from childhood, an experience which no doubt countless felt when the credits rolled. Toy Story 3 continues in the great tradition that is at the heart of all the arts yet which only the greatest works can achieve, namely to hold ‘the mirror up to nature.’ Pixar, to me, helps to bridge the gulf between childhood and adulthood; it conveys the themes which underpin life to children without patronising or trivial-izing, and allows adults to rediscover their youth without ever sen-timentalising.

There is a magical moment in monsters, inc., the final sequence, in which Sulley is allowed to visit boo once more, the joyful toddler who taught him the truth of what life is for. a year has passed, and Sulley naturally fears that she may have forgotten him. She hasn’t, much to his delight, and reacts with glee. This is how i feel about Pixar: they allow us all brief but beautiful glimpses into what we have left behind but not forgotten. and i for one await the next peek into the wardrobe, where i am once again granted the privilege of bask-ing in the splendour of Pixar and be a child once again.

The aNimaTioN geNeraTioNalex JoyNeS ShiNeS a lamP oN Pixar’S CiNemaTiC aChievemeNTS

“What sets Pixar apart is that they unflinchingly show the seemingly banal aspects of life... Pixar elevates these moments,

glorifying them.”

graphics: ant lewis4 The Pembroke bullfrog 5

18 DayS laTerThere aND baCk agaiN: arabiST margoT arThur ShareS her PerSPeCTive oN The revoluTioN of 25 JaNuary

When i arrived in Cairo last october i had a feeling that the com-ing year would be a crucial one in egyptian politics. i knew

that the Western media were getting excited about someone called muhammad el baradei and with the December Parliamentary elec-tions on the horizon, which in 2005 had witnessed a muslim brother-hood gain one fifth of the seats, I eagerly awaited the build-up. Alas, whilst oxford raged back home over university fees, Cairo cowered as the Parliamentary elections approached. egyptians were either too scared to venture out or had become so disillusioned with their country’s politics that they just couldn’t see the point in turning up. A rigged result in the first round was plain to see with the main op-position parties winning the odd token seat. i even thought mubarak might die when i was in egypt after having had a gallbladder opera-tion at the age of 81 the previous march. it seemed that only his death would release egypt from his terrifying regime. i was begin-ning to understand why egyptians hated the word stability so much. and that’s when the revolution happened...

The rest, as they say, is history. Well, actually that’s just what David Cameron said when he suggested that the egyptian revolution be taught in british schools in the future. in the end it was facebook of all things that finally gave the people a voice. Although this Revolu-tion is now heralded as the 25th January revolution, the day that re-ally caught everyone’s attention was friday 28th January, otherwise known as yom al-ghadab: The Day of rage.

as the day approached i and many others were still doubtful it would come to anything. as my guitar teacher had said to me earlier in the week, “We egyptians can’t organise anything, let alone a revo-lution.” and yet between friday noon prayers and 6 o’clock that evening the protesters had seized the bridges and Tahrir Square despite the water cannons, rubber bullets and tear gas. The police had vanished into thin air and a military curfew was already in place. This revolution didn’t need extensive organising. The achievements

of 28th January were realised without neither mobiles nor internet. Never mind about the way, all it needed was the will.

for the next few days Tahrir had the feeling of a summer music fes-tival, just with a serious political twist. after being searched and iD’d on entering i wandered from one group of about a dozen humming softly to an ‘Oud through a sea of flags and amusing placards to the main stage where thousands were joining in with the latest chant. The only difference of course was that the only substance people were under the influence of was freedom.

Outside Tahrir was a different story. Thugs and criminals who had either been released or had escaped from prisons during the chaos had started looting which prompted neighbourhood watches to form checkpoints at the end of each block. inevitably this violence entered Tahrir on 2nd January, otherwise known as bloody Wednesday. an ugly chaos reigned in Tahrir as pro- and anti-mubarak protestors fiercely fought amid burning buildings. The Armed Forces are yet to explain why and how these thugs on their camels were allowed in.

Peace shortly resumed in Tahrir but tranquility did not. over the next week the pressure on Mubarak intensified. On 11th February Mubarak finally threw in the towel but passed the duty of saying goodbye to his first ever and newly appointed vice-president Omar Suleiman. The people waved them off with the soles of their shoes and the festivities began.

egyptians celebrated throughout the night and the whole of the fol-lowing day. in fact they were still going when i got back two weeks later. There is not a street in Cairo whose pavements or walls or tree trunks don’t bear some resemblance to Egypt’s flag or a ‘Mubarak’ metro sign that hasn’t been renamed ‘martyrs’. There are also local entrepreneurs selling all sorts of revolution memorabilia: wristbands, badges, wigs, flags, picture cards of martyrs, car stickers, day-by-day guides to the revolution, etc.

at the same time however egyptians have hardly rested on their laurels. hard-core protesters in Tahrir did not completely leave until some more specific demands had been met, demands like the res-ignation of Prime Minister Ahmad Shafiq and the arrests of corrupt businessmen and former ministers. even then they concentrated their efforts on exposing the dreaded Intelligence Service which has since been disbanded. across the country their headquarters have been besieged revealing labyrinths of underground torture cham-bers, mounds of shredded documents and detailed records of in-ternet activity.

more recently 18.5 million proud egyptians (the vast majority for the first time) voted in a referendum over some key constitutional amendments. These include the restriction of presidential office to two terms of four years and the call for a new constitution to be writ-ten by the next government. however it is in the interests only of the muslim brotherhood and mubarak’s National Democratic Party that these amendments are passed as quickly as possible, for then the country can swiftly move to elections which newly founded parties will have little or no chance of winning.

The result has shown that there is still much work to be done to build a long-term democracy. The 77% that voted in favour of the amend-ments are either supporters of the mb and NDP or those who are willing to accept a swift transition of power for a return to stability. if the talented and educated youth that brought about this revolution in the first place want to have any impact on the political future of their country they need to reach out to people beyond their followers on facebook. There is legitimate concern that the inhabitants of cit-ies like Cairo and alexandria are overlooking the importance of the votes of the 40% of the population that live under the poverty line. let this referendum be a warning to them.

for now, on the surface at least, everyday life carries on as normal. The only thing missing is all the tourists. The military curfew from 12pm to 6am is either just another obstacle you have to work around or is the only form of state security you still have any faith in.

however, there is mounting evidence that certain sections of the army have no interest in protecting civilians. Protests in Tahrir on in-ternational Women’s’ Day (8th march) ended in attacks and assaults on females in broad daylight. amnesty international has claimed that up to 18 women were arrested in Tahrir the following day and, after being beaten in the egyptian museum complex, were detained in a military camp and subjected to forced virginity tests. The same day witnessed the deaths of 13 Christians in clashes with muslims in Downtown where there is a heavy military presence.

There are still huge hurdles for egyptian society to overcome and they are not just old and engrained problems like corruption, mi-sogyny and persecution of religious minorities but ones caused by the revolution. egypt’s economy is in a dire state after its stock exchange dropped by 10% within a few minutes of its reopening on 23rd march.

Nevertheless, despite all these problems, the revolution has shown the great potential egypt has to be a democratic, prosperous coun-try with a highly educated and cultured population. i have nothing but the greatest admiration for its people and the millions of other in-habitants of the middle east who are risking the little rights they have left for the chance of a better future. it was with deep regret that back in early february i heard about a Pembroke fresher who had asked some friends, “What’s all this about a forest fire in Cairo?” As the whole region undergoes momentous social and political change the West needs to sit up and pay attention. it can no longer try and mould the middle east to suit its own interests but instead needs to start listening so it can adapt with it. let it never be claimed again that the middle east is not ready for democracy. 41.2% of egypt’s eligible voters show that that is simply not the case.

“The revolution has shown the great potential egypt has to be a democratic, prosperous country.”

6 The Pembroke bullfrog 7Photos: margot arthur, isobel Platts-Dunn, livia bergmeijer; graphics: Charlie mcCann

8 The Pembroke bullfrog

abbie WilliamS, Tilly SmiTh, aND CaroliNe Daly Talk To arTiST Tom PhilliPS

9 The Pembroke bullfrog

Tilly Smith, Tom Phillips, abbie Williams and Caroline Daly

The newest addition to the emery gallery, rima’s Song (©Tom Phillips).

upon meeting Tom Phillips, Cbe, royal academician, writer and composer (to

name but a few of his accolades), it is fair to say we were perhaps the slightest bit star-struck, with no idea what to expect. yet he immediately put us at ease, individually greeting and air-kissing us, charismatic from the outset. having read english at St. Catherine’s College, oxford in 1957 (where he is today an honorary fellow), it’s clear that Tom (born 1937) feels a certain af-finity with us and sees us as a ‘friendly college’. Pembroke already owns two paintings by Tom, one being the JCr-owned The City, his first-ever commercially sold piece, painted whilst Tom was at St. Catherine’s. We visited him in January with the purpose of purchasing another for the JCr collection.

Tom, born Trevor Thomas Phillips yet always called Tom by his family, was noted for his creativity and in-dividuality even in primary school, taking long railway journeys from Clapham in search of inspiration each Sunday at the mere age of 11. Tom decided at this time to become an artist, after learning that the word meant ‘someone who does not have to put his paints away’. Whilst at oxford Tom pursued classes in life-drawing at the ruskin, going on to study at Camberwell School of art, but his english degree remained a prevalent in-fluence in his life, language being one of the primary preoccupations of his body of work. he has won and participated in various art competitions, including, as he recounted to us, one held in iraq and judged by, amongst others, Saddam hussein (Tom adds that it was unsurprising the judges gave first prize to an Iraqi). Tom has starred in many solo exhibitions, from his first at the artists’ international association gallery in lon-don in 1965 to a showing of the complete a humu-ment, his most famous work, in 1973 at the institute of Contemporary arts, with further exhibitions at the National Portrait gallery and birmingham’s ikon gallery to name but a few. Decades later, Phillips has become one of the foremost figures of our time in the British art world, having been elected as the royal academy’s Chairman of exhibitions from 1995-2007, in addition to other earlier posts as a Trustee to both the National Portrait gallery and the british museum.

visiting Tom at his studio in Peckham, london we real-ised that this area has been an influential force through-out his artistic career. he was keen to show us an en-larged local map on which he has charted his different residences and routes, reflecting his nostalgic attach-ment to the neighbourhood. however, it would be true to say that he has had as much impact on the area as it has influenced him. One cannot walk more than a few paces in this community without recognizing a mosaic wall, lamppost, archway or gate designed by the artist. over the last 15 years, Tom has been heavily involved in the Peckham urban renewal project and his work, along with contributions from other local artists such as anthony gormley, has played an important role in reshaping the aesthetics of the neighbourhood. Step-ping inside Tom’s studio is just as interesting. his of-ficial workspace houses a selection of his larger works, and, in keeping with Tom’s eccentricity, a large ping-pong table. Tom professes to be a keen player and this feature, alongside the sparklingly clean New york loft-style interior, would lead one to believe that his studio is more of an area for show and play than real artistic industry.

Indeed, our suspicions were confirmed when we vis-ited the artist’s home, just a few minutes’ walk from the official studio. Tom’s home is an enormous studio in itself, with every room devoted to one or other of his many ongoing projects. he joked that we wouldn’t be able to tell which room was his kitchen, and indeed it is perhaps better described as a studio that happens to have a sink and fridge, an assortment of paints, pep-

PorTraiT of The arTiST aS a maNper pots and stencils. even his bedroom forms an enor-mous workspace with the only domestic feature being a bed in the corner. Tom showed us how he religiously uses up all the excess materials from his work to create impromptu pieces, and is even happy to scribble all over his bedroom walls whenever inspiration strikes.

rima’s Song, the collage which now belongs to the JCr art Collection, is characteristic of much of Tom’s work. The a humument project, which he has been working on for well over 30 years, reworks William mallock’s victorian philosophy a human Document, a book Tom found in a junk shop and made his lifetime companion. Tom illustrates each page, obscuring everything except for a few words, which he in turn connects in order to construct a whole new text from the original document. as with a humument, rima’s Song shows Tom’s fasci-nation with colour and texture, and his enthusiasm for mixing media. The collage is constructed from american comics, ‘without cheating’, as Tom explains. he uses the lines and shapes which exist within the original comic to create new images in his comic collage series. in rima’s Song, the comic is recycled into a musical stave, with pictorial expressions of the sounds rather than notes.

Tom’s artistic output is not confined to a single medium, and, in fact, across all his work is a distinctive preoc-cupation with the limits of form. Just as rima’s Song plays with the conventions of written music by con-veying sound through comic book explosions, Tom’s other work often highlights the parameters of traditional mediums by turning it into ‘art’. The Wittgenstein’s Di-lemma cube on the front cover reads ‘the limits of my language are the limits of my world’; the text itself limits the seemingly infinite and boundless space of the Perspex cube. a striking canvas in his Peckham studio had sentences laid one on top of another until they became indeci-pherable. Tom highlights the physicality of lan-guage, reminding us that letters are just letters. in his Coronation anniver-sary Coin, the murals on Peckham high Street, or the stained glass win-dows he designed for Westminster Cathedral, Tom uses a unique and fluid font, drawing atten-

tion to the role of language even in a civic context. as well as the visual arts, Tom is a passionate supporter of music, bridging the gap between artistic forms. he has composed an opera, irma, was a founding member of the Philharmonic orchestra and is currently working on a chamber opera of Joseph Conrad’s novella heart of Darkness.

although Tom produces public art, his work remains in-herently personal and individual, and his generosity in inviting us into his home reflects his gregarious attitude to life. he still pursues private projects, such as painting one periwinkle each day for a week at the beginning of spring every year, an attempt, he explains, to keep his hand in at life-drawing. over the years, Tom has had the honour of producing portraits of many high-profile characters, from the monty Python men to iris murdo-ch to Samuel beckett, yet he claims to know Salman rushdie better as a ‘fearsome table-tennis opponent than as a man of letters’. he collects postcards which he now publishes in themed collections, from hats to bicycles. he writes opera and has designed cover art for brian eno and The Who. With the release of his a humument iPhone app, Tom, a regular blogger, is evi-dently not afraid of new channels of expression. he has an admirable ability to pursue all of his interests, em-bracing and contesting the conventional restrictions of genre, discipline and medium, the separation of public and private. Due to this outstanding commitment to the world of art, literature and music, it is highly fitting that Tom was made a Commander to the british empire for services to the arts in 2002, and even more fortunate for Pembroke that we now own three of his pieces, span-ning his diverse and profuse career.

10 The Pembroke bullfrog 11illustration: Tilly Smith

on the irony of Patriotism

“True Patriots, pray look upon this styof modern brutes who tarnish england’s name; the proudest men who cause the greatest shame.No voices tell her beauties, save the sighof those who know her ancient blood runs dry.great poems, prose and theses lose acclaim.What stirs these souls? Not deeds of worthy fame,but flags held high, as swords to pierce our sky.What country do they boast of? and what goodis pride? Their empty praises pound in waves,wearing the slate of noble english graves!Such lords of art once lived, and name this nationgreat still! To think their hearts held british blood;long years before this paltry generation”

matthew byrd

12 The Pembroke bullfrog 13

Sans domicile fixe = sans devenir fixe (no fixed abode = no fixed future)

Such is the bleak view which french photographer franck boucher evokes of the state of being homeless – and it could not be more accurate in its image of imprecision. Not knowing where you’re going to sleep that night, where your next meal will come from: the life of a rough sleeper is one where nothing can be guaranteed except your static state on the street.

i met the photographer through an Ngo i work with in Paris that cam-paigns on issues of social inequality such as homelessness, and we are in fact exhibiting his work in Paris for the first time this May. Having worked with the homeless in France for five years, Franck has created various series of photographs involving the interesting characters he has met, the most recent and most powerful of which is Story bord de vie. asking 28 SDfs to pose for him, the photographer tried to tease out an anecdote or situation that each homeless person would like to improvise as a representation of their life on the streets. in a meeting of photography and drawing, the cartoonish images depict the nature of their social exclusion and relationship with the city in an at once humorous and pathetic way. The two homeless men hung on a washing line between apartment buildings is a great example of this, conveying their sense of being ‘left hung out to dry’ by society, while in a comic position all the same.

franck’s work is not simply a study of the homeless community but is almost like a social enterprise, engaging them in a project that helps them express their creativity and reclaim their identity. indeed, the photographer has created a personal philosophy of human Social art, in which he seeks to bring together artists with an interest in the social impact of their work. after all, art is a medium highly suited to changing perceptions.

Seeing franck’s work immediately made me think of The big issue, a painting in Pembroke’s very own JCr art collection where the vivid-

ness of the creases in the crumpled khaki jacket of a homeless man is mirrored in the creases of the newspaper he sells – both are ultimately equally fragile and weathered by the conditions. linking these two works of art made me ask myself: why do cities as diverse as Paris (a huge capital) and oxford (a medium-sized provincial city) attract such great numbers of homeless people and why is the problem persist-ing?

Living in Paris has most certainly made me reflect on the plight of the homeless more than ever before. While this may seem rich com-ing from a Londoner, the statistics support the palpable difference: Paris counts almost 10,000 homeless on average whereas london estimates are around the 4,500 mark, particularly notable given how much smaller the french capital is. The ubiquity of homeless people in Paris is such that you can ‘bond’ with almost any other Parisian over the familiar faces lying in Châtelet metro station or outside the doors of the Sorbonne, just as we might do with those faces on Cornmarket Street. The number of homeless seeking shelter in the metro system was in fact so great that the authorities introduced individual plastic chairs spread metres apart on platforms to replace the benches that had long been an ideal place for someone with no elsewhere to go to lie in reasonable comfort and warmth.

While I was struck by the high rent and competition for flats in Paris, I crucially, benefitted from parents who could counter-sign and guar-antee my rent if i failed to make a payment. The number of papers required when flat-hunting in France (you are advised to visit flats with a dossier prepared of National insurance, pay-slips, utility bills, recom-mendation from your bank among other documents) is also a great obstacle. it is estimated that 25% of homeless people in Paris are in this situation by virtue of a lack of official papers. The sans papiers are those that find it hardest to come out of their situation as this renders access to benefits or registering with a doctor a huge feat.

The Parisian housing crisis is particularly severe due to the lack of

student accommodation. While at oxford we are blessed with college accommodation for at least two years as undergraduates at most colleges, and most london universities guarantee 1st year accommo-dation, meaning students can live in areas like the Southbank, russell Square etc., in Paris there is a centralized system of student housing which only provides for 10% of the student population. Those who come from the suburbs therefore largely decide to live with their par-ents throughout their university life (the impact of this on the student community and social life in Paris is lamentable – don’t get me started on that…). however this does mean that there are many more people searching for cheap accommodation in the city, a pressure that therefore disadvantages low-salary workers who do not necessarily have the willing parents to fall back on or to use as guarantors. one blogger commented on how the word for “homelessness” translates as the rather more cumbersome “le fait d’être sans-abri”, implying that this reflects how long it is taking the French government to deal with the issue. With so little potential for expansion and building of social housing within the city limits, more certainly needs to be done to appropriate the thousands of abandoned and disused properties for this critical use.

oxford, ranked as the 4th largest urban area (after Westminster, the City of london and Peterborough) for rough sleepers in the uk, suffers perhaps disproportionately from the issue of homelessness. With a relatively young demographic, given its large student base, the profile of the Oxford homeless is strikingly young as well, with 50% being under 25.

The social demographic of oxford also contributes a great deal to the problem. oxford has an unusually large population of middle class graduates for a city of its size, but at the other end of the scale, the number of people earning less than £20,000 a year is significant, with the social deprivation in blackbird leys, for example, comparable to inner-city london. This polarized population creates a market where prices are driven close to london levels, but a large section of the local population is far from able to pay.

Some argue that it is in fact the impressive social support services

in oxfordshire which attract many homeless people to either sleep rough, or find temporary housing in Oxford. It is true that the council spends more per head on services for the homeless than others of a comparable size, but it seems a question of which came first, the chicken or the egg? Nevertheless, some of the work started by chari-ties in oxford has shown a commitment from the local community to engage the homeless in oxford in mainstream society. “The Porch” provides iT and art classes and the social enterprise started by oxford university alumni, ‘aspire’ aims to connect homeless people with the employment market by providing professional services to businesses and individuals in the local area – for example, Pembroke used aspire to collect and recycle old clothes at the end of last Trinity Term.

People say we ought to ‘put an end’ to homelessness, a problem that seems anachronistic and a visible sign of the poverty we are meant to have overcome in developed Western nations. it is certainly not as easy as that, not least since the factors that render people down and out are not just economic: the breakdown of relationships is a primary cause, and mental illness can regularly complicate matters. local and central governments should nevertheless be determined to allocate funds to increase the social housing stock as well as support services. What the work of people like franck boucher and the social enterprise in oxford demonstrate, however, is that when tackling these issues, perception is everything – social exclusion is as much about people’s attitudes towards the excluded as the real hard facts of their situation.

In George Orwell’s fictional but semi-autobiographical work Down and out in Paris and london, the narrator recount his experiences tramp-ing and living in slums both sides of the Channel. he ends his diary with the following thoughts: ‘at present i do not feel that i have seen more than the fringe of poverty. Still i can point to one or two things i have definitely learned by being hard up. I shall never again think that all tramps are drunken scoundrels, nor expect a beggar to be grateful when i give him a penny, nor be surprised if men out of work lack energy, nor subscribe to the Salvation army, nor pawn my clothes, nor refuse a handbill, nor enjoy a meal at a smart restaurant. That is a beginning.’

ramya arNolD lookS aT arT aS a meaNS of eNgagemeNbT WiTh DoWN-aND-ouTS iN PariS aND oxforD

The arT of STreeT liviNg

Photos: courtesy of franck boucher, to see more go to: http://web.me.com/atelierboucher/officiel/Art__Photo-graphie/Pages/Story_Bord_de_vie.html

on 20th october 2010, the Treasury released its comprehensive spending review. This gave details of the budgets of different

governmental departments up to 2014-2015. The good news for the scientific community was that the science budget wasn’t cut. The bad news was that it was frozen at 4.6 billion per anum, when inflation is taken into account, this works out at about a 10% cut in real terms. Compared to other areas of government this was not a terrible result for the scientific community, but it wasn’t a great one either. Two months later, on 20th December, David Willets – the minister for universities and Science - announced how this money would be broken down be-tween the uk’s seven research councils. knowing how much money is being given to each research council is important, but perhaps more important is finding out what they plan to do with the money. Luckily, the research councils thought this too. So to coincide with the an-nouncement by David Willets, they published delivery plans, stating what they were going to do with the money they had been allocated.

as a chemistry student, and a chemistry student who is applying for PhD places at that, I was keen to find out how the research council in charge of funding chemistry, the engineering and Physical Sciences research Council (ePSrC), was planning to spend its money. With my immediate future depending on what they decided, i was obvi-ously delighted to find out that the amount of money the EPRSC was to spend on studentships in the academic year 2011/2012 would be £133 million, a 3% increase on the £129 million spent in 2010/2011.

but this wasn’t a simple case of keeping the old system going with a

little bit more money to counter out inflation; there would be a major change to how PhD studentships are allocated. Previously, academics would apply for a studentship that would pay a student’s fees, pro-vide living expenses and contribute to the cost of their research. These would be given to academics based on the strength of their research proposals. academics could then choose a student to take up the stu-dentship. The student would then undertake research under the su-pervision of the academic for the length of the studentship, normally 3 years for a PhD. under the new system, the ePrSC will fund Centres for Doctoral Training (referred to as Doctoral Training Centres - DTCs). each centre will focus on a particular area of science, for example, oxford has (amongst others) a Systems biology DTC and Cambridge has a Nano Science and Technology DTC. These will offer students taught courses for the first year, before they join the research group of an academic associated with the centre for three years of research to complete their PhD. This means that it will take an extra year to obtain a PhD, but students will benefit from more taught courses. They will often get a chance to undertake a couple of short research projects in their first year, giving students a chance to try different areas of research before choosing which one to follow for a PhD. This is similar to the american system, where students take advanced classes as well as doing research.

Speaking from the point of view of a student, this is an excellent sys-tem. Getting the opportunity to sample different projects in the first year, then choosing one of them for the next three, is a nice way to ease yourself into a PhD. Jumping straight into a three year project,

without any experience of what your colleagues are like to work with, what your day-to-day routine will be like and (crucially) what kind of a boss your supervisor is going to be, is not. but that’s not the only ad-vantage; DTCs are designed to create scientists with the skills desired by the science industry, making their graduates more employable, a great advantage in a highly competitive job market.

on the face of it, the ePSrC’s decision to stop project studentships and focus on funding DTCs appears to be a good one. yet some peo-ple disagree. Academics who find themselves at Institutions without a DTC focusing on their area of science will now find it increasingly dif-ficult to get funding for PhD students. An academic whose research is relatively weak that happens to be at an institution that has a DTC in his or her subject will be able to get PhD students, whereas an academic with a record of excellent research who happens to be at an institution that doesn’t have a DTC will not. Surely this is not a desirable situation.

There is also another major concern. in their delivery plan for 2011-2015 the ePSrC state that they want to “move from being a funder to a sponsor” and that they will “in concert with our partners in business, academia and government, co-define more explicitly the landscape of research we wish to support.” They also state that they would like to “encourage the uk’s best minds to engage with society’s most impor-tant research problems”. it seems that in the age of “free Schools” and “The big Society”, a state funded organisation is trying to increase central control.

Now some would argue that at a time when our nation has little money to spend we should only spend money on research that aims to give us things we really need. DTCs, which train students in specific areas, are an excellent example of how the ePSrC will shape the immediate future of british science. however, i feel we should not concentrate sci-ence that has obvious, real-world applications at the expense of “blue-sky” science. The accidental discovery of penicillin by Scottish biolo-gist alexander fleming is a brilliant example of how seemingly useless research can have a massive impact on the world. fleming is famously quoted as saying, “When i woke up just after dawn on September 28, 1928, i certainly didn’t plan to revolutionise all medicine by discovering the world’s first antibiotic, or bacteria killer, but I guess that was exactly what i did.”

every time an organisation makes sweeping changes to the way it op-erates there are bound to be teething problems. The ePSrC’s change of focus to DTC style PhDs will go a long way to ensuring that PhD students graduate with all the necessary skills to become successful scientists, and its attempts to tackle areas of science which relate to areas of national need are commendable. however, it must still sup-port excellent academics wherever they are conducting their research, and it must not forget the story of fleming’s serendipitous discovery. The major challenges facing science at the moment - energy, security, tackling food shortages, providing clean water for the world - could as easily be solved by someone conducting research that seemingly amounts to pure academic indulgence as by someone who sets out to meet these problems head on.

DaviD boWkeTT DiSCuSSeS The fuTure of SCieNCe fuNDiNg for STuDeNTS

14 The Pembroke bullfrog 15Photos: ollie ford, jenni from the block (flickr) graphic: Charlie mcCann

16 The Pembroke bullfrog 17

aneira: Day 1: alex, drunk and full of pork, played the ‘french fancy’ card last night. We split this morning, eager to tick off as many boxes as possible on our list of challenges. The objects each participant must acquire: a presidential election campaign t-shirt, a root vegetable you dug up yourself, a bird’s feather, a witch doctor’s brew and a living organism from a national park.

i took a matatu (a van licensed to take 14 passengers, but always packed with 22) to Pakwach with the intention of going south through murchison falls National Park. The driver, mid-journey, decided that his vehicle was not full and that it was, therefore, not worth his while. he ditched 14 passengers, including several nuns. The nuns cursed – god would have his vengeance.

before long, i scrambled onto a truck - much to the disapproval of the nuns - carrying two tonnes of cassava crop and 40 odd people. i had my first sighting of wild elephants seated on cassava.

4.30pm – Pakwach: No idea of how to get to murchison falls. after wandering, i chanced upon some park wardens driving in and hitched a lift. Murchison Falls: baboons, elephants, buffalo, giraffes, warthogs, hippos and the Nile. Wondrous.

i was dropped at a hostel in this african wilderness – ‘No booking?!’ No, no booking. ‘No space’. hmmm. a worker took pity on the dusty girl covered in bedbug bites. he led me to some basic dorms. luck-ily, National Parks have cheaper accommodation (1/3 of the price) for locals. I dropped my bags, then went to find out about Safaris and boat

trips. Turns out you need a car for Safaris and the boat trips go in the afternoon – i needed to be out of the park by 5.30 pm to avoid paying $30 for another 24-hour access permit, and to be in good stead for the race. i went to the bar, bought a beer and wondered. a brit (plenty of them in the National Park) struck up conversation; she was going on an early morning Safari, in a car with a space, before driving onto masindi – my second destination. Double luck. i had another beer.

Day 2: early start. The sunrise on the Nile was amazing – it illuminated

little black mounds (hippos) basking in the shallows. No lions, just lots of big game. Stunning place. We left at midday. i lunched at masindi – the typical Ugandan lunch is a plate of rice, posho (maize flour), yam, matooke (mashed plantain) and stew - then took a matatu to hoima. a tyre burst, we were unloaded. hoima, 7 pm. ate some meat on a stick, found a guesthouse and fell asleep listening to the bbC World Service – all guns blazing in libya, apparently.

Day 3: hoima to fort Portal - via kigardi. Time to start dealing with the ‘challenge’ element of the race. i started with the veg and was soon tearing up plants, with a small audience - a woman sitting outside her house was intrigued, rather than perturbed, by my cassava plant query. She let me loose on her garden. Success. en route to the matatu, i exchanged words with a local – did he know where i could get a presi-dential t-shirt? he did. he sold one to me. fort Portal,11 pm.

Day 4: To kasese and rwenzori National Park (rNP), or, just kasese. my bank card failed. banks closed – bank holiday. i sat on the street reading and was approached by two london-based salesmen (small world, eh). Their product: clothes that made you lose weight, but this was a holiday.They offered me a drink. I said yes, and spent two very long hours realizing salesmen are never on holiday. i used my remaining £3 on a guesthouse.

Day 5: No luck on the card front. i got desperate, opening a ugandan account in hope of an automatic transfer – but, alas, they take 48-hour precautions with african accounts. Thank god for Western union. i took a boda (a motorbike) to the border of the rNP. had a beer with the driver. Put some grass in a deodorant lid (living organism chal-lenge). found a feather. Caught an overnight coach to the rwandan border.

Day 6: kabale, 6 am. my coach slumber was broken by a taxi-driver, who wanted my custom, prodding me. To the border? yes. rwandan border to kigali by coach: three hours. Time of arrival: 10 am. Sign of mr Temple? No. Was victory mine? alex, knowing i was penniless, had lingered in uganda. Saviour or fool? Well, he didn’t do any saving.

The inaugural gulu – kigali Dash alex: adventurer, thief and all round man-of-action alex Temple quests once more in service of the british Crown. but his expedition takes him far from home, and has he bitten off more than he can chew? And so the race began, and, elevenses over, i prepared to depart. a large and tearful crowd gathered to see me off. “Do not fear!” I called out, mounting my horse Wellington, “i shall defeat her!” but i would come to regret this braggadocio, for I had boasted of sure-fire victory to all and sundry. and, unbeknownst to me, mysterious happenings were already underway.

Those who probe africa’s darkest reaches tell of strange and malevo-lent beasts. i had laughed at tales of monsters prowling the bush’s shadowy tracks, or lurking in the swamps and forest depths. ”What tripe!” i’d cried, hearing of Ndalawo, the shrieking man-eater of the ugandan jungle. and what of mbilintu, the vast pachyderm of the Con-golese marshes? Or the dreaded Mngwa, the silent fiend skulking in the mangroves of the coast? “Poppycock and claptrap!” i’d exclaimed; such foolishness would not deter me, alexander ‘Silverback’ Temple, from storming to victory, from upholding my reputation as both hellion and hero. and thus, maintaining a herculean pace, i reached the do-main of the N’kole tribe by sundown.

yet word of my coming had already spread, and as dusk fell, i found myself surrounded. vicious spears and cut-throat blades gleamed murderously in sunset’s crimson hue. “Whoa, Wellington!” i bellowed, though leaning close to my loyal steed i whispered softly in his ear, “but prepare to fly!” A behemoth of a man strode forward, handsome but deadly, and my hand slowly closed around the flintlock Webley pistol that was tucked in my belt.

“i am omikye”, he said calmly. “We have been expecting you.”

Three days later: I paced around my tent. My armour was less stifling now, and the acacia bow felt natural in my arms. i was comfortable, but I was not confident. The scouts had reported that Khodumodumo was approaching from the east. i had just a smattering of Swahili, but glancing at arthur Cornwallis madan’s dictionary, i’d translated the name: ‘gape-mouthed fire Demon’. “ex africa semper...”, i muttered. omikye entered and passed me my helmet.

“my lord, the generals are here.” king mabutu, chief of the N’kole tribe, had been a gracious host. his daughter too had taken to me. Stepping out to meet the generals, i looked back at her as she slept, and desire rose inexorably in me once again. “Damn armour”, i thought to myself. With not only the N’koles in peril, but kigali itself, i had agreed to help mabutu. for i could not risk aneira’s safety, and thus thoughts of the dash were far from my mind. With the masai’s arrival we numbered 500, but we needed a plan, as i didn’t much fancy dying so far from home. If the demon brought fire, I must too.

Day four, Dawn: Preparations made, we lay in wait for the coming of the beast. Without warning, the skies clouded, and rains began to soak the savannah. “odd…” “No,” said mabutu, “khodumodumo.”

So my plan was in motion. i’d declined to use cannon fodder; if bait was needed, i would do it myself. mounting Wellington for perhaps the last time, i turned to mabutu. “remember my instructions.” i rode out to meet the beast. The morning was ethereal, silent. a stately hippo lay still in the water, blinking thoughtfully at the scene before him. for kho-dumodumo, fire-devil, had joined me on the plain, a towering inferno of malice and ash! “over here, you swine!” i cried, speeding North, with the mighty demon now in pursuit. my fate was in mabutu’s hands, but he did not disappoint. a thunderous boom! embers rained. There would be no third act twist. The brute was dead.

With mabutu’s charcoal, and potassium nitrate, the curing agent for my bully beef, we had dispatched him. No match for gunpowder, khodu-modumo succumbed. Cheers rang out, but i’d no time to celebrate. After all, I had a race to win! A hasty goodbye and I was off, Mabutu ensuring swift passage on to kigali. “you won’t forget me,” i whispered, answering the sobs of the doe-eyed princess.

i had saved the N’koles, kigali, and perhaps aneira’s life. Contented, i arrived at our rendezvous still optimistic of victory. but there she was, a vision in green, elegantly sipping earl grey.

“you’re late” she said, as i pulled up a chair.

“you’re welcome”, i replied.

600 km. SeveN DayS - aNeira rooSe-mCCleW aND alex TemPle raCe from ugaNDa To rWaNDa

Sunrise on the Nile. Taxi park full of matatus in kampala, uganda. The boda driver who took aneira to rwenzori National Park.

Photos: aneira roose-mcClew

elephant in murchison falls National Park.

18 The Pembroke bullfrog 19

i don’t think about you during the day,because you are not paper, or plastic, or wood,I don’t see your faces reflected in car windows,or in the patterns on train seats,or in words, which run like ants across the lines of the paper i am writing on,and hurt my eyes when i am tired.

but when sleep swallows me,and i am drunk on the dark,Which curls around me like a black dog,aching with its own deafness,your faces come into my mind,Sharp little bits of your faces come into my mind, and stick there, like shrapnel, or splinters,and sometimes in my dreams you say you love me,and sometimes, i imagine you are dead,The dark soaks into me,it soaks into my skin,and it makes me dark.

rachel Wilson

Photo: s.alt (flickr)

ParTyiNg beyoND The friNgeit’s sometime in the wee hours of the last general election night at

the Windrush leisure centre in Witney, oxfordshire, and David Cam-eron stands at a makeshift rostrum to address his constituents and the nation. having been returned with an increased majority and with his sights on Number Ten, he’s looking pretty chipper. The customary thanking of the tea-ladies over and done with, he speaks of building a stronger and better nation, of a brighter future, of leading his party back into the corridors of power after thirteen years on the dark side. and all the while, swaying somewhat awkwardly behind him, stands a man dressed in a cream-white suit and matching Stetson, with an enor-mous yellow rosette hanging precariously from his lapel and his mouth ever so slightly open. The man, of course, is alan ‘howling laud’ Hope, candidate in the constituency for the Official Monster Raving loony Party, and its sole leader since the unfortunate death of his cat, ‘Mandu’, in 2002. That night, his party fielded twenty-seven candidates all over the country, but in the circumstances, it was the defeat of its leader here that was by far the most high-profile. The scene was an odd one, but up and down the isle, a similar picture was being painted. Dave bishop of the bus Pass elvis Party reaped a mighty 112 votes in my own constituency of kettering; up in Cowdenbeath, Derek Jackson of the landless Peasants’ Party only managed 57. They had all taken the time to stand, promulgating some pretty preposterous manifesto pledges in the process, and been roundly rejected by the electorate without even the small consolation of keeping their deposits. but what was the real point of their foray into the murky world of politics? and why, in the face of inevitable defeat, had they decided to put them-selves forward before the voting public?

Considering 95 per cent of the seats in the house of Commons are held by the larges three parties, it came as a surprise to me to learn that there are over three hundred of them registered with the elec-toral Commission. The vast majority of these, of course, are pretty serious organisations, and that includes the ever-increasing number of single-issue protest parties that have made their way onto the bal-lot paper. animal rights, piracy laws, the necessity of a new bypass in the lincolnshire town of boston – all are causes espoused by genuine political parties. but more careful inspection of the electoral roll reveals an altogether different breed of political group, fielding candidates in towns and cities all over the land. Candidates with no real plans for

government or hopes of having their election promises picked apart by Paxman on Newsnight . Candidates that make John Prescott sound lucid. and come election night there’s usually one decked out in ri-diculous clobber behind the all the suits in every provincial town hall in britain, waving uncontrollably at someone towards the back whilst the returning officer reads out the results. I am of course speaking of the more frivolous of the political alternatives before us, of the parties that seek votes on the promise of, among other things, filling the Thames with alligators or making it illegal to sell socks in anything less than a pack of three. in amongst the grey and greying of the traditional british political establishment, it is these groups that add a bit of colour to the process of scraping together a new government. They are to the elec-toral process what ricky gervais was to the oscars, a kind of ‘inside man’ making sure those involved don’t take themselves too seriously. but surely there can’t be anything more to them than that?

Well, looking a little more closely at some of them reveals that there might be. most of these ‘frivolous’ parties, it has to be said, started out as nothing more than a bit of political tomfoolery, a bit of light fun to bring good cheer at election time and make the whole process a little bit more bearable. but behind all the absurdity stand the founda-tions for a relatively new kind of political satire, working from within the system itself. What else could be discerned, for example, from the monster raving loony policy of re-naming the isle of man the ‘isle of Person’, if not a jibe at a perceived over-extension of political correct-ness? how about their policy of joining europe ‘in a big way’ by invit-ing the rest of the continent to join the pound sterling, before making Britain an off-shore tax haven? The Citizens for Undead Rights and equality Party, standing in four seats in 2010, pledged to increase the minimum statutory retirement age to ‘beyond death’. Captain beany of the New millennium bean Party (the ‘party for human beans’) stood in aberavon last year – beating ukiP – and promised to put the faces of politicians who abuse office on toilet roll packaging. In many respects,

these less serious parties use political lunacy as a smokescreen for lampooning those in power.

all such parties, of course, do not expect to win power and would prob-ably (and hopefully?) reject it if it ever came to them. ‘howling laud’ hope, of course, is a rare exception, having experienced genuine politi-cal authority when he got his feet under the desk at ashburton town council in Devon in 1987. but such notable exceptions aside, a vote for the Death, Dungeons and Taxes Party (the other one – not the Tories), or the fancy Dress Party, or even the True english Poetry Party, is really nothing more than a wasted vote, the ballot-box equivalent of register-ing as a Jedi knight on the census – although arguably even that has more serious ramifications. Scratch below the surface, however, and these so-called ‘joke’ parties actually reveal a more fundamental ma-laise with the current state of british politics. it’s at the cornerstone of both the Common Sense Party (whose leader stood in reading West in 2010, and campaigned from behind the tiller of a purpose-built yellow submarine), and the movement for active Democracy (or m.a.D., who stood in South Dorset), who both put forward some pretty serious pro-posals for ancient athens-style direct democracy and the sort of public initiative system used in California. increasingly, these parties seem to reflect disenchantment among the electorate, at a time when the poli-cies of the major parties are virtually identical in so many areas, and so many of those standing are career politicians who have only ever cut their teeth at think-tanks or research departments. it could be said that they provide the real alternative for those wishing to participate in the voting process, but who can find nothing in the major establishment parties worth voting for.

People have always voted for parties without credible plans for gov-ernment as a sign of disillusionment; the problem now is that the lib

Dems have snuck into government by the back door. So what’s the alternative if you really don’t much like either of the big two, or if you happen to live in a safe-seat constituency where the locals would send a furby to Parliament if someone pinned the right rosette to it? you can stay at home and not bother, as 35% of the electorate did last time, or perhaps spoil your paper in an exuberant manner and then run wildly around the voting hall spooning spaghetti hoops down your shirt. but that’s it – and if you still want to exercise your right to vote as a matter of principle, one of the quirkier options may do the job. in our post-expenses scandal age when the public’s confidence in politicians is at rock bottom, the eccentric parties at the bottom of the list provide a genuine method of registering dissatisfaction with the lot of them at the polls. in a way, not voting at all shows disillusionment both with politi-cians and the system that put them there – but putting your cross next to the name of a party with barmy policies at least shows a residual faith in the democratic process itself, even if simply as a method for protest, and even if your vote ultimately counts for nothing.

besides, aren’t some aspects of our political process rather silly any-way? our state opening of Parliament, for example, features mem-bers of the Commons slamming the door ceremoniously in the face of someone called the gentleman usher of the black rod. Ten minutes of PmQs is enough to make you laugh and cry. The whole way of doing things in britain involves some pageantry that’s pretty absurd when you think about it, and the less serious political parties have become an ad-ditional part of that tradition. People scoffed at the Loonies when some years ago they made a manifesto commitment to introduce passports for pets – but roll forward to 2005, and what did the last government in-troduce under new quarantine legislation? exactly that. Perhaps there’s some method in madness after all.

Paul SeDDoN examiNeS Some of The leSS SeriouS PoliTiCal ParTieS oN The briTiSh balloT PaPer

”a relatively new kind of political satire, working from within

the system itself”

20 The Pembroke bullfrog 21illustration: ellie Wylie, graphic: Paul Seddon

iN The Wake of The greaT Wave

suit, casting his eyes perplexed across the sea of little silver trian-gles, before identifying one or two as his, catching them up in his arms, and taking them off into the still unsettled night.

With the last of them departed, I was finally able to make my way back home. i followed the motorway above my underground line, which was still out of service. around me, hundreds of other com-muters were doing the same. A river of people flowed for miles ahead, spilling off the pavements and weaving between static cars, slowly ebbing along an imaginary train line. i passed old men and women, who moved slowly, in visible pain. for myself, i knew the journey would take no more than three hours, even in my heels and with my heavy bag, but who knew how far and for how long they might have to walk. buses started to roll past, throbbing with peo-ple pressed up against the heavy glass opaque with condensation. Taxis stood in unhappy traffic jams, their passengers looking weary and resigned.

i passed a noodle shop, with sounds of news radio leaking from its open window. There is something peculiar and old-fashioned about the radio when a disaster has happened: the tone is one of control-led panic, with no room for jingles or ads. The sounds of swallowing, or a paper being passed quickly from hand to hand tell listeners that something is wrong before the words do. behind the counter, the cook sat in profile, a towel wrapped around his sweaty forehead, his face heavy and stiff as he craned forward to listen. The snatches of words and phrases that i caught were ominous ‘…measuring 8.9 in the Tohoku region…’ ‘massive tsunamis striking…’ ‘… we cannot rule out the possibility of more …’ ‘… aftershock measuring six about to hit …’. later i passed an old lady walking her dog. an aftershock hit and the little thing began yapping insanely. its owner looked up into the starless sky. i thought about how strange it is that when an earthquake hits, people look up rather than down.

Nearing home, texts started to seep through from several hours earlier. The tone was confused. People didn’t know whether this was something to be taken seriously or treated as a joke. as far as i could see, Tokyo was alright. i switched on the news, and was told that a large earthquake had struck off the northeast coast of Japan, sending a massive tsunami crashing into the towns and cities near the sea. The quake, I was told, measured five in Tokyo. So far, just over 100 people had been confirmed dead. When I was shaken awake by an aftershock the next day, the rating in Tokyo had been bumped up to a six. The richter scale does not go up in regular increments, so the gap difference between a five and a six is significant. A message from a friend later that morning told me that the death count was now being projected at over 10,000. i was sure at first it must have been a mistype – how could it have gone from just a few hundred to 10,000 literally overnight? Soon, our dawning realisation of the tragic scale of destruction in the north of the coun-try was joined by another worry. Power had been knocked out of a nuclear plant in fukushima, and the back-up supply had failed too. Things like that don’t happen in real life, and not in Japan. but i felt confident that, being as prone to earthquakes and tsunamis as it is,

Japan would have an effective plan in place to deal with the situa-tion. Surely, it would be over by Sunday.

Sunday came and went, and things only got worse. Japanese friends were staying in. Safer to stay in, they said. We had been told that there was a 70% chance of another earthquake, as big or even bigger than the last, over the next three days. The min-utes and hours dragged by with a sense of uselessness, because

no one knew what we should be do-ing or how we should be behaving,

and irrelevance, because of what was happening elsewhere. We watched fresh news of the de-

struction emerge minute by minute in places like iwate, miyagi and fuku-

shima. People had lost family members, houses, cars, livelihoods, all destroyed by

an unstoppable wall of water that had washed six miles inland, tearing down everything in its

path. The damage was so extensive that at first we had no comprehension of its scale, because there was no one living to tell us. and in those areas in which there were sur-vivors, all lines of communication had been

lost. i had friends who for several days after the quake had no idea where their friends or family members were, or whether they were

still alive.

by lunchtime on Wednesday, i was on a flight back to London. The time in between

was such a sleepless mess of packing, clean-ing, and phone calls, that it was not until i was on

the plane, my headset sitting in a neat little packet on my lap, that the guilt and fear flooded into me. When I had spo-

ken to my Japanese friends the day before to say goodbye, some were considering leaving Tokyo, and all sounded scared. i felt ter-ribly guilty that for me, it had been almost as simple as packing up and leaving. my job and apartment contracts had been due to end that month, so running away had not been complicated.

at home, i was frustrated by the way certain things were being re-ported in the british press. There had been no mass panic, no emp-tying of supermarket shelves into a single trolley. When speaking to my Japanese friends now, the word that comes up again and again is ‘ganbaru’. it means to work hard, to persevere, and it sums up the selflessness and presence of mind with which they have handled a situation where instinct might provoke over-reaction. i hope that by the time you read this, this situation in Japan is much better. i hope that people are starting to be rehoused. i hope that towns are beginning to be reconstructed. i hope that families have been reunited and victims laid to rest. i hope that the nuclear situation is resolved, and that the people around fukushima can move back into the homes that they left behind. but even if all my hopes have come true, there is still huge damage to be repaired, and the scars left behind will be enormous, and permanent.

To help, please go to http://www.redcross.org.uk/Donate-Now/make-a-single-donation/Japan-Tsunami-appeal to donate.

The murmur of ‘earthquake’ ran across the classroom like a rip-ple. We waited, eyes wide, faces expectant. What we expected,

however, was for it to end, for the brief shaking to pass as it always did, so that we could finish lessons for the day. Instead, the shaking became more violent. We told the children to get under their desks, whilst I remained standing, my fingertips resting on the surface of the desk in a neat row. From our classroom on the third floor of the hilltop school, you could see all across Tokyo – from the busi-ness district right down to the bay area and out to sea. Now, as i looked out across the city, i could see everything: every roof, tree, and building, beginning to shake. Soon, what had begun as a shiver became a rocking, and birds launched themselves into the air in scattered clouds. The teaching assistant, yusuke, and i glanced at each other, and silently withdrew under our own desks.

once under, the shaking became even more violent. like all schools, the building was well earthquake-proofed, yet still the threat of ‘the big one’ hung over Tokyo with a palpability that is difficult to imagine in a place as relatively safe as britain. Throughout her history, Japan has suffered at the hands of her unfortunate location at the meeting-point of four tectonic plates. although earthquakes are notoriously hard to predict, the kanto region, encompassing Tokyo along with six other prefectures, has been due a major earthquake for about 20 years. Crouched low, knuckles white as we clung to the legs of our desks, we waited to see whether this was to be a big one or the big one.

The shaking subsided. it cannot have lasted more than a minute in total. from the window, i could see thick plumes of black smoke bil-lowing into the air from Odaiba on the coast, where fires had broken out. minutes later out in the playground, we could feel the earth still lurching beneath us. a few old women came stumbling into the school grounds, casting their eyes about, disorientated, and repeat-ing the word ‘earthquake’ again and again amongst themselves. Turning back to look up at the school building, i could see it sway heavily from side to side, and the tree in front of it was shaking from the trunk up, its branches swinging here and there. i glanced to-wards yusuke on the opposite side of the pitch. he laid his hand on

his chest and made a little motion to indicate a heart beating fast. When i cast my eyes across the children, i could see that many of them were doing the same. With time now to register it, we were all aware of our pulses going at an extraordinary rate, so fast it felt like our hearts were buzzing against our ribcages. Some children were crying, but most simply looked stunned and wary. Soon, the headmistress had gathered the teachers together, and i watched as their faces, calm and serious in front of the children, melted instantly into fear and apprehension. i was used to Japanese people masking their emotions; the sight of a dozen or more adults so visibly fright-ened left me feeling unnerved.

as several teachers took children to their homes nearby, the rest of us stood uneasily amongst the remaining pupils. They were dead quiet, but all around, the dull rumble and creak of shifting earth and buildings continued. Suddenly, the clouds parted, and the sun burst through. The children looked up, dazzled. The boy beside me tugged at my sleeve and said: ‘miss, isn’t it funny. after an earth-quake, the sun is shining.’ i was still wearing the school slippers, so i scurried back inside the main building to get my shoes. in the staffroom, the television had been left on, and as I passed the dark room, I caught a flash of the screen, a map of Japan. The whole stretch from hokkaido down to Chiba, and even to the south as well, was flashing red. The entire north eastern coast looked like a slashed artery, pulsing and haemorrhaging blood. That was the first concrete indication i got that this was something bigger than Tokyo. even then, though, i did not know just how big.

The night wore on. The time at which i was meant to meet my friends came and went, and in any case the trains had halted. The doors to the sports hall had to be kept open in case we needed to evacuate, and the cold seeped in quickly. Policemen arrived with insulating foil for the children and the elderly people who had congregated in the school. bundled up in the foil, still wearing their pointy earth-quake hoods, the children looked like little Christmas trees. There was nothing to do now but wait. The only children left were the ones whose parents worked far away, and were making the long trek on foot to the school. every several minutes a father would arrive in a

geNNy eDWarDS DeSCribeS The ShoCk of liviNg Through The TSuNami, earThQuake aND eNSuiNg NuClear CriSiS iN JaPaN

22 The Pembroke bullfrog 23artwork: genny edwards

and whose idea of speaking french is now to shout,

‘bon Jour. Je WAnT un glASS of Wine.’ And then

there are others (i fall into this category) who

skipped as much Pe as they possibly could and now

become breathless climbing more than two flights

of stairs. my students are rarely listening to me by

this point however, as they all imagine the glorious

life they could be leading, in which they are good

at all their subjects, and, moreover, only have three

or four hours of lessons a day, leaving them a lot

more time to eat baguettes/wear berets/get up to

all sorts with Jean-Pierre next door.

i am not claiming that the french are all multi-

skilled, über-talented machines who can do sums

whilst simultaneously writing an essay in Spanish

whilst running a half marathon. Surveys have shown

that in general, the germans, the Spanish and the

Scandinavians all speak better english than the

french. but it must be said that a system where les-

sons start at eight and can go on until six, where

the students can play to their strengths a little but

must study a wide range of subjects and where

there are even lessons on Saturday morning (who

says the french are lazy!?) does seem to be a little

more academically rigorous than our good old A

levels. The bac has not changed too much since it

was first made a state examination by napoleon i

in 1808. Compare this to A levels and the feeling

that it was necessary to add the A* qualification,

for example, as they are perceived to be getting

easier and easier. The international baccalaure-

ate has already been introduced in some british

schools, as some believe that as a student needs to

be good at many different subjects to gain a good

overall mark, it is a more valuable qualification. it

reinforces the idea that you must work at what you

are not naturally good at; you cannot just take the

easy route and drop bothersome subjects. you must

stretch yourself.

yet on the other hand, why force the talented sci-

entist to struggle through history lessons or sub-

ject the budding writer to mathematical formulae

which will seem senseless and pointless to them

and not help them in their chosen career? Will it

not only frustrate both the teacher who feels that

they are getting nowhere, and the helpless student

who can’t see the use? no-one gives a damn how

good einstein was at foreign languages. Which is

fairer: the system which allows students to play to

their strengths but doesn’t allow the intelligent all-

rounder to really shine, or the system which pun-

ishes the students who are exceptionally talented

in one subject area, because their overall mark

will be dragged down by their worst subjects?

Which system is better? i am tempted to say the

french one, as students should have a wider range

of skills at the end of it. but then, i am very happy

to have grown up in england and been able to

drop Physics very quickly, skip a good deal of Pe

and devote more time to the subjects that i am

passionate about. even if we weren’t allowed to

snog in the corridors.

24 The Pembroke bullfrog 25

i t’s an average morning in lycée georges Clem-

enceau, reims, france. lessons begin at 8:00

every morning, so i am hurrying down the semi-

darkened corridor (it’s not light outside yet) to the

staff room at approximately 7:57. in my bag i have

the materials i will use as the resident english As-

sistant to try and prompt my french students, aged

between 15 and 18, into speaking english. i have a

worksheet about this week’s news (what’s been hap-

pening in egypt, children?), a satirical cartoon cut

and pasted from ‘The independent’, a poem and if

all else fails, a quiz about Angleterre. i also make

them do english tongue twisters - my excuse is that

it’s good for their english pronunciation, but the

real reason is that i find it very funny. As i walk

briskly along the darkened corridor i encounter

several pairs of students making out. in my first

few days i was surprised that the students were al-

lowed to play so much tonsil hockey so obviously,

but now i am used to it.

i was placed in a school with a fairly good repu-

tation, and i really was struck by how well-behaved

the students are, in general. Sometimes i am given

classes to teach by myself - in england, a solitary,

inexperienced language assistant who doesn’t un-

derstand what you are whispering about her would

get ripped to shreds, but in this lycée, it’s doable.

i didn’t even tell a student off for the cheekiest

thing that has happened to me: a girl deliberately

addressed me with ‘tu’ and not with the polite

‘vous’, implying a lack of respect, but it didn’t even

register until later, when of course it was too late

to reprimand her for it. but that’s hardly a lot to

deal with. The funny thing is that to me, a lot of my

students look either scruffy or inappropriate, with

some sporting ripped jeans, or jeans that sit very

low indeed on the backside, and others dressed

as goths from head to toe, or else dressed in

very little at all (ooh la la) with very bright dyed

hair, lots of make-up and piercings everywhere. The

headmaster at my old Sixth form would probably

have preferred to see the place burnt to the ground

than permit such carry-on. but these students ac-

tually work hard; their behaviour is generally very

good and their english is dramatically better than

my french was at that age.

in fact, their english is so good that i have been

asked to teach Shakespeare a few times. it would

seem that the french enjoy being able to say they’ve

‘studied’ him, even if they’ve just had a look at

one sonnet. often i do general knowledge quizzes

with them so that by now they should all know that

Toad in the hole is not a toad in a hole, that henry

Viii had six wives, who Charles Dickens was, what

‘eejit’ means, and that the river that flows through

london is called the Thames, which they all pro-

nounce ‘the them-mees’. They can have some odd

ideas about traditional english breakfast (‘cheese’,

‘chips’, and ‘jelly’ have all been guessed as possi-

ble ingredients) and for some reason, many think

that Tony blair is still the Pm. Still, i hope i have

taught them some general things about england; it

may not actually help them pass any exams but it’s

culture.

The french students are all studying for the bacca-

laureate, a fairly prestigious and demanding qual-

ification. english students at the same age usually

take A levels, but the bac is quite different. for

one thing, although you have some options - the

students at my lycée can choose a more literature-

focused bac, a Sciences-orientated one or an eco-

nomics and Social Sciences one - students must

study approximately as many subjects as we do at

gCSe. often i must explain the english A level

system to my french students, and they nearly al-

ways respond with incredulous indignation along

the lines of, ‘Quoi!? english kids can drop maths/

english/ the subject i dislike most? C’est unfair!’

Then a dreamy look crosses their faces as they im-

agine the utopia of being able to just devote their

attention to their three personal favourite subjects.

With no obligatory Physical education which counts

towards their final grade. or compulsory Philoso-

phy. Aaah, bliss.

i try to explain that we do study our subjects in

some depth, you know, we don’t just study half

the subjects and therefore do half the work. Come

on, i argue, isn’t it really an advantage to have

more skills, be able to get along in at least one

foreign language and do some maths? i have many

acquaintances that dropped maths as early as pos-

sible and now the mere sight of a restaurant bill

sends them into a cold sweat. There are those who

dropped all foreign languages at the age of 14

lAuren ClArk-hugheS grADeS The SChool SySTem ACroSS The ChAnnel

ClASS ConTrol

illustration: nishita Singhal

ally Doyle DiSCuSSeS The haveS aND have-NoTS oN The CuliNary SPeCTrum

26 The Pembroke bullfrog 27

i’ve never had the privilege of eating a turkey dinosaur, that strange cross-breed even Jurassic Park didn’t attempt, in which extinction

and genetic dissimilarity are compensated for by turkey and dinosaur sharing both a limited brain capacity and not having seen daylight for many an age; millenia on the part of the dinosaur, generations on the part of the shed-housed turkeys. When Jamie oliver vs. bernard mat-thews reared its rather more photogenic head in 2005, it induced remi-niscences of my own school food which was, although dinosaur-free, crowned by a similarly bizarre cross-breed. my most treasured and perplexing memory from my short-lived experience of processed food in 1990s Scottish state education is one of macaroni pies – with chips of course, my five-year-old self’s favoured choice over peas when I was informed that i wasn’t allowed both by one not-so-charming and well nigh incomprehensible dinner lady. unlike the deep-fried mars bar that has become so successful that it has had multiple incarnations, the macaroni pie i can attest from school dinners c.1994 is a true stalwart of Scottish cuisine, up there with chips, the staple which apparently saved the populations of edinburgh and glasgow from scurvy during World War ii (praise be). Not to be confused with the West indian ver-sion, the macaroni Pie (Scot.) is macaroni cheese encased in short-crust pastry, which Wikipedia conveniently informs me has become something of a favourite in the american Deep South because of the Scottish ancestry of the region.

Perhaps it is no coincidence then that Scottish 12 year-olds in 2005 narrowly pipped the americans to the title of world’s fattest kids, with one in five obese compared to one in six stateside. Britain as a whole only came in with a measly one in 20, despite the robust contribution of the Scottish average, amply living up to its well-earned reputation as the ‘sick man of europe’. Don’t get me wrong, i absolutely love many

things about Scottish food, but despite the natural riches of salmon, scallops, pheasant and Scotch beef, it has traditionally been one to feed a largely poor population – and unfortunately kippers, kedgeree, oatcakes, porridge, haggis, neeps and tatties have largely come to be replaced by deep-fried pizzas, battered burgers, irn-bru and, of course, the aforementioned macaroni pie.

This somewhat surreal mishmash of fat and carbs was not at all re-called, however, in another recent culinary experience of mine at the fat Duck, heston blumenthal’s restaurant in bray, berkshire. The ‘nitro poached aperitif’ which opened the evening, for instance, looked like something the young Dali might have put together if he had picked up a rolling pin instead of a pencil. and it really is an evening: a 14-course and four hour extravaganza, appropriately balletic waiting staff includ-ed, one particularly ferocious member of which, in the manner of a youthful rosa klebb, squirted a spoonful of liquid from a pressurised container into a steaming flagon of liquid nitrogen and deposited the re-sult on my plate. it looked a bit like a meringue. ‘all in one please’, she barked. Suddenly feeling a bit more like my five-year-old self confront-ed with the scary dinner ladies, i meekly complied. but the result was oh-so-different. It was like biting into a campari and soda-flavoured cloud. blumenthal has spoken of reigniting a childlike sense of won-der in our eating, and certainly smell and taste are senses which have an extraordinary potential to evoke distant memories. indeed Proust, writing a century ago, used the taste of a madeleine cake to evoke a whole childhood. from a ticking gold watch which dissolved in a bowl of mock turtle soup, to a tiny centimetre-squared brown film which, placed on the tongue, gave an unbelievably strong flavour of oak for-ests (even mine which i managed to get stuck to the roof of my mouth, a word of warning for anyone with my level of dining idiocy), the fat

Duck certainly didn’t disappoint.

When Jamie oliver derided school food as ‘scrotum burgers’, he sug-gested something that sounds almost like the kind of culinary challenge Blumenthal would relish. Indeed, in making ice cream ‘as hot as fish and chips’ he used the very same machine used in the fabrication of the legendary turkey dinosaur. The british establishment has recently spent a lot of ink, time and money lauding a new renaissance for british cuisine and any number of television programmes celebrating great british menus/Pubs/breeds of Pig seem to be continuously hogging air time (oink oink, but seriously, there is one on as i type). however, six years on from Jamie’s war with the turkey dinosaur and the damning report of the girth of Scottish 12 year-olds, have our diets really im-proved? The healthier food in schools has been countered by reports of children getting mcDonald’s in their lunch hours, and in 2007, the government-commissioned foresight report predicted that by 2050, 60% of men, 50% of women and 25% of children would be obese. at the same time, the increased press coverage of the prevalence of obesity and poor diets has resulted in what some have argued to be an equally unhealthy obsession with body image, which has itself con-tributed to the increasing numbers of hospital admissions due to eating disorders in girls and, newly, in boys as well, with a rise of nearly 50% being recorded between 1996 and 2007 in england.

Jay rayner, a food writer for the observer, wrote that seeing a turkey dinosaur on his son’s plate at a zoo resulted in such outrage that he

was ‘immediately moved to take my son to the michelin-starred fat Duck in Bray to eat cuttlefish cannelloni, sea bass in a vanilla sauce and white chocolate with caviar’. unfortunately, this undoubtedly delicious remedy is not one open to the majority of the population. The price of dinner for one at the fat Duck, at £180, amounts to considerably more than the average family food budget which was just over £50 per household per week in 2009 according to a 2010 Office for National Statistics report, let alone the 37p per meal budget of children’s school meals. eating well is not simply a matter of being ‘adventurous’ as Jay rayner suggests, but neither are items of processed food, like turkey dinosaurs, the automatic solution to this.

Stating the truth universally acknowledged that the clientele of a mc-Donalds or kentucky fried Chicken is, if a cross section of the popula-tion, one that is heavily weighted to the poorer end of the market, one cannot help but comment on the irony of this state of affairs, given the relative expense of the food provided. as the average £4.50 cost of a mcDonalds’ meal would be spent to much greater value on the raw in-gredients, it is not economic status which causes the poor to eat poorly but rather a lack of education and motivation. The inability to cook for oneself is becoming increasingly financially as well as physically harm-ful because food is becoming ever more expensive: currently the uN food price index has risen six months in a row to reach its highest since records began in 1990 and if education is the problem, then Jamie and food-saturated Tv is surely a step in the right direction, even if a rather sedentary one. food is deeply linked to both class and morality, with feeding children well becoming increasingly viewed as an ethical duty of the parent, and justifiably so in a sense, as good diets could replace expanding waistlines with improved physiques, higher iQs and increased potential for concentration. The crucial importance of diet to height has been common knowledge from the early 20th century onwards thanks to the rowntree reports and the exposure of shock-ing statistic such as the six inch height difference between ex-public school boys enlisting and the rest of the male population in 1914.

It perhaps appears that I have been indulging in a conflation of two issues that (despite Jay Rayner’s personal efforts) are really are two very different things – surely the bizarre artistry informing Blumenthal’s cooking and represented in recent publications like the princely £395, 2,438 page modernist Cuisine: The art and Science of Cooking has nothing to do with how many vegetables our five year-olds eat and the health of the nation? but this is simply not true. rayner’s vaunting of his opportunity to, at a whim, take his son to the fat Duck, rather than emphasising his son’s wonderfully sophisticated palate, as he claims, rather reinforces the fact that food is fundamentally a class issue. and the fact that it is so absolutely fundamental to our sense of ourselves, that it is able to evoke the most incredible sensations, bring back dis-tant memories and on a more fundamental level really make us better and more intelligent human beings – makes the disparity between what the educated and less fortunate of the nation eat even more distressing and remarks such as rayner’s even more ill-conceived, demonstrating, if i am not as equally lost in translation as the british establishment has been on marie antoinette’s count, the same ill-judged naïvety as the perennially misquoted ‘let them eat cake’. Splashing out on a lavish meal at bray, no matter how nice it is, is a reminder of the continued prevalence in our society of the division between the gourmands and the have-nots, and the appreciation of the cognoscenti leads us no further towards a solution to that old dinosaur of a problem… so let’s turn the telly back on.

eaTiNg To live or liviNg To eaT?

illustration: verity Whiter

The Pinnacle

He walks, headfirst into the wind,absorbed, lost in foreign thoughts twinnedwith a whispered wish for knowingWho he is. his face is glowingLike a daffodil whose first bloomis born with Christ. The storm clouds boomAnd drown out seagulls caught in flightas Phoebus leads away the light.The gold’s replaced by murky grey,and time moves on – he’s had his say;he takes the maps that plot things gonein a small bag. The man walks on.

No better place to find oneselfThan where the cliffs reveal their wealth.The place where man first found his feetand learnt to think and breathe and eatand use his hands - the pinnaclereliant on the big bang’s pull,or push – one sees things as one will.a wave then breaks, shows land its quill.he leans, his arms stretched out to sea,revealing what it is to beThe speck of dust left to lingerOn an ancient jagged finger.

aneira roose-mcClew

28 The Pembroke bullfrog 29

underwater

illustration: Penny andrea Photo: anya howe

The piece was partially inspired by landing under Water, i see roots (see right), hence the sculpture of a guy holding his breath underwater, all pressure and suppression. i particularly like the way the poet has thoughts that she is squashing so hard, she can’t even admit them out

loud - instead they burst out in parentheses. I guess I’m trying to evoke this sense of suffocation of self and to convey a whole tangly forest of thoughts and feelings, imperfectly repressed, by means of the deep, stylised grooves and furrows in the man's face. Perhaps this is every stu-dent’s secret response, at times, to oxford life? or maybe just the morning after a night on the lash…

landing under Water, i See roots

all the things we hide in waterhoping we won't see them go—(forests growing under waterpress against the ones we know)—

and they might have gone on growingand they might now breathe aboveeverything i speak of sowing(everything i try to love).

annie finch

aNya hoWe, WiNNer of The 2011 emery PriZe, DiSCuSSeS The iNSPiraTioN behiND her SCulPTure

31

Now she can start to detach and unhookThe golden bangles completing the look:She replaces each shiny hoop and chain

in the pink plastic packaging from whence it came.Her last effort comes in removing the clothes

That for this night she especially chose:a short mini skirt and push up brassiere

flatter her tits and large sagging rear,While out from behind a tight tee-shirt flopsa pallid, round paunch, encrusted in spots.

Tossed in a corner she regretfully notesThat her outfit is caked in what looks like dried oats.

To take off her heels is a painful convention for her blistered toes need a doctor’s attention,but she drags her sore feet and climbs into bed

foregoing the sheets, she lays down her sweet head.and just before letting slumber constrain her,She pops in her mouth a night-time retainer.

This little routine she repeats day by day,in the hope, one suspects, of some midnight foreplay;

or a longing for praise from all who beholdThis charming young thing wearing skirts in the cold.

Perhaps an attempt to trap fading youth,makes her maintain this aesthetic untruth?

or maybe this costume improves how she feels:a crepuscular goddess in ten inch high-heels.

in the seconds before she falls fast asleepShe addresses these doubts that she buries so deep

and asks what it is that makes her decideTo engage in this battle of Jekyll and hyde?

Ziad Samaha

She noisily clatters through her front door,She slides down the wall, she hits the cold floor;She can’t remember with whom she’s just been,Nor what she’s said, nor what she has seen,and though in the morning she’ll feel really vileat least tonight happened in “proper style”:She went into town with all her best pals – a tasty bunch, those plus-sized gals – from pub to club, then kebab van:She loves a night that goes to plan.

but now all alone, and slumped in the hall,She concentrates and makes to crawlinto the bathroom, where she will startTo deconstruct this piece of art. She staggers and leans against the small sink,eying the mirror she gives a coy winkbefore taking a tissue to lips full and redTo expose their true colour: cadaverous lead.and reaching across with both of her handsShe strips her false lashes in spider-leg strands.Next come her nails, stuck on with glue:and promptly dropped into the loo;her golden hair that cascades downis unclipped and unfastened to show roots of brown.She’s not finished yet as her brows dark as coalAre wiped off her head with dampened bog-roll.her face – a glowing orange sphere –requires something more severe,So tilting her head back, she grabs for the jarmarked: “beWare! This product will wound or scar”,and pours it onto her ginger cheeksTill the tangerine tint begins to leak.a last review of her pasty new facereveals a dark beauty spot left in place:This she diligently peels awayTo place in a box for another day.

a beauTiful youNg girl goiNg To beD after jonathan swift

illustration: Tilly Smith

laSTiNg imPreSSioNSNearly one in three britons aged 16-44 has a tattoo. i have two.

Since the age of 15 i knew what i wanted and where. Just after my 18th birthday I got my first one done, and I have the feeling, bear-ing in mind the sentiment of the tattoo, that it won’t be something i regret. even if it is, i think i’ll be happy for that to be the worst of my regrets when i’m older. The second tattoo is a line from my favourite poem. I consider both of these to be very significant to me: a reflection of what means the most to me at this point in my life and a reminder of how i want to live the rest of it. but with such a rapid increase over the past couple of decades in the number of people with tattoos, am i just kidding myself that these markings are something special to me? are tattoos a cultural phenomenon; the new fashion; something simply to regret when their heyday passes and in 5 or 10 year’s time we’re left with an indelible mark of our misspent and ill-advised youth? in fact, instead of expressing individuality, are tattoos the new symbol of conformity?

The earliest inkings recorded were discovered on the remains of a Neo-lithic iceman from 3300 bC and tattooed mummies from the second millennium bC have been found in the Tarim basin in western Chi-na. evidence of tattooing stretches from Japanese societies in the Palaeolithic period, and Persians during the achaemenid empire, to pre-Christian germanic and Celtic tribes across europe. The word ‘tattoo’ first emerged in the English language during the eighteenth- century when sailors described the traditional ‘tatau’ seen on Samoan islanders during Captain Cook’s 1768 voyage through Polynesia. for the Samoans, their traditional male tattoo, the pe’a, served as a rite of passage, a mark of status, rank and cultural identity. Their tattoos transcended the present and connected those who had undergone

the painful process with their gods, their ancestors and their tribe. in Samoan society, the pe’a and malu (female tattoo) are the indication of having achieved man- and womanhood.

So why is it that these symbols of cultural pride and kinship have seem-ingly been hijacked by a Jeremy Kyle-generation who flash their tramp stamps with pride and who scar their bodies with ‘england’ in bold, gothic print and the names of several ex-partners on their arms? Well, i don’t think tattoos have been hijacked. i don’t think they have lost their cultural or social significance. I think we have developed our un-derstanding of tattoos just as our society has developed. While ink was once the preserve of criminals, gangs and sailors, that tattoos can now be found on the bodies of the most respected members of society, in the highest professions, and with the greatest responsibility for our country, children and future, shows that the stereotypical view of a tattooed individual needs to be challenged.

The attitude towards tattoos is still very society relative. very few peo-ple still associate tattoos solely with the criminal underworld, gangs or a maritime career, yet the reasons that more and more people are getting them today remains fairly unchanged. Tattoos tell a permanent and public story of someone’s life: the people they love; the people they’ve lost; the things that bring them joy; what they see as beautiful. Tattoos are a form of self-expression and for those who choose their markings carefully, they have a personal and unique significance. Don’t get me

wrong, I don’t mean the butterfly, the dolphin or the dubious Chinese character that you see branded into the hips, wrists and shoulders of a large percentage of society nowadays - although i think it would be arrogant to suggest that they had no meaning for their owner. i mean those tattoos that are painstakingly planned, a labour of love, and a true expression of the essence of the person who wears them.

if there is any indication that the attitude to tattoos is fast changing, it is the emergence of art gallery exhibits showcasing artists and their work. Thomas hooper, a Sussex-born tattoo artist now working in New york, is one of many artists whose techniques were learnt at respected art schools and whose skill and attention to detail has made him the toast of the tattoo, art and fashion scenes. The skin is his living canvas, and the line between fine art and breakthrough modern tattooing is being blurred. of course, the work hooper’s best known for is that currently on lenny kravitz and Sam ronson. The rise of ink on celebrities has no doubt contributed towards its boom in popularity in the last couple of decades, and the growing fascination with tattoos is demonstrated in shows such as Miami Ink, and its spin-off L.A. Ink. Instead of a fringe subculture, being a tattoo artist is a respectable career choice, and, for the most part, being tattooed is a perfectly acceptable choice.

yet there is still an undercurrent of hostility towards tattoos on women. The attention that they attract and the comments that a woman with a tattoo can provoke seem to clash with a society that’s supposedly tolerant of most lifestyle choices. looking at comments on message boards, the main problem is that tattoos seem to offend a narrow-minded view of what a woman should look like – people pronounce the women less attractive, assume lower intelligence, and announce that they will have less chance of getting a job. admittedly not a paradigm

for tolerance and open discussion, one reader on the Daily mail mes-sage board suggests that if the ‘tattooed morons’ were rounded up, ‘im sure violent crime, anti-social behaviour and illegal drug use would virtually disappear from our streets overnite (sic)’. Considering nearly a fifth of Britons have a tattoo, that’s a pretty damning statement.

it appears easy to completely ignore the fact that most people with tattoos, and i mean large, visible ones, have them done for a personal reasons – that they’re not considered socially acceptable or socially attractive usually doesn’t play a part in the decision. Personally, i think the most saddening perception that surfaces is that a tattoo, on a man or woman, makes them less professional or good at their job. it’s easy at university to maintain your individual ‘look’, whether through pierc-ings, tattoos, hairstyles or clothing, but the thought of a potential em-ployer forces many of us to conform to a look which hides the very fea-tures we chose to emphasise our individuality. a tattoo doesn’t lessen someone’s natural aptitude, talent or suitability for a job, but its mere presence may be enough to discourage an employer. yet, for that very reason, i too chose to have my tattoos in easily coverable places.

Tattoos are experiencing a rush of favour and with them becoming a permanent part of society, for the time being at least, it is time that tra-ditional stereotypes are challenged. The cultural significance of tattoos has changed; we no longer wear with pride tattoos proclaiming our tribal loyalties, but they are no less a sign of identity. i admit, tattoos aren’t exclusive and maybe it is fashionable to have one, but that does not reduce their significance to the individual or lessen the expression of their personality. Tattoos will never be a symbol of conformity; their very nature - the combined vision of client and artist in an intricate and ornate design - means that every tattoo is unique, much like its owner

”the stereotypical view of a tattooed individual needs to be challenged”

heleN Pye ouTliNeS The NeeD for SoCieTy To ChaNge hoW iT lookS aT TaTTooS

32 The Pembroke bullfrog 33Photos: fura (stock.xchng), laDeon (stock.xchng)

flo WalkerWiNDoW ShoPPiNg

Squat upon a pile of Dishclothes and biblesi was born a nouna nun in monochromegroping a WaltzWith the afternoonby twilight i had eaten your tongue for teaPoached in red wine vinegartaste of summer, Saltand the seayou empowered me with speecha throat coat of alkalinealigned my honeycomb mind to yoursall aboard the one way train!a destination we’d yet to nameoh but how i abhorred the way you ate your vowelsadored the things you found foula shadow root, an autumn childI had you hole punched, tucked in a file

lucy Du

34 The Pembroke bullfrog35

illustration: verity Whiter

36 The Pembroke bullfrog 37

it’s no secret that the music industry is in trouble. The advent of new technology, enabling digital retail and illegal file-sharing, has caused

once mighty record labels, founded on a now-effete business model, to spin round and round in the pessimistic self-awareness that they may not be around to do so much longer. The plummeting cost and decreasing technical knowledge needed to make music has not only rendered labels rather more dispensable and certainly less relevant to success, but it has also made it much easier to create music. Theo-retically, one could tool around on garageband for an afternoon and produce a hit. but that’s just what artists are doing today; rising rap-per Tyler, the Creator, of the la-based ofWgkTa collective, produces his music with apple’s logic Studio (a step-up from garageband) and fruity loops software, and while none of his singles have made the Top 40 (yet), his self-produced debut album ‘bastard’ was ranked 32nd on Pitchfork media’s list of the Top 50 albums of 2010.

The demise of major labels - often enormously inefficient and always profits-driven - and, in turn, the democratization of the music-making business, are perhaps developments to be celebrated. but there are victims to be mourned in the new era of music 2.0, as it is now being called; these are the record stores. unable to withstand the deluge of new artists and the ubiquity of illegal downloading, record shops are closing everywhere. Indeed, over the last five years, an independent record shop has closed in the uk every three days. high street music chains have been hit even harder: all of the high street chains are gone apart from hmv, and in January the hmv group announced its inten-tion to close 60 UK stores over the next 12 months, a decision affecting 10% of the group’s uk high street presence. This comes as no surprise

considering that, over the last three years, physical album sales have dropped by 12% and single sales by 32%, with three-quarters of the one billion songs downloaded so far this year having being done so illegally.

but were you to walk past the magdalen roundabout and up Cow-ley road, you might think these doom-and-gloom statistics sit rather oddly with the bright and cheery facade of one of oxford’s newest entrepreneurial endeavours, the singularly-named Truck Store. opened in february by brothers robin and Joe bennett, in collaboration with rapture entertainment ltd., the record store has a strong, if not par-ticularly lengthy, heritage. The brothers bennett founded Truck festi-val, an annual independent music festival held in July at hill farm near abingdon, in 1998. With an average annual attendance of around 5,000, Truck festival is nothing like its mammoth competitors glaston-bury and reading festivals, but that rather misses the point. you won’t find Kanye West or Dizzee Rascal on one of the festival stages; not for Truck the likes of u2 and Coldplay. That’s because Truck is informed by a rather more ‘indie’ ethos, with its focus on supporting stalwarts of the local scene like Stornoway, The Candyskins and youthmovies, and by its emphasis on a small and intimate setting - hill farm is very much a working farm and one of the festival’s stages has been branded the “barn That Cannot be Named”, perhaps because the overwhelming smell of manure overpowers one’s capacity for mental activity.

Truck may be stereotypically indie, but this approach evidently works; the festival gave birth to Truck records in 1999 and, this year, Truck Store. indeed, the minute you walk into the store, you can sense that

the pleas of oxford’s indie/alt/emo/hipster - whatever you want to call it - cohort for a suitably alternative record store have been answered. Glossy new vinyl records line the walls and the CD stands are filled with the not-quite-mainstream. indeed, robin bennett, of the founding family, unabashedly admits in an interview during Truck’s celebration of record Store Day in mid-april, that “the store has an independent-alternative style.” gesturing to his right, he points to the stage on which folksy message to bears had just played their mesmerizingly melodic set: “We got this stage so that we can hold regular events like [Record Store Day].”

Indeed, when I question Robin about the financial practicality of open-ing a record store in light of the slew of statistics which seem to pro-claim the death knell of such institutions, he eagerly rebuts, “Truck Store is not a record store, but it is. it’s a hub for the music community, for the Truck community. There is a community of musicians here and, just look,” he says, gesturing at the hot and sweaty crowd filling the store, making it feel more like a surging night club than anything else, “there’s an audience. This is a place for them to congregate.” That is, if you’re not intimidated by the pervasively indie staff, clientele and overall look of the place. But Truck Store certainly has made an effort to con-nect with its customers: “We put the counter a foot lower to make the staff more approachable, and we want to get tables in here so people can just sit down and read, hang out,” says robin. “We don’t have an algorithm. instead, you get my brother.”

It all sounds like a lot of offbeat fun and games, but who’s to say Truck Store won’t just go the way of the junkyard, even if the bennetts do try to fashion the Store into a meeting place for musically like-minded peo-

ple? Robin assures me that the Store’s finances are solid on a normal day and skyrocket during events like record Store Day, a worldwide celebration of independent record stores which Truck turned into a two-day extravaganza, with exclusive record Store Day releases from acts like radiohead, Caribou and Tom Petty, and in-store perform-ances, with the young knives’ set arguably being the highlight of the weekend. There do exist other, more consistent, factors accounting for Truck’s promising start. importantly, vinyl, once the fuddy-duddy grandfather of the CD, has become fashionable: “Sales [of vinyl] have just been going up and up. initially, it constituted 10% of our stock which was quite a lot. We were surprised to see really high demand in-crease that percentage.” and after all, robin admits, “if you wanted an mP3, you would probably just download it for free, right? records are a nice artifact.” What’s more, he points out, all the infrastructure needed to support the Store in its infancy already exists: there are the Store’s forebears, Truck festival and label, and, perhaps more importantly, an already vibrant local music scene - the scene that spawned ride, radiohead, Stornoway and the foals. There is, as robin already men-tioned, a sizable audience that is very ready and willing to participate in the local scene and in the life of the fledgling Store.

This audience, robin is quick to point out, is largely devoid of oxford university students. “i would really like to see more students involved,” says robin, a generous statement considering he went to “the other place”. “Sometimes i feel like oxford students never make it to this side of the river. People should embrace this side, and Cowley.” he might just have a point. There’s something to be said for engaging with the city that is our home for the ‘best years of our lives’. and if it’s distance you’re worried about, well, c’mon. it’s not as if it’s a truck drive away.

aT a Time WheN maNy reCorD ShoPS are DiSaPPeariNg, Charlie mCCaN revealS ThaT TruCk STore iSN’T goiNg aNyWhere

oN TraCk for SuCCeSS

Photos - flickr: laurence oP, brunobucci, g-monkey, Jacob Whittaker, anataman, red beddy black, rTPeat, hlima, funkandjazz; Stxchng: raWku5; graphics: Charlie mcCann

38 The Pembroke bullfrog 39Photo: ollie ford

Photo: flo Walker

lumNiif you would like to receive a hard copy of the magazine, there is a subscription pakage available where we will mail you three issues for a donation of £20. if you are interested, please email helen Pye at helen.pye@pmb.ox.ac.uk

DverTiSiNg400 undergraduates and 200 postgraduates receive a hard copy of the magazine. over 4,500 alumni are emailed an electronic version. if your company would like to advertise with us, please email Charley fus-cone at charlotte.fuscone@pmb.ox.ac.uk

DiTorialeditor: Charlie mcCanncharlotte.mccann@pmb.ox.ac.uk

editor: Paul Seddonpaul.seddon@pmb.ox.ac.uk

sub-editor: helen Pyehelen.pye@pmb.ox.ac.uk

reaSurertreasurer: Charley fusconecharlotte.fuscone@pmb.ox.ac.uk

eSigNdesigner: Charlie mcCanncharlotte.mccann@pmb.ox.ac.uk

iSClaimerThe views presented in this publication are the opinions of the named writers and do not represent the views of the College or the JCr.

We would like to thank all of the contributors who made this issue possible.To get involved with the next issue, please email the editors.

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