Once Upon a Time on the Internet...

Last night, after a glass or two of wine, and via a facebook link, I ended up reading College Humour's (extremely funny, but rather Western-centric) 'Facebook History of the World'. I had read bits of pieces of it before, but never all the way through, and I blinked a bit at this one:

I blinked because it's a little disconcerting to suddenly realise that your mind contains the memory of something so trivial. I remember - just - the days when the internet quite literally came on a CD. And it got me thinking about how much the internet has changed even within my lifetime. It struck me that one of the weirdest things is not how much the internet has developed, but how much I, at least, take the current status quo for granted. I haven't thought about my childhood experience of the internet for, quite literally, years.

I know that I can't exactly claim to have any memories of the 'birth' of the internet as a technology, but I think I certainly fall into the age bracket of people who were children when personal computing and using the internet started to become more and more common within the home. I remember my family's first computer - I think for some reason I called it 'Sally' - with its screen that was massive not in width but in depth - and the excitement in discovering that, unlike my grandfather's slightly older computer, it showed colours that were not black and green. And dial-up internet! Just listen to this sound clip. Doesn't that take you back? It's hard to imagine that eight-year-old me happily waited up to a minute or two just to get onto the internet, when twenty-two-year-old me gets antsy when Gmail takes more than 5 seconds to refresh -heck, when a large PDF document takes more than ten seconds to download!

And then there was the fact that, in the first few years at least, my parents had the type of internet that you paid for by the minute. I seem to recall that they agreed a tariff with me and my brothers whereby we would pay a certain contribution to the cost of the internet per minute (I think it was maybe 2p per minute?). Speaking of childhood memories, does anyone remember the Wonka chocolate bars and sweets that were around in the late 90's? Gobstoppers and chocolate bars with crackling candy in the middle? I think the packets advertised a website that had games on it, and I would save my pocket money to spend ten or fifteen minutes playing games on that site. I don't think I was really aware that the internet contained anything else.

It's very strange to think that a technology that seemed, at the time, a bit slow and a bit silly is now such a large part of my daily life. I backup my work to 'the cloud', I write blog posts in my browser, I stay in touch with friends and family via email, and so on. It's pretty rare that I ever happily 'work offline'. (Ah! Another memory: the good old days when webpages contained so little information that your computer would 'save' the pages you'd loaded automatically and you could look at them again without being connected).

However, if it's strange to think that technology we now take so much for granted was - so recently - just a fifteen-minute game when we were children, it's even stranger to realise that, 'even' today, the majority of the world is not on the internet. Obviously, some might argue that other more basic problems, such as world hunger and disease, need to be dealt with before we start worrying about digital equality. But perhaps it's striking to realise that, for all the talk of this being a 'digital age', accessing the internet - be it in ancient dial-up form or through high-speed broadband - is still a privilege. And perhaps that, just as much as amusing childhood memories of AOL cd's, should remind us not to take it for granted.

Battlestar Galactica: A Spoiler-Free Recommendation

Mr S and I both share slightly obsessive-compulsive tendencies when it comes to watching television. When we come across something we like, we watch it to the exclusion of anything else, with sessions of two or three episodes once or twice a week (we are also impatient, and prefer to leave the minimum amount of time between cliffhangers) until we have exhausted the entire series. This is probably one of the reasons why we don't have a TV, but we do have a Netflix subscription. Our latest addiction has been to Battlestar Galactica - not the one from the 1970's with the wonderful and ridiculous 1970's costumes, but the 2003-2009 remake.

Capes just seem a bit impractical for space fights.

I first came to science-fiction television through Star Trek, by which I mean I was pretty much raised on a steady diet of Next Generation, followed by Deep Space Nine, followed by Voyager, and rounded off by Enterprise which, due to coming out when I was in my early teens and starring several wonderfully chiselled jaws, ended up being the focus of my earliest fantasy 'crushes'. So the Star Trek universe has always been something of a ballpark against which I measure other science fiction. To be honest, this does not exactly disadvantage the rest of the genre.

One of the things which both makes Star Trek compelling watching and yet also removes its potential to really sting its viewers into sitting up straight with excitement is, well, its morality. Gene Roddenberry, its creator, wanted to portray an optimistic - some might say, idealistic - vision of the future. Conflict within episodes was to come from external sources, rather than occurring between characters, as he believed that 'by the 24th century, humanity had transcended petty conflict, and... arguments in the same way it had gone beyond poverty and disease and wars'.[1] These rules were not, of course, always strictly followed throughout different incarnations of the show (part of the drama of Voyager, of course, came from the potential for internal disagreements between a group of people stuck on a ship decades away from home), but the basic message underlying most of Star Trek is: humans are okay, really, and things will come right in the end. 

Which is why it is sometimes refreshing to encounter science fiction that takes a slightly less rosy view of things. Hence my enjoyment of the new Battlestar Galactica. To call the show 'dark' would perhaps be a mild understatement. I don't think it would be spoiling anything for those who have never seen the show to say that the first episode starts by almost all of humanity being wiped out in a nuclear attack by 'the Cylons' upon the Twelve Colonies, given that this is the basic premise of the show and is noted in the first sentence of pretty much any online synopsis you'll find. But anyway: it's stark. And the writers give some much harsher answers than Gene Roddenberry would have done to the question of what would happen to a group of 50,000 humans stuck in cramped conditions on a group of surviving ships as they run for their lives. They bicker. They riot. They complain about food rations. They sleep with people they shouldn't sleep with. They make really, really bad calls.

Especially this character. She had me shouting at the
screen in sheer exasperation a few times.

Like most successful science-fiction shows (and I use 'successful' in the sense of 'had a full run of seasons', unlike, sniff, Firefly), Battlestar Galactica has left fans and critics deeply divided. One blogger, following up on a post and epic comment thread which lasted approximately 4 years (!), concluded that he would recommend the show to a friend, but with serious reservations. This conclusion was largely due to the finale, which did, admittedly, contain some plot holes big enough to manoeuvre a battlestar through.[2] My own take on it is that the finale was, at the very least, more emotionally satisfying than many a finale, and that an entire series should certainly not be judged on the basis of its last three episodes.

So, the question for me is not so much would I recommend BG (as Mr S and I got to affectionately calling it) to a friend, but why would I recommend it. As I hinted at above, the conflicts and issues raised by the premise of a near-extinct human race fleeing from their enemies are fascinating. Issues of how justice, democracy, and social mobility would work within such a limited and, let's face it, terrified population are all considered and, I think, dealt with in a realistic and compelling fashion. Then there's the question of the Cylons. The Cylons were created by man, and the destruction of the Twelve Colonies is their revenge for what they see as their previous enslavement. Throughout the show, the question of what constitutes humanity is asked. If the Cylons can feel love, grief, and pain, are they human, or at the very least deserving of humane treatment? However, what really makes the show are the characters, and the actors who portray them. You might despise some of them at times, but they are all of them believable and complex, from the strict, gruff, angry but ultimately warm-hearted Commander Adama, to the crazy-I-really-want-to-have-abs-like-hers Kara 'Starbuck' Thrace.[3] You really want them all to survive and, in a show in which survival is constantly at question, it's that desire that keeps you coming back week after week - or, in our case, letting Netflix tick onto the next episode, and the next, and the next...

I could go on more, but instead I'll just say: if you enjoy science-fiction, and enjoy television that makes you think (and occasionally shout at the screen), you should give Battlestar Galactica a go.[4] Regardless of the ending, and perhaps appropriately enough for a show which is essentially about getting from point A to point B, the journey is entirely worth it.

Also, I love the design of the Galactica (the eponymous
main ship). It's hulking and huge and seems kind of like a
comforting old dog.

---

[1] http://1701news.com/node/322/rick-berman-roddenberry-made-rules-i-obeyed.html

[2] Initial post here, reluctant recommendation here. Spoiler warning!

[3] Starbuck was a man in the original. The actor who portrayed him wrote a protest against the 'castration' of his character which I think does more to indict him than it does the choices of the directors of the remake. 

[4] If you’re a newcomer to BG, you have the advantage of everything – interim webisodes etc – available to watch in the best possible order. This guide might be handy, though I wouldn’t agree with his suggestion of leaving any episodes out! 

Why I am Voting Yes, Part I - Political Autonomy

I have felt somewhat nervous in preparing for, writing, and publishing this post. I do not enjoy confrontation, and unless an issue is something I really care about, I try to avoid bringing up topics that may cause contention between myself and another, be they my friends, acquaintances, or complete strangers on the internet. Unfortunately, I find myself caring more and more about contentious issues as I grow up (a process which I’m sure I haven’t finished with yet!). Scottish independence is one such issue, and one that I have been putting more and more thought into lately, not least – but also not solely – because I have recently moved to Scotland, and will be voting in the referendum in September 2014.

I will be voting “yes” when I go to the polling booth.

As indicated above, admitting this in such a public forum – especially one which I believe many friends, some of whom have equally strong feelings in the opposite direction, read – took a certain amount of screwing my courage to the sticking place.[1] A few days ago I went onto the “Yes Scotland” website and signed their online declaration. But such gestures are fairly meaningless if I carry them out quietly and privately at my own desk – hence this post.

Why will I be voting “yes”? There are a plethora of reasons, reasons which are often batted away all too easily when they are given together and in summary. For that reason, I intend to discuss each reason in a separate blog post. However, the one I want to start with is the issue of political autonomy, and I want to justify my sense in the importance of this by looking at a few maps and statistics.

Above are two maps, one from the 2010 general election, and another from the 2005 general election. (As an aside, I find it a surprise looking back how geriatric the 2005 map seems, and how recently this sort of graphical take on reporting election results seems to have been in vogue!) In terms of the four colours filling Scotland, red is Labour, blue is Conservative, dark yellow Liberal Democrats, and light yellow SNP. I chose these maps because they make it really visually striking how distinct Scottish voting patterns in 2005 and 2010 were from the rest of the UK, mainly England (although the size of the constituencies farther north obfuscates the Liberal / Labour divide – Labour won 45 seats in both 2010 and 2005, and the Liberal Democrats 11). Of the 307 seats won by the Conservative Party in 2010, one was from Scotland.

This political distinctiveness from the rest of the UK is nothing new. Pushing further back into voting history (and relying now, alas, on statistical tables rather than online interactive maps!), Scotland has never had more than one Conservative seat since 1997, in which year they lost the 11 seats they had won in 1992, leaving them with a grand total of 0 seats in Scotland for the duration of Tony Blair’s first government. Under the aegis of Margaret Thatcher, from the 1979 to the 1987 election, the Conservative Party did rather better, with a high of 22 seats (and 31.4% of the overall vote) in 1979, and a respectable low of 10 seats (and 24% of the overall vote) in 1987. However, during that same period, Labour saw a high of 50 in terms of seats (and 39% of the overall vote) in 1987, and a high of 41.6% of the overall vote (and 44 seats) in 1979. They never won less than the 41 seats, just under half of the Conservative total for the same year, filled in 1983. Only once since the end of the Second World War have the Conservatives gained more seats in Scotland than Labour – that was in 1955, when 36 seats went blue and 34 went red.[2]

This post is not about the pros and cons of specific party politics per se. However, a friend of mine has a comment that he makes from time to time regarding the current political establishment; “David Cameron, you won a minority government. You did not receive a mandate to rule.” And yet, in spite of that lack of mandate, the government since 2010 has brought into effect a variety of significant policies, some of which, it could be argued, reflect Conservative ideals far more than those of the Liberal Democrats (for example privatisation of public institutions such as the NHS and Royal Mail, and increasing student fees, to name but a few). In other words, these policies represent the voices of a minority of voters within the UK. Such a reflection is even starker when considering Scotland alone. In 2010, whilst 39.6% of voters in England put a tick next to the blue box, only 16.7% did the same in Scotland (I fear my mathematical skills are not up to figuring out the overall proportion for the ‘rump United Kingdom’).[3]

What this adds up to is simple: the political views of the majority of people in Scotland are not represented by the Parliament in Westminster.

I am aware of the existence of the Scottish Parliament: however, it does not currently have the power to make the same kinds of life-changing decisions that Westminster makes every day for the population of the UK. To highlight one (less hotly discussed) such element of governmental policy, there have been suggestions that Scotland would be better off with a different immigration policy than England; Scotland is under-populated, and relies on migration for population growth far more than the rest of the UK does.[4] Moreover, it seems that the people of Scotland on the whole have a less negative attitude towards immigration than those in England.[5] Michael Moore, the Secretary of State for Scotland, has argued that Scotland changing its immigration policies after potential independence would cause a “complete nightmare” in terms of Scottish-English border controls, suggesting that, in spite of the arguments against a “one-fits-all” approach to immigration, this is one area in which a non-independent Scotland would be highly unlikely to see any autonomy.[6] And this is just a single issue. And is it really likely that the vast majority of voters in Scotland who have, over the past fifty plus years, voted for left-wing parties, have ever desired the policies brought in by successive right-wing governments ruling from Westminster?

Therefore, one of the reasons I am voting “yes” is because I strongly believe that the gap between Scotland and the rest of the UK is far more than a historic line on a map. There is a clear disparity between the decades-long political allegiances of the Scottish population, and the rest of the Union. This is not about high-sounding phrases such as “Scotland should rule itself”, or “Scotland’s voice should be heard”, but the political reality for a population of over 5 million people inhabiting a country that is not just geographically but politically discrete. Scottish voters should be able to look at the government making the policies that shape their lives and know that they reflect their democratic voices, as 30 years out of the past 54 have not.

***

Postscript: I am aware that one possible response to this argument is that political distinctiveness should not political independence make, otherwise one could argue for the total independence of certain counties within the UK which have traditionally voted in a certain way. It is difficult to know how to respond to this (although I think it is perhaps a shade reductio ad absurdum), except to repeat that this is but one of my reasons for supporting the dissolution of the Union, and that this reason is by no means independent of the others that I have yet to discuss. The "line on the map" between Scotland and the rest of the UK is evident in other ways, and it is when all of these differences - political, social, cultural - are taken together that I, personally, find them persuasive. 

---

[1] If you are one of those friends, please let me say that regardless of differences in opinion on political matters, I hold you all in great affection. Please keep talking to me! :)

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elections_in_Scotland#UK_Parliament.2C_Westminster
I refer both to seat totals and percentage of vote to satisfy the interests of both those who support FPTP, and those who prefer the idea of PR voting. I am aware that in PR terms there would be more Conservative seats in Scotland for many of the elections I refer to than occurred with FPTP.

[3] I have no idea how I would even do that without knowing the exact number of people voting in each constituent part of the UK...

[4] http://cpc.geodata.soton.ac.uk/publications/BP10_Patterns_And_Perceptions_Of_Migration.pdf

[5] As above; see also http://www.heraldscotland.com/comment/columnists/english-teachers-case-highlights-parallel-reality-of-border-agency.22089683 and http://www.scotsman.com/news/politics/top-stories/uk-immigration-policy-damaging-scottish-economy-1-2936945

[6] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/scotland/10214943/Michael-Moore-Immigration-a-nightmare-if-Scotland-votes-for-independence.html

Appallingly Alliterative Title: Marvellous Mushroom Risotto

Firstly and briefly, apologies for the long break between posts: finishing my MPhil, having my parents-in-law over from the States, hosting a wedding celebration, moving house, going on honeymoon and then settling into a new university have all meant that the past few months passed in a blur, occasionally interspersed with blogging-related guilt, but with little time to do anything to assuage it!

***

A fairly simple meal which I have always loved making is risotto. This probably dates back to my late teens, when pouring extra liquid onto risotto rice and stirring was the only culinary duty that my mother (a woman who cooks food for a living) would entrust me with. To me there seemed to be something marvellously relaxing about the process: pour, stir, and watch the rice almost magically expand. Risotto can, of course, endure almost endless variation: spring vegetables (a friend of mine once served this with feta, a cheese that I adore, stirred in at the end: Mr S was apparently hurt that my retrospective panegyrics over this meal far exceeded any I had lavished on his risottos!), butternut squash, peppers and bacon, and salmon and asparagus are all risotto ‘fillings’ that I have tried and enjoyed. I do, however, have a particular soft spot for mushroom risotto.

The first time I made risotto, in fact, it was mushroom risotto. I never really learnt to cook much as a child, and the first time I really attempted entire meals completely solo was when my parents went on holiday during the summer between my A Level exams and my first year at university. One of my older brothers was home, but not always in, and when he was around we often indulged in pizza or fish fingers and chips. One evening, however, I got home from work (a full-time summer job selling school uniforms in a wonderfully old-fashioned department store: a blog post all of its own!) to find the house empty, and began to explore the possibilities outside of the freezer. I came up with a bag of risotto rice, and some dried Sichuan mushrooms (though, being a supermarket product, they were of course labelled ‘Szechuan’). I slavishly followed the packet instructions on the plastic packaging of both delectable-looking foodstuffs, and ultimately retired proudly to the living room, to consume my first ever own-made risotto in front of the television and a favourite DVD: a guilty pleasure that I would certainly not have got away with had my parents been in the house!

I like to think that my cooking skills have matured a bit since then (I’m not entirely sure if I used an onion to help add flavour and bulk back then: possibly it was an awful lot blander than my memory pretends), and my favoured take on mushroom risotto now is inspired by another memorable meal. A couple of winters ago Mr S and I enjoyed a wonderful week in Venice singing with our college choir on tour, a trip which involved, of course, many delicious evenings. Early on in the trip, however, we were largely frustrated by the nigh-unavoidable ‘menu turistico’ offered as a staple by many of the Venetian restaurants – three course set menus which, to their credit, provided extensive food, but not a huge amount of exciting variety. Mr S – having a rather less determined approach to eating anything put in front of him than I – took this a little hard, and on the third night I attempted to assuage his grumpy expression by persuading him to go in with me on the house risotto, which required two people to order it at once; a sure sign, I thought, of fresh and careful cooking! What arrived, a pile of rice and mushrooms steeped in the flavour of both strong wine and cheese, more than hit the spot.

Since that meal, I have several times tried to recreate that heavenly risotto (though I cannot, I fear, recreate the rather wonderful circumstance which followed it, which was the owner of that out-of-the-way restaurant serenading our group with a small guitar and warbling Italian singing), and I think this is more or less how it goes:

- Risotto rice: I usually use arborio (cheaper), and about 75g per person.

- Onion; I usually use half an onion for two people.

- Mushrooms: half dried (whatever type you can find) for a stronger flavour, and half fresh, preferably chestnut.

- Vegetable stock mixed with boiling water.

- White wine, preferably not too sweet or fruity.

- A generous amount of grated parmesan (or grana padano – once again, cheaper!).

- Some butter.

It seems a little extravagant to cook with wine, and this is definitely a meal to be reserved for semi-special occasions, but it is completely worth it. Do not skimp on the wine; 1/3 of a bottle for two people is entirely reasonable. It takes quite a bit of wine to get the effect, meaning that just adding a little dash here and there is a bit pointless. Both the wine and the dried mushrooms add heaps of flavour, and for some reason the dried mushrooms give the dish a much more appropriately-mushroomy colour than fresh mushrooms do.

Anyway, you cook off the onions in butter, then once they’re starting to cook add the rice. Get it coated in butter and let it cook a tiny bit, but before it sticks add a good dash of wine and stir. I find that if I breathe in at this point the fumes get me a little bit tipsy…!

Some recipes I think have you add all the wine at first and then finish off with stock, but I tend to alternate as the rice expands and the liquid cooks off, leaving the bulk of the wine for the end of the cooking – I think its flavour ends up being expressed more strongly that way. Anyway, do the whole meditative pouring, stirring, simmering, pouring, stirring, simmering cycle with the rice whilst you chop the fresh mushrooms and steep the dried ones. Add both of those about 10-15 minutes in and keep adding stock/wine, with whatever herbs and seasoning you desire.

I’m not going to say how long to cook the rice, for two reasons. One is that I never wear a watch when cooking, so generally (unless I’m putting stuff in the oven to bake) don’t really study the time, and the other is that how cooked one wants risotto to be is entirely a personal preference. Technically, of course, it should be slightly al dente, i.e. a bit firm, but not everyone will prefer this. So, add liquid (preferably ending with wine) until the rice is at the consistency you desire, then simmer down until the risotto is not too ‘wet’. Then add a fairly generous handful of parmesan and a small knob of butter and stir it in. Take it off the heat, let it bubble the butter and melt the parmesan, give it a good stir, and serve with more parmesan on top, and perhaps with a glass of the same wine used to cook with. I always think it is the ultimate success of wine-matching to drink the same wine that has flavoured a meal!

Obviously, this is not a risotto that I cook every day, or even every month. However, every now and then, when things are not feeling so lean that pouring half a bottle of drinkable wine into a saucepan does not seem like economic and alcoholic sacrilege, I’ll cook this one up, and remember the alleyways and singing restauranteers of Venice, and my first summer of culinary freedom.

What's the Catch?

Mr S and I have just finished house-hunting for the third time in three years. I found house-hunting to be an activity that is both unbearably exciting and terribly stressful. Exciting, because the novelty of the freedom and adultness of the activity (I can choose where I live, and in what house? Don't I need to check with someone first?) hasn't yet rubbed off. Stressful, because of a whole list of unlikely rhetorical questions: what if everything is awful and every house we see is falling down? What if we find the one we love and in the half an hour it takes us to decide on it someone else nips in with dastardly haste and gets it before us? What if the letting agents decide I come under the prohibited definition of 'student' rather than the approved status of 'one half of a professional couple'?

These terrors have never yet come to pass, but my pessimistic expectations have been more surprised by the speedy and positive results of this search than they have been by either of the previous two. Thinking about what will be our third home together, which we sign the lease on tomorrow (but what if the landlord changes his mind overnight?! - shut up, brain), I can't help but wonder what the catch is.*

The first time we went house-hunting, it was in Oxford, where prices were high and where flats vanished from rightmove what felt like every ten seconds in the run-up to our search. We saw some appalling properties defined as 'student lets' (one of which had a basement for a living room in which my head scraped the ceiling - those who know me in person will know how low this was! - and another whose kitchen did not seem to have been repaired since 1940) until we finally chanced upon a fairly clean flat which impressed us so much with its non-geriatric cooker and unobjectionable carpets that we agreed to take it in minutes, relieved to find a place that was at least mildly well-cared for. It proved, over the course of the year, to have horrendous damp problems, so bad that our clothes moulded in the wardrobes. For what we could afford, it was the best of a bad lot, and I now mostly remember with fondness the excellent gas hob and the bright bay window in the bedroom, rather than the persistent coughs which we both suffered from due to its general atmosphere.

Our second flat, in Cambridge, was discovered after a run of (if possible) even worse viewings than in Oxford, including one particularly memorable property in which the letting agent, looking despairingly at the horribly peeling walls, pulled a long strip of paint off and said grimly: "the landlord will have to fix it now!" We had very few properties on our list - a symptom of the rapid turnover and high demand in such a beautiful and student-filled city - so nerves were certainly growing as we crossed more and more off, until I looked with new eyes at pictures of the university-owned accommodation (let directly from the university to students or employees as tenants, rather than through colleges). True, the flats available were in the midst of several very modern, over-large blocks, but at least, I reflected, they were new. We hastily signed a lease on a 10-year old ground floor, unfurnished flat with neutral walls, an almost shockingly efficient layout, and red blinds in the bedroom which look startling, but result in a surprisingly soothing shade of morning light. We also signed a lease which stipulated we had to get permission to play music: I was requested not to play my saxophone at all, and our piano-playing was limited to set hours. Moreover, the site is a good twenty-five minute walk into town, and the only amenity between it and said town is a cafe we have affectionately dubbed the 'Worst Coffee Shop in the World'. However, the flat is dry, and nothing ever breaks. A distinct step up from a house whose damp problems could only, we were told, be solved by demolition.

I've actually grown increasingly fond of the modern
architecture - I think it looks like the Cambridge
sky with its blue and light-grey panels.

So, we had high hopes that we could continue this upward trend with our third residence, this time in Fife, to where we are migrating for me to undertake a PhD at St Andrews. We decided to look in the coastal villages outside of St Andrews, on the grounds that they offered much lower rents than the town itself, and had good bus services (also, four years are too many for this country bumpkin to spend existing in anything more bustling than a large village). We booked a week in Fife, to give us plenty of time. This day - our first - started with the usual run of rejects; one too small, one too near a busy road, and one too-full-of-the-accoutrements-of-its-presumably-recently-deceased-elderly-female-owner (it still had bowls of pot-pourri, 1960s patterned carpet, and a flowered quilt on the bed. I can understand offering a house furnished, but this still looked like someone else's home). Then we caught the bus to a village called Crail, knocked on the door of a pretty stone house, and were welcomed upstairs by its landlord, who was wearing paint-splattered overalls due to being knee-deep in sprucing up an already pristine flat. 

If nothing else, the view out of the (double-glazed! - surprisingly rare in a place as chilly and windy as Fife) kitchen windows alone would have had us signing our next three years away then and there: nothing but sea. Add to that a sparkling kitchen, complete with dishwasher (oh, choirs of angels...), bedrooms with fitted shelves (we possess many books), the most picturesque harbour in Scotland two seconds down a lane, and we were pretty much biting the landlord's hand off.

When I call it 'picturesque', I mean it appears on
jigsaws.

Afterwards, in a daze of mild exhaustion and happiness at having found such a wonderful place so quickly, we took a walk around what will be our new village, and that's where things started to get a bit unbelievable. Across the road from the flat there was a second-hand bookshop, and when we got into conversation with the owner we were told happily that this was surely the friendliest village in the East Neuk, and if we ever needed anything, we should just go knock on the door across the way, whose inhabitant would help out any newcomer. Leaving the bookshop (purchases in hand, of course) we passed two cheerful cafes, a grocers selling fresh vegetables, a family butchers, and an uninterrupted series of lovely old buildings, until we reached the church, where we were greeted with a series of anecdotes about the church and village by a cheerful gentleman standing at the doors for the conveniently-timed open day. Both he and the bookseller imparted to us the low-down on the available 'entertainment' in Crail: a folk club, and a bi-weekly cinema club, at which (as I later discovered on the village council website) free wine is served. It has regular, quick buses into St Andrews which run late except on Sundays. In place of the kebab vans of student cities, it has a fish and chip shop, and a shed in the harbour that sells hot lobster to take away (£5 for a half). Oh, and it has a beach that has won awards. I am trying very hard to think of anything to criticise about either the flat we are going be taking or the village in which we will reside, and it is feeling increasingly surreal.

So, if you ever see headlines declaring "mysterious spate of murders in coastal village", or "sinkhole opens in the East Neuk", you will nod, and know - it was simply too good to be true.  But I'll try to

keep a hold of that giddy feeling until such evidence appears.

______________________________
*The answer is, of course, 'maybe lobster'.

The Mysteries of May Week

Once a year, after the end of 'Easter' (summer) term, the students, colleges, and other institutions of the University of Cambridge undertake to enjoy a week of revelries known as 'May Week'. Being Cambridge, and therefore one of the more eccentric cities in the country, this of course takes place in mid-June, after both exams and the pressures of term have come to a close. May Week consists of a flurry of - extremely grand - balls, and slightly less extravagant garden parties. Unlike in Oxford, where such events take place spread over the three terms - albeit, admittedly, with a conglomeration of 'Commemoration Balls' at around the same time as Cambridge May Week - the inhabitants of her sister city seem to take the approach of cramming all of the revelries and relaxation forgotten for the rest of the year into as short a space of time as possible.

I think I may be whatever the Scrooge equivalent for May Week is.

Obviously I would be Patrick Stewart's Scrooge.

This is, partially, down to finances (a statement met with surprisingly blank looks from several of my fellow students - have they access to an academic philosopher's stone about which I know nothing?). During a year in which living costs are tight enough to warrant Mr S and I keeping a strict expenditures book clocking down our weekly funds, I simply couldn't imagine spending £310 (the cost of a pair of non-dining tickets for the May Ball at my college, Queens') on a night out for the two of us. To refer back to an earlier post, you'd get a good 100 jars of home-made pesto out of that - enough to keep two people going for 200 days, if you could stomach the repetition.

That aside, I'm also not 100% sure if I would want to spend that much even if I could afford it. This is no reflection on the many people who do spend that much on a ball - I very much hope they enjoy themselves! - but I'm the kind of person who feels automatically guilty at spending any money on herself. I go through internal paroxysms simply justifying a spend of twenty pounds on a new dress (will I wear it in enough? Do I really need it? Does a wardrobe half made up of items bought when I was in school really need freshening up?), and I can't quite imagine what contortions of guilt spending £155 on a single night, however pleasant, would put me through. Once again, this is simply my own peculiar mindset, but I have a feeling that, personally, I would spend so much energy worrying about getting £155 of enjoyment out of my time at such an expensive ball that I would, well, fail to enjoy myself.

However, I also find the concept of May Week as a whole a little discomfiting. It is a time of so much conspicuous consumption - of food, of alcohol, of spectacle. It feels somehow both a little wasteful and a little excessive. I worry in an ill-defined way that this week is one of the traditions that makes Oxbridge - which has a lot to offer potential applicants from all backgrounds - seem a little remote, and a little strange. Or at least, it is the type of thing that makes journalistic commentators declare that Oxbridge is remote and strange, in spite of the best access efforts of both universities. May Week is grand and lavish and entirely unselfconscious of how that might make the university in which it occurs appear to bemused outsiders.

Mr S and I are escaping to the country tomorrow to stay with my parents. This is mainly because we have been promising to visit for some time, and it is our only chance, but we are also quite relieved to escape town for the week, not least because in mid-June it is crawling with tourists, and colleges, now filled with the construction of gazebos and tents and soundstages, have ceased to be the quiet havens from the main thoroughfares that they were in previous weeks. However, that is not to say that we haven't taken a small amount of second-hand pleasure from May Week. This afternoon, we went into Queens' and sat in the gardens to observe the set-up. 

And what a set-up it was. Every previously un-covered pathway was lined with a gazebo, to keep ball-gowns and white tie jackets dry in the case of rain, low, amoeba-like tents had been erected over dance-floors which covered pristine lawns (I winced for the gardeners' doubtless emotional trauma at such a sight), and - most amazingly of all - an entirely new bridge, constructed from scaffolding, had appeared out of nowhere across the Cam, providing a second connection between the two halves of college in addition to the famed Mathematical Bridge. This I eyed with some dubiousness, but I couldn't help but feel impressed as I observed the effect of several coats of glossy black paint over somewhat nondescript scaffolding. It would certainly look impressive once finished, and the whole thing was an incredible effort. After finishing our picnic, we walked back through college, passing countless palettes piled high with goodies - penny sweets, bagels, digestive biscuits (?!) - and a troupe of actors rehearsing Shakespeare in front of the Tudor Gallery. An old-fashioned and somewhat delicate-looking merry-go-round had sprung up within an impressively small patch of space next to the river. Anyone going tomorrow is sure to have an incredible night - so long as the new bridge holds!

Contrary to myth, this bridge wasn't designed by Newton, and has
always had bolts.

This evening, we heard the sound of fireworks from our flat, and dashed outside to a good patch of grass some distance from our building. A mile as the crow flies from either Trinity or Clare Ball (it could have been either), we could hear the music and see the display quite clearly. I was delighted that they included a few of my favourite fireworks (the gold ones that go 'wheee' in a shrill voice - I have child-like tastes in such things, I fear) but mildly perturbed to think of the sheer expense of the display, which went on almost as long as any big Bonfire Night performance. For the most part, however, I just enjoyed our private viewing of the array of colours and explosions which filled the night sky for a good 15 minutes. They had some especially beautiful effects which I had never seen before - ones which combined fuzzy gold streamers with bright pink rockets, for example* - and for once I found the music paired with the fireworks (Brahms at one point, ending with the 1812 overture) to be enjoyably apt.

May Week. An eccentric, and slightly overwhelming tradition, well suited, if nothing else, to an eccentric and slightly overwhelming place.



*I fear I will never get a job as a reviewer of firework displays...

The Hiatus Cycle

This post comes by way of an apology for my silence lately. Last Friday I handed in my Masters (or is it Master's, or Masters'? I'm never entirely sure) dissertation, an event preceded by around three weeks of stress, running around the library, and reading and re-reading my three chapters until I wanted nothing more than to throw them all into the Cam and cycle away as fast as I could. In the end, the pages stayed dry, and are as we speak heading towards the desk of the two mystery examiners, but it was a close run thing.

Anyway, this has resulted in me failing to write anything on here for over a month. I have lots of things I want to write, but I knew that the first thing I needed to do was to break the hiatus cycle, hence this post.

The hiatus cycle is a close cousin to that scourge of students everywhere, procrastination. It is the mindset you get when events have conspired to prevent you doing something for so long that by the time you actually get the chance to do it, you feel so ashamed for having taken so long that you can barely bring yourself to actually complete the task. So you delay further, and then the next time you think of it, you feel even more embarrassed. And so on.

So this is me - breaking the cycle, albeit with a fairly bland post. More anon, now that I have got over that first hurdle.