TN2 Vol 54 Issue 7

tn2
Shedding light on the
arts in Trinity
ARTP16
4
THAT FACEBOOK FEELING
Love, life, and relationships all
through the news feed
19
RACHEL ALLEN
The TV chef reveals her top
tips for student cooking
COVERNOTESP2
Catriona
Notorious
Its the morning after and our girl is mortified.
Words: Victoria Notaro
B
est case scenario. It all starts with
mad passion and reckless abandon. A
kiss turns into something more,
bodies become fused together like
they’ll never be wedged apart and
the animal in you takes over. And it’s all fabulous.
Eventually you drift off into a satisfied sleep,
warm and drowsy after all the eh…exertion.
Flash forward. It’s eight in the morning, bright
out and you’ve just woken up starkers. There’s a
body in bed beside you, one that you were doing
kinda carnal things to a few hours before. Things
you might just be a wee bit self conscious about
now the hormones have abated.
It’s happened to the best of us. Well, those of
us that bother to stay the night, anyway. You’ve
slept with somebody for the first time (and in
some cases, definitely the last time) and now that
you’re feeling decidedly less sexual in the light of
day, there’s room for another emotion.
Mortification.
There’s fear in almost every situation, unless you
happen to be a supermodel. If it was a one night
kinda thing, you’re wondering how to get to your
knickers across the room without this stranger
seeing your stretch marks. If it’s the start of what
you hope to be a new relationship, you’re hoping
the body that might have seemed fabulous and
graceful in the twilight won’t make him puke in
the stark light of day.
Now I’m not just talking about body hang ups
here. I’m also talking about morning breath, the
biggest romance killer of all time. I get really
annoyed when I see couples on TV waking up in
full make-up without panda eyes and kissing their
co-star passionately. This gives men a bad
impression that all women should wake up
ethereal and goddess like. We do not. I have
distinct memories of waking up and wondering
how to get out of bed in the nip and race to clean
“
Photo courtesy of The Fury of Tim
terviewing the very enigmatic
Sons and Daughters, The Fury
of Tim and Los Campesinos!
(check out the backpage if
you fancy a free ticket to their
next gig).
For Fashion, we get to
see what mature students
think of Trinity’s fashion
sense and we get a glimpse at
the work of fashion students
in NCAD.
Last of all, this issue’s cover is
dedicated to the upcoming
Trinity Arts Festival, which is
much anticipated by all!
I get really annoyed
when I see couples on
TV waking up in full
make-up without panda
eyes and kissing their
co-star passionately.
”
my teeth without yer man noticing. Water by the
bed helps, but coupled with nerves, morning
breath is a powerful creature.
Another thing - what went on while you were
asleep? I am both a cuddler and a talker. A friend
of mine is a sweater. Another is a kicker. Adding a
strange bed and a warm body to this mix might
result in all of the above. I once had a very vivid
dream which led me to talk aloud. I was having a
conversation with somebody called Frank who
happened to be on top of me in my subconscious.
“Frank, Jesus, get off me! Not now. Frank, I’m
serious, get off me!” Thankfully Himself and I had
been together quite a while at this stage, and I
assured him that there has and never will be (I
hope) a man called Frank on top of me. Imagine
that happened on the first night we spent
together?
Maybe putting on underwear after the throes
of passion might help. Or even a t-shirt. Perhaps
flannelette full length pyjamas, deodorant,
mouthwash and ambient music to avoid vivid
dreaming is in order? After all, a girl must be
prepared. Here, lads, I’ll let you in on a secret.
THAT’S what we keep in our gigantic handbags.
COLLEGE BANDS: The Fury of Tim
F
or this issue, the
exceedingly elusive Lara O’Connor has written a
feature on relationships, Facebook style. Edibles gets
inspired by the prospect of
Shrove Tuesday, and gives you
instructions on how to make
the perfect pancake. If it’s recipies you’re after, then look
out for our interview with
Rachel Allen, who shares
some of her favourite student
dishes with TN2.
Meanwhile, Hugh
McCafferty has been busy in-
S
ome people have compared
The Fury of Tim to My
Bloody
Valentine
and
Mogwai.
Although
complimentary,
such
comparisons are inaccurate. Where My
Bloody Valentine get the digs in early
with an immediate blast of impenetrable
noise, The Fury of Tim wear the listener
down slowly, patiently, over the course
of a song. Where Mogwai layer delicate
harmonies over waves of distortion, The
Fury of Tim pound out guitar mantras
that seem to operate on a much more
primal level. Drone rock, then, along the
lines of Earth – but infinitely more
listenable – might be a more apt
description.
“We actually brought in Earth CDs
as a reference point when we were
recording before Christmas,” guitarist
John Kealy explains. Eager not to some
across as too obscenely pretentious, he
continues, “I think of music as texture.
There are infinite ways of playing the
same chord, depending on how you
strike it, the effects you use etc.” “We’re
not just interested in melody,” drummer
Ronan Lyne takes over, “dynamics are
especially important; we’re very riffbased.”
Indeed, in a typical song, the band
will take a riff and play it over and over
again in an attempt to play it differently,
somehow, every time. On paper, that
may sound tedious, but in practise it can
be mesmerising. And when the
crescendos kick in, it’s not just for chinstrokers, either. “I used to imagine that
fans of ours would be very much
hardcore music fans, into obscure stuff,
but I get surprised by the kind of people
who react positively to us,” Ronan
remarks.
The band will be playing in the
college chapel at this year’s Trinity Arts
Festival. It will be a rare opportunity to
hear them in a venue so well suited to
their sound. At the moment, times and
dates are unconfirmed, but it should
take place on either the 12th or 13th of
February- check out their website.
www.furyoftim.com
www.myspace.com/furyoftim
Sons and Daughters
P3INTERVIEW
Sons and
Daughters
discuss their new
record, illuminate
the enigma that is
Morrissey and
warn about the
perils of micro
sleep.
Words: Hugh
McCafferty
O
n the release of their
second album, The
Repulsion Box, back
in 2005, Glasgow’s
Sons and Daughters
seemed to be going
places. Critical reaction to the record was
positive and a string of support slots for
high-profile acts such as Idlewild and
Franz Ferdinand added fuel to the
already blazing fire. Somehow, though, it
didn’t quite come together and despite a
punishing tour schedule, the four-piece
failed to get the level of attention they
seemed to warrant.
Two and a half years later, the band
are back with a new record, This Gift,
and no less ambition than before.
Produced by former Suede member and
all-round guitar legend Bernard Butler,
the album sounds a lot more assured
than previous efforts.
I spoke to front woman Adele
Bethel and guitarist/vocalist Scott
Paterson about the new album and what
it was like to work with Butler. “He’s a
lovely guy, socially”,Paterson begins, “but
I’ve never been more tense in the
studio.” It would seem that there were
serious differences in opinions during
the recording sessions. “Scott almost hit
him at one point”, Bethel explains,
glancing at her bandmate with a grin.
“Bernard’s fiery and passionate”, she
continues, “and we clashed because we
are too.”
Studio spats aside, the two are quite
pleased with the new record. The band
still sound like an American folk-playing
garage rock band, but this time around,
they’ve added a few more classically
British flourishes, such as the Johnny
Marr guitar licks of standout track
“Iodine”. “We never really think about
what new songs are going to sound like,
but we did want to make a record that,
like with the Smiths, was catchy but had
depth as well”, Paterson explains.
On the subject of the Smiths, I asked
them what it was like to tour with
Morrissey back in 2006. “Beautiful”,
Paterson returns with an --irrepressible
smile, “it was great to meet him”. The
former Smiths front man has certainly
had a patchy relationship with the media,
and, indeed, other bands, over the years.
His most recent altercation involves the
NME, against whom he took a lawsuit in
December after the publication
allegedly took an interview quote out of
context, portraying him as a racist. “He’s
a gentleman”, according to Bethel, “but
he keeps to himself. He distrusts the
media, I think, with good cause”.Nodding
sympathetically, pen and notebook in
hand, I decide to move swiftly on.
The band are set to tour for the next
four months, after which the summer
festival season will kick in, bringing with
it more dates. And after that? “Touring,
touring, touring”,Paterson returns, with a
look of both dread and delight. I wonder
whether they ever suffer from tour
fatigue. “You always have adrenaline to
play shows; you get the energy from
somewhere”, Bethel tells me, “except for
that time Scott went into a micro-sleep
in the middle of a gig in Hamburg”, she
says, throwing a teasing look at the
guitarist.
For the uninitiated, micro-sleep is
an unexpected onset of sleep that lasts
only a few seconds, but that leaves the
subject confused and disorientated. Not
something you’d like to happen during a
show, then. “I hadn’t slept in, like, two
days”, Paterson explains, with a look that
would suggest his bandmates have
extracted the story a few times already.
“It worked out alright though, I don’t
think anyone noticed.”
There’s no doubt, then, that the
touring can be intense, but it pays off, as
when the band went to Australia a year
and a half ago. “When we got off the
airplane, we saw kids wearing our tshirts; in the taxi, the radio was playing
our songs; all of our dates there sold out.
It was bizarre”, Paterson says. “We got
our first magazine cover there too”,
Bethel adds.
Touring aside, the group have been
involved in other activities between
albums, including last year’s “Ballads of
the Books” project. Spearheaded by
Idlewild’s Roddy Woomble, the project
involved eighteen Scottish poets
presenting a poem of theirs to one of
eighteen Scottish bands, who then wrote
a song using the words provided as lyrics.
Sons and Daughters found themselves
paired up with the poet A.L. Kennedy.
“Alison Kennedy picked us personally”,
Bethel enthuses. The band received the
poem just days before they were meant
to record the finished song. “It was one
of the quickest songs we’ve ever written,
which usually isn’t a good thing, but we
actually really love it”, Bethel concludes.
On the subject of further
collaborations, Paterson doesn’t hesitate,
“I’ve always said my ambition was to
work with David Lynch”. And Bethel?
“Leonard Cohen. But I don’t think
there’s much chance of that happening,”
she laughs.
For the time being, though, their
minds will be focused on the upcoming
album release (it’s in shops now) and
coinciding tour, which includes a date in
Whelans on 17 February. Will the group
scale the heights of rock stardom this
time around? It’s hard to know. One
thing’s for sure, though: they’ll put on a
passionate show either way.
FEATUREP4
News Feed
Preferences
January 29
Updated: Lara O’Connor is no longer in a relationship
Updated: Lara O’Connor created a group
“All Men are bastards”
Just for fun - Inside jokes
Info: For all those ladies out there doing it for themselves and abandoning men
see more
Updated: Lara O’Connor left the group “All you need is love”
January 28
Lara O’Connor is bewildered.
Sarah Hughes tagged Lara O’Connor in 3 photos.
Tagged in: Random Photos
January 26
Updated: Lara O’Connor joined the group “All you need is love”
Lara O’Connor has given a Love Monkey to John Carroll.
“
Mwah!
”
View my gits | Give Lara a gift
P5FEATURE
Relationship status:
It’s complicated
F
“
acebook makes me nervous.
You never know what is
lurking around the virtual
corner, what nugget of
information is just a mouse
click away. You get that tingling
Facebook feeling as you log on and click
your way through comments, the slight
knot in your stomach that is always
there. Sometimes it can be a harmless
invitation to a party (in which case I
scrutinise the list of confirmed guests
and base my attendance on that), but
other times, it can be something else.
Something darker, something that I
don’t want to know… “Karen Coombe
has spanked John Carroll with a blowup sheep”.There it is – the private/public
flirting of your ex-boyfriend plastered in
front of you. Sometimes ignorance is
bliss. But up pops the news feed with
our daily fill of scandal and I can not
help but click onto this Karen Coombe
and skim through her photos of nights
out and track her changing hairstyle... I
am a Facebook masochist; although it
hurts, I cannot pull myself out of the
digital whirlpool of buzzing with people
I hardly know.
In this modern technological age,
Facebook is the devourer of all things. It
devours our time, our relationships and
even our friends. In the past three years,
there has been a digital boom in the
online life – Facebook, Bebo, MySpace,
to mention the most prolific, are
dominating our social lives both
privately and publicly. At the time of
writing this article, the Trinity network
on Facebook has 8465 members – a
figure which is steadily increasing every
day. This internet trend of blogging was
initially reserved solely for cyber-geeks,
but now, the personal blog has emerged
as the friendly version of seedy web
chat. It is now the most fashionable way
to communicate with friends. Everyone
who is anyone and anyone who is no
one has an online identity. Not getting
on too well in the real world? In this
cyber age that we live in, that doesn’t
matter anymore. With the joy of the
internet, we can conduct conversations,
relationship and even sexual acts
without leaving our rooms, getting
dressed or brushing our teeth.
In the course of research for this
article, I came across a prominent
broadsheet Irish newspaper who
recently ran an article pronouncing that
With the joy of
the internet, we
can conduct
conversations,
relationship and
even sexual acts
without leaving
our rooms,
getting dressed
or brushing our
teeth.
”
Irish university students are turning
away from Bebo and moving up to
Facebook. The blithe reporter gleefully
trawled through the benefits of
Facebook – whether it is used to meet
new debating partners or play Scrabble
with friends in Germany. Another
article I came across was a sort of
Facebook manners tutorial in which the
journalist
recommended
specific
Facebook etiquette such as: “Don’t
leave your status unchanged for 3
weeks… you don’t want to appear lazy”.
Despite this profusion of Facebook
popularity, what effect does this cyber
society obsession have on our real,
everyday lives where we are not
zombies or vampires but ordinary
mortals?
A friend of mine recently broke up
with his boyfriend and has found
himself in a new turn-of-the-century
problem following a break-up. In
previous years when relationships
ended, all our predecessors had to worry
about was ripping up the odd
photograph and throwing out old love
letters – a private, cathartic process of
removing someone from your life. The
modern day equivalent is logging into
your
Facebook
homepage
and
systematically deleting them from your
digital life. As your life changes, your
Facebook status must change also… and
simultaneously, your whole Facebook
network is notified. From computer
room to college dorm to lecture hall,
daily news feeds keep everyone in your
cyber circle posted on who is dating and
who is being dumped. In one sense, this
is a positive development as it cuts out
any awkward questions about the break
up – everyone is informed of the news,
therefore, you are not accountable for
telling everyone you know. However,
saying that, there is something clinical
about this new way to communicate.
Following a break-up, the tears and the
rows are difficult, but the worst part of
all is logging on and finding that you
have been digitally dumped.
John Carroll is no longer in a
relationship.
The stark internet world… a
statement complete with a little broken
heart symbol. If only the real world was
that simple. If only we could digitally
erase people’s touch, smell, past from
our bodies… but we can’t. Perhaps this
is why the digital dump is so difficult –
this merging of private emotions and
public reality brings a certain sense of
inescapable finality. But there are no
cyber tears… we are all determined to
put on a brave face (book). We post
scores of smiling photos preferably
taken with scores of equally smiling
attractive friends having the time of our
cyber lives. “Me and Shane”, click “Me
and Shane again”, click, “Me and Shane
Locked”… and so forth. Up the photos
go with steely determination to be
virtually fabulous; meanwhile, we brush
our real tears aside, trying not to let
them fall on the keyboard and short
circuit the computer.
We create our online identity
through the basic headlines which have
been laid out for us by the Facebook Big
Brother:
Name,
Sex,
Birthday,
Hometown, Religious and Political
Views. Then on to the more personal
details: favourite quotes, favourite
books, films, music and personal
employment history (including dates,
addresses and phone numbers of
employers.) Facebook is a social
curriculum vitae, we are effectively
marketing ourselves to our peers.
College can be an intimidating place;
many people find this cyber world as an
accessible alternative to meet people,
get involved with societies and make
friends. However, we must not forget
that Facebook is not merely a social
tool, it is a social weapon. In the wrong
hands, it is a weapon which can be
orchestrated in the most delicate ways
to increase popularity, create internet
rivalry and manipulate people.
Everyone looks hot on Facebook
or interesting or fun to be around or
whatever public persona you are trying
to embody. It is the equivalent to a
glossy celebrity magazine – except the
people you read about are people you
know (most of the time). The most
frightening manifestation of this is
walking through campus and finding
yourself staring at someone who you
just cannot place… and then you realise,
you have crossed digital paths, never
spoken, never been introduced and yet
you are intimately aware of this person’s
current social standing and life. But no
one can admit to this without seeming a
little bit creepy… so we avoid their gaze
and carry on walking.
To conclude, we have to be careful
about the way in which we use this
social network – this tool which is
supposed to be helping us to
communicate can, in fact, push us
further away from each other. It is a bad
sign when we are spanking, poking and
tickling people online and then pass
them in Front Square without saying
hello. The idea of Facebook etiquette is
a tricky one – we feel guilty for
examining the private details of other
people’s lives, for clambering through
their comments and pictures whilst
“facebook stalking”, as it is known in
circles. However, since this information
is presented in a public forum (or
limited forum such as Trinity network),
surely it exists purely for us to examine
and process. How can we create a
balance between our public social
performances and private emotional
realities? Excess of knowledge about
other people’s lives is often not a good
thing. Personal mystery and the
excitement of the unknown has been
erased in this saturated digital world
that we live in. This world is all about
the known, the visual and the public…
which many consider a positive change.
I know I should push my Luddite
tendencies to the back of my mind and
embrace this new technology, but there
is still something about this Facebook
family which makes me want to pull my
eyes out.
FILMP6
WAR
MURDER
S
E
X
the Dublin Inte
rnational
Film Festival
Words: Conor O’Kelly
T
here is no Garbo. There is
no Dietrich. There is only
Louise
Brooks!”
So
claimed Henri Langlois,
the Head of the French
Cinematheque. In the 1920’s, Louise
Brooks was an original screen siren, a
showgirl turned actress; her trademark
bob haircut made her instantly
recognisable and her fans were legion.
Then, at the height of her fame, and in a
pique of diva-esque behaviour, Ms.
Brooks quit Paramount Pictures and
decamped to Europe to work with the
German director G. W. Pabst. Tragically,
and illustrative of the power of the
studios in Hollywood in the 1920’s,
Brooks’ acts of defiance and disloyalty
meant she was denied any offers of
significant roles when she returned to
the United States. Louise Brooks died
in 1984.
Brooks deserved popularity as an
actress: the fact that she had an affair
with Charlie Chaplin and that she was
a close friends of William Randolph
Hearst would have been sufficient to
earn her a place in film and media
history. As it turns out, ironically, it is
the work which she completed in
Europe, contributing to the demise of
her career in Hollywood, that has
contributed most to her bona fide status
as a screen legend of the twentieth
century.
Pandora's Box (1929) directed by
German Expressionist G.W. Pabst,
when Brooks thumbed her nose at the
United States studio system, remains
her most celebrated role as a sexual
ingénue and is considered a
masterpiece of one of cinema’s most
creative and formative decades. Nearly
eighty years later, Pandora's Box is
being screened as part of this year’s
Dublin International Film Festival. If
my superlatives are not enough to
convince you to skip along to the
screening, perhaps the live musical
accompaniment by the avant garde
group 3epkano or the film’s notable
first big screen lesbian kiss is enough to
convince.
Now in its sixth year of
sponsorship with Jameson, Ireland’s
premier film festival is showing signs of
maturity – over 100 screening,
premieres, discussions and events are
planned between 15 and 24 February.
While the full schedule for the film
festival will not be released until tickets
go on sale on 29 January, a few details
have been released by Programme
Director Grainne Humphreys.
Anyone interested in queer studies
will be eagerly anticipating Savage
Grace, directed by Tom Kalin, director
of the new queer cinema favourite
Swoon (1992). Starring Julianne Moore,
this film tells the bizarre story of the
1972 Barbara Daly Baekeland murders
involving an incestuous mother /
homosexual
son
relationship
culminating in matricide. This film has
“
Savage Grace tells
the bizarre story
of the Barbara
Daly Baekeland
murders involving
an incestuous
mother/
homosexual son
relationship,
culminating in
matricide.
”
been under wraps for quite some time,
with a 2007 Cannes screening receiving
rapturous reviews.
The Irish and Polish film
communities will both be out in force to
welcome, Danuta Stenka, the star of
Andrzej Wajda’s latest film Katyn, is a
promised attendee for the Irish
premiere. Wajda has been honoured
with both an honorary Oscar and a
Golden Bear for his contributions to
cinema, in a career that has spanned
seven decades. Katyn tells the story of a
notorious massacre of Polish prisoners
of war and political prisoners (think
lawyers, landowners, journalists etc.) by
Soviet soldiers. This is a subject very
close to Wajda’s heart in that his father,
a Polish cavalry officer, was killed in the
massacre, which claimed upwards of
20000 lives. Expect this to sell out early
on.
Finally, we all know someone who,
at every given opportunity and a
moment’s notice, is prepared to strap a
surfboard to the roof of their
Volkswagen Golf and head for the
wilds of Bundoran or Lahinch in search
of the perfect “Tube”. Well, I thought
this
was
a
relatively
recent
phenomenon, but I am willing to be set
right
in
my
(apparent)
misapprehension.
As Waveriders would have it,
Irishmen are the original instigators of
the modern surf lifestyle, having
brought it to California from Hawaii
and then contributing to the
establishment of a surf culture proper…
dude. If all this sounds too deliciously
improbable to be true, get yourself
along to the premiere, which is bound
to be high five-tastic event.
These are only a few example of
what promises to be a really enjoyable
festival. One word of warning: tickets
for these screenings will sell-out.
The Dublin International Film
Festival opens on the 15 of February.
Tickets go on sale on the 29 of January.
P7FILM
Sing ‘M’ for murder
A
pparently Tim Burton
wears a pair of pin-stripe
socks as a lucky charm at
every premiere and
special occasion. He
supposedly never remembers his
dreams, apart from one recurring dream
involving the girl he fell in love with in
high school, and word on the Internet
rumour mill is that he is set to direct the
Broadway musical version of Batman. It
would appear that even in everyday life,
the man who brought us such films as
Beetlejuice, Mars Attacks! and Charlie
and the Chocolate Factory is every bit as
deliciously weird as we like to imagine
him. Despite protests from Burton to
the contrary, “I could dress in a clown
costume and laugh with the happy
people, but they’d still say I’m a dark
personality” - we still like to think of him
as a misunderstood outcast who finds
cathartic release in gothic horror.
Therein lies the essence of Burton’s
appeal. Even if he were literally to dress
in a clown costume and “laugh with the
happy people”, you just KNOW he’d find
a way to make it disturbing. Let’s face it,
this man could make a film about the
Andrex puppy and it would put us all off
toilet paper for life.
Burton was born and raised in
Words: Emma Keaveney
Burbank, California and spent much of
his formative years indoors, consuming
low budget horror movies. These films
clearly had a great effect on the young
Burton – once he even staged an axe
murder with his brother to scare the
neighbours, who then promptly
informed the police. A talented artist, he
won a fellowship at Disney after
graduating from art school. There he
worked as an animator on films such as
The Fox and the Hound, but quickly
became disenchanted with Disney’s
refusal to accommodate his artistic
vision. After a string of quirky short
films, Burton was presented with 1988’s
Beetlejuice - the film that firmly set his
style of pop-gothic in the public
imagination for the first time. Warner
Brothers, impressed by Burton’s ability
to spin a big hit from a small budget,
then assigned him to direct Batman
(1989), which turned out to be one of the
highest grossing film releases of all time.
Burton’s career had gone super-stellar
and the 90’s brought a string of neogothic
crowd-pleasers:
Edward
Scissorhands (1990), Batman Returns
(1992), Mars Attacks! (1996) and Sleepy
Hollow (1999), as well as the critically
acclaimed but financially unsuccessful
Ed Wood (1994). Since then, cinema-
goers have been served up a slightly
bizarre re-imagining of Planet of the
Apes (2001), a fantastically tall tale of
America’s Deep South (Big Fish, 2003),
an exuberant adaptation of Roald
Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate
Factory (2005) and a stop-motion
animation film loosely based on
Russian-Jewish folklore (Corpse Bride,
2005). All in a day’s work for the man in
the pinstriped socks.
So it would appear to be business as
usual for Burton with his latest offering,
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of
Fleet Street. An adaptation of the
Stephen Sondheim stage musical,
Sweeney Todd marks Burton’s sixth
collaboration with Johnny Depp and his
most likely film yet to be a significant
Oscar contender. Widely accepted to be
the stuff of mere legend, the gruesome
tale of Sweeney Todd was once matched
in notoriety only by Jack the Ripper.
Todd would cut his customers’ throats
while they sat in his barber’s chair, then
send their bloody corpses down a chute
into the cellar below, where they were
chopped up and used as the filling for
meat pies by his accomplice in crime,
Mrs. Nellie Lovett — pies that were then
sold to an unsuspecting public. Johnny
Depp plays Benjamin Barker (a.k.a.
Sweeney Todd) while Helena Bonham
Carter, another Burton staple player,
plays the widow Mrs. Nellie Lovett. Diehard fans of the stage version should
approach with caution as numerous cuts,
edits and changes were made, most
notably the omission of the famous
“Ballad of Sweeney Todd”.However, this
is certainly not to the expense of the
film’s overall effect. Burton clearly
relishes in the film’s Kill Bill style
fantasy gore - another element that
distances it significantly from the stage
version - making Sweeney Todd an orgy
of abject bloody delight.
The murder scenes are mouthwatering (there’s a sentence I never
thought I’d say!) reminding you of the
undeniably cinematic qualities of
squelchy, tomato-red blood on the big
screen. The horror is augmented by
another powerhouse performance by
Johnny Depp, this time reportedly
inspired by the 1940’s character actor
Peter Lorre (and Depp fans will love
seeing him in a musical again after John
Water’s Cry Baby). So if you feel
yourself intrigued by the mere idea of a
musical slasher, then I would highly
recommend tripping along to your local
multiplex. Sweeney Todd is bloody
brilliant.
MUSICP8
the soft
bullet
in
T
hese days, College
structures seem to be all
about change – semesters
and modules, merging
departments: all in the
name of making the College
experience a better one for students
everywhere. Indeed. However, there
are plenty of ideas they have missed
out on in the interests of the learning
experience. Powerpoint presentations
and lecture notes are all very well; but
in these times of change, we must once
again turn to internet-based
entertainment nuggets for inspiration.
Stronger than a moose and coming at
us like a buzzard in the Olympia this
September, the Mighty Boosh have, in
their third season, shown us the way
forward for class presentations with a
twist – or more specifically, a crimp. No
more for us the mediocrity of the
prose-style discourse on whatever we
were supposed to read for class this
week: behold instead the might of the
randomly-structured junkbeat rhyming
genius that is the crimp. Check it out
at http://www.veoh.com/videos/
v25620973bPzebeW.
And if presentations with props
are your thing, the excellence that is
Potter Puppet Pals has proved to us
that hand puppets are by no means a
thing of the past and seaside
Punch&Judy shows. Even if you are
not a major Potter fan (don’t worry,
there are support groups out there)
you can still appreciate this musical
ode to the essential comedy of the
characters, from Naked Dumbledore to
an all-singing, all-dancing Snape. Just
think of the possibilities for tutorial
frolics: Joyce v. Beckett prose-off
scenarios, Mozart v. Salieri conducting
a battle of the bands…and if you want
to get involved on a larger scale, you
could always try demonstrating
quantum physics laws through the
eternal medium of modern dance.
See the pals in action at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tx1
XIm6q4r4 and see how you can live the
dream for your next class effort.
And as for entertainment of the live
variety, Forever Presents have some
great Whelan’s shows coming up in
February, including Laura Veirs on the
6, Chrome Hoof on the 12 and The
Dillinger Escape Plan on the 16.
EnjoyT!
Lara O’Connor invstigates the virtual world of Relationships on Facebook FEATURE P4-5
Words: Carolyn Power
Sonic Youths
Resistance is futile: Los Campesinos! will defeat you with
irresistible hooks, razor-sharp lyrics and more exclamation marks
than you can possibly hope to defy. Words: Hugh McCafferty
W
e might be doing this show when
we come over, I wonder if you
could tell me something about
it”, Aleks Campesinos inquires.
“Em, what’s it called again?
Ooh! Tubridy Tonight! Do you know it?” I begin to
stutter. Laying bare the true horrors of RTÉ’s
Friday night television atrocity is not an option. It
would be like explaining what goes on in the glue
factory to Clip-Clop the lovable horse. Or kicking
a puppy that was wearing an adorable little woolly
hat in the face. I mumble something incoherently,
laugh awkwardly a little and change the subject.
Crisis averted.
Such is the sense of unadulterated joy that
Los Campesinos! inspire in me. But perhaps I’m
being unfair to the band, for they are by no means
a troupe of drooling, loved-up idiots. On the
contrary, their lyrics point towards a wry, observant
sense of humour in songs such as “The
International Tweexcore Underground” and their
ability to grab listeners with infectious pop hooks
is masterful, even at this early stage. “I think we’re
a bit wary of coming across as too happy”, Aleks,
who plays keyboard and shares lead vocal duties,
admits.
The video for next single “Death to Los
Campesinos!”, then, where the band are attacked
and murdered by a marauding wave of kittens,
balloons and rainbows, seems quite appropriate.
“We’re being attacked by quite pleasant things,
really”, Aleks notes. “We want to make people
aware that there’s more to us, that there’s an
edginess there.”
The seven-piece are set to release their debut
album Hold On, Youngster on 25 February. I asked
Aleks what it was like to work with Broken Social
Scene collaborator Dave Newfeld, who produced
the record. “We were a bit nervous at first, but
Dave was very inspiring. It was nice to feel that
you could make mistakes and that you had the
time to get things right.”
Looking at the band’s progress over the last
year, it’s easy to forget that they are, essentially, a
university band, having formed at the University
of Cardiff in 2006. I asked Aleks if she had any
parting advice for students with dreams of indie
stardom. “Well, it’s difficult; we never set out to get
signed, our only aim was to play one students’
union gig,” she recalls. “We were bored with a lot of
other music, so we just tried to create something
that sounded new. I suppose, then, it’s important
to try to do something different. And enjoy it.”
Presuming they survive their ordeal on
Tubridy Tonight, Los Campesinos! will play the
Village on 11 February. It’s going to be deadly.
P9MUSIC
W
hat do you get when
you
cross
an
embryonic
comic
book incarnation, a
celluloid
junkie
songwriter and a Theramin afficionado?
The answer is Dev Hynes, aka
Lightspeed Champion: the name comes
from a comic book character that was
started on his schoolday mathbooks and
is rapidly becoming a member of a
collabrative comic and a graphic novel
that’s still very much in the works.
Striking out from previous bands like
Test Icicles, his debut album Falling Off
The Lavender Bridge proves him to be a
serious contender for the indie-darling
throne, with songs ranging from the
anthemic and insanely-worded “Galaxy
of the Lost” (I believe I have referred to
the ‘now we kiss and I’m sick in your
mouth’ line before – that one pretty much
never leaves you) to the breezily sardonic
“Devil Tricks for a Bitch” and the sonic
seascape of “Salty Water”. There is also a
slightly restless roaming spirit to the
album, which makes sense when you
consider Hynes’ travels from his
Houston, Texas birth through Edinburgh
and Essex to London, where he still lives
– although the album travelled still more,
recording in Omaha, Nebraska with a
cast of dabblers including producer Mike
Mogis of Saddle Creek Records, Nate
INREVIEW
Interpol
Venue: RDS
Date: 2 December 2007
Words: Tim Smyth
CHILLING
in the name of
Lightspeed Champion proves that there’s still hope
for indie in his debut Falling Off The Lavender
Bridge, and chats about TV addictions and the
future of the theramin.
Words: Carolyn Power
Walcott, Clark Baechle, vocalist Emmy
the Great and moonlighting sessions
from members of Tilly and the Wall and
Cursive.
Given the seemingly effortless sonic
witchery of his debut, you may well
assume that Hynes himself would be
something of an interesting character for
a chat. And you would be very right
indeed. Talking to him before his last
Whelan’s gig, he was expansive and
entertaining, despite being tour-weary
and somewhat nervous (or freaking out,
to paraphrase the man himself) at
playing his first Irish show. When
reassured that Irish crowds have a
reputation
for
being
positively
responsive, he was visibly relieved – due
to the fact, he explained, that “I just get
so nervous, and I say a lot of stupid shit
on stage. I mean I don’t know if anyone’s
even going to turn up!” Naturally turn
up we did in droves, and also naturally,
the gig was sweet.
Music alone, however, is not Hynes’
only concern: television looms large in
his list of vested interests. The OC, one
of his favourites, even gets a namecheck
on “Let The Bitches Die” (calm down,
he’s not a raging misogynist) and when
asked what television show he’d most
like to contribute some music to, he was
delightfully verbose: ‘Oh, wow…All. I
mean, if I could give a list…I’m a really
big That 70’s Show fan, but I mean that
doesn’t exist any more, so it wouldn’t
happen unless there was some weird clip
episode or something. The OC, The
Hills, Laguna Beach…what else? Angel,
but that’s over as well…Lost, but they
don’t really have music…24…I don’t
even own a TV, but I’m a huge TV fan.
Well then, how about writing for TV
itself? “Definitely. I mean, I just love
writing – I love recording, but I love
writing more. If I was asked to write a
song for someone, I would do it right
then and there…but nobody ever asks
me!”
You may also be wondering where
the theramin comes in. Well, Hynes is a
bit of a multi-instrumentalist, so I asked
the usually hypothetical question
concerning the weirdest instrument he
would like to have on the next album –
and the response, “Well, I play the
theramin – I’d love to own one, actually –
that has to go on the next one.
Definitely”, pretty much sealed my
opinion that this character is quite
possibly 2008’s embodiment of wicked
cool.
Teutonic stomp
I
’ll be honest: Interpol always struck me as an
odd prospect. Not fun enough to be Franz
Ferdinand, too clean to be The Strokes and
too Krautrock to be New Yorkers, I could
never really figure them out. Besides, Carlos
Dengler looks like a vampire and Paul Banks' lyrics
always seemed to have been written by an East
German who has difficulties relating to other people.
No, it all seemed a little too European for me.
Of course, that was before I saw them live. So, while
the word “revelatory” might seem a little too Biblical
in this context, I'll go ahead and use it anyway.
They kept us waiting, mind. I think we could all
have done without the support act Friendly Fires, who
don't seem to have realised that Klaxons were joking
when they came up with this whole “nu-rave” thing –
which died about three weeks ago. Granted some of
their songs have the odd anthemic cadence in the
chorus and their guitarist plays like a post-punk Nick
Zinner, but when I saw the cowbell and police-car
light, I'll admit I switched off.
Then the temperature in the place dropped
about four degrees, Interpol swept on-stage as only
they can and slunk into the sinister, spectral “Pioneer
To The Falls”. It's the most deliciously eerie song of
2007 and also the moment the quartet became the
streamlined, minimalist auditorium act they always
threatened to become. Against its soundscape of
chiming guitar, echoing piano and spongy bass,
frontman Banks' hollow voice sounded even more
spookily declamatory than ever.
They don't have to resort to the flashy gimmicks
of the nu-ravers to get the crowd going: all they need
is their repertoire. The pogoing reached a frenzy
during Antics's highlights ”C'mere” and “Evil”, and
the Teutonic stomp of “Say Hello To Angels” was as
terrifying as it was exhilarating.
Granted, one or two songs – most notably “No I
In Threesome” – failed to fly, and the decision to play
stately dirge “Rest My Chemistry” and the beautiful,
interminable “The Lighthouse” either side of “Slow
Hands” was like stopping a rollercoaster before it
gets to the fun bit. Even still, though, the odd slow
number was welcome, with “Hands Away” (from
their 2002 debut Turn On The Bright Lights) adding
some much needed shade and depth. Given the
strength of their set, it was hard to know what tricks
they could pull out of the bag for the encore. “PDA”,
however, did the job beautifully, with Kessler again
acting as the hyperactive foil to Banks' stock-still
delivery.
And then, with drummer Sam Fogarino pausing
a moment to tantalise the crowd with his hat and with
a wiggly-fingered wave from not-so-vampiric-after-all
Dengler, away they go, leaving this hack duly
converted to their suited-and-booted delights.
FASHIONP10
A true passion for fashion
Laura Corrigan checks out the up and coming design talent at NCAD.
Photos: Caroline O’Leary
I
t’s a bitterly cold Thursday morning
when I find myself lurking outside the
distinctive blue gate of the National
College of Art & Design. I’m here to
interview the fashion students, but a
thought sits uncomfortably in my head. Irish
fashion design- isn’t that a contradiction in
terms?
The team from Trinity News are led to the
design workshop through a labyrinth of
building work, meanwhile keeping an eye out
for the eccentric fashion aficionados and the
paint-speckled alternative types art schools are
famed for. The doors open onto a room
steeped in creativity- swathes of material
looped around mannequins and billboard-sized
images of models in daring patterns adorn the
walls. The minute I step across the threshold, I
realise that I have happened upon something I
didn’t think existed within the confines of
Ireland. We are pointed towards the students’
personal workstations on the upper level,
where we are to meet the budding designers.
To be admitted to the NCAD Fashion
Design course, a core first year must be
successfully completed in the College. Once in
second year, students get experience learning
about a wide range of fashion aspects:
including knitwear, pattern cutting, illustration
and manufacturing techniques. The students
seem self-assured and confident; the answers
to our questions come easily, no doubt a result
of the critique given by the tutors in the coursean ability to be able to defend your stylistic
choices and give poised reflections is a crucial
part of surviving the fashion business. For some
of the students, the combination of style and
design has been their focus from an early age,
while for others, the course was something they
decided on after trying out other disciplines in
the College. NCAD students have the
opportunity to participate in short introductory
sessions to all the aspects of design, often
resulting in career defining changes with more
than one student taking the tremendous leap
from Industrial Design to Fashion.
Pleasantries are exchanged as we meet
Barry, a Senior Sophister student. His first
foray into fashion occurred when, at just
twelve, he attended an Issey Miyake show in
New York. Although he enjoyed the encounter,
he never considered a career
in
fashion
until
he
experienced a change of
heart in first year of College.
Despite some eleventh hour
decision
making,
the
fashion students in NCAD
are anything but indifferent
when it comes to work.
They fight hard to be
admitted, and as a result,
are willing to sacrifice
their social lives, replacing
these with up to 60 hours
of study a week.
In a course where hard work reigns
supreme, it comes as no surprise to learn that
the rewards to be reaped are extraordinary.
Suzanne, a Junior Sophister, described last
year’s field trip to Paris, during which they
attend the Premier Vision fabric fair.
Opportunities for work experience beyond the
wildest dreams of most are plentiful, thanks to
the College’s links with the European Union
Leonardo scheme. One or two students from
the 15-strong course are chosen for the chance
to complete internships in EU countries. Barry
was a successful candidate for the programme,
getting the chance to work with Galliano for
four months in Paris. Steve, another
charismatic Senior Sophister, spent the
summer working with All Saints in London – a
name synonymous with young UK design
talent. He felt it was a competitive
environment but a positive one, the small team
was brimming with fresh perspective and a
crisp take on the old ideas. Barry sheds some
light on the question of why such revered and
established names are willing to lend a hand to
the up-and-coming crop of Irish design
students by explaining that the NCAD has
traditionally churned out a collection of much
more wearable designs than its outlandish
competitors such as Central Saint Martins.
In a college as diverse as NCAD,
inspiration seems to lurk around every corner,
but for these students, their creative awakening
can be stirred by both the bizarre and the
mundane. Stimulating materials are found
everywhere from the beauty of a flower to old
Batman and Robin episodes. When asked who
their
favourite designers were, the sheer passion in
their answers and knowledge the students have
for their field is astounding, they cited unusual
and international design references rather than
the classic art school reply of “McQueen”.
Suzanne looked to Japan for her influences:
Junya Watanabe topped her list of luminaries,
while Steve noted East End leading men
Henry Holland and Gareth Pugh as his main
inspirations.
On top of their many commitments, the
students are also taking part in “Lightwave”, a
festival exploring light, to be held as part of the
launch of Trinity Science Gallery in February.
Installations, displays and interactive events
will take place around the gallery and the city
centre and it will incorporate work from some
of the top lighting designers in the world. The
NCAD students plan to work with a variety of
fabrics for the event, ranging from LED
encrusted materials to UV printed dresses, in
an attempt to convey the intricacies of light in
relation to art and design.
Walking out of the design workshop, I
envied the fashion students. Their absolute love
of what they do, and the opportunities within
their grasp amazed me, and defied all my
expectations. They admit that staying in Dublin
to establish a career in fashion is virtually
impossible, but with their credentials after
graduating from Ireland’s top design college,
London, Paris and New York don’t seem that
far away. It won’t be long until the fashion
scene is littered by these homegrown talents
and watch this space, our very own enfant
terrible is about to arrive.
Old skool
campus cool
How do mature students handle the
pressure when it comes down to the
style stakes on campus?
Words: Ciarán Durkan
T
he Arts Building is
renowned for a certain je
ne sais quoi, be it the
dressed to kill (watch while
I don’t break my ankle in
spike heels on the cobbles) type, the
trendy (I got it at a London flea market) type, the conservative/preppy-soon
to be business person/librarian type, or
the, how shall we say, rather more
demonstratively attired individualrather less, in some cases. From personal
experience, spending two years at one of
Dublin Institute of Technology’s institutions, I know that this level of attention
to detail is not found on every campus
across the nation. As almost everyone
walking through the Front Gate of Trinity knows, consciously or otherwise,
there is a certain expectation they must
live up to. The tradition of a somewhat
more fashion-conscious campus perhaps
belies Trinity’s illustrious, albeit somewhat elitist, history. And there must be
some truth to the rumours of Trinity’s
stylish youths, with top Irish stylists
known to brave the cobbles to get inspiration on the hottest new trends and
Irish newspapers having, on more than
one occasion, photographed a welldressed fashionista in the Arts Building.
Given the fact that the main part of the
student body in Trinity is made up of the
culturally aware youth in their early
twenties, it is readily accepted that they
will quickly adapt to their new surroundings. That is what people in the
late stage of their formative years do:
find individuality and personal style,
which is part and parcel of what college
life is about. But what of the much-forgotten demographic in the student population, the mature students? If you are
somewhat past the impressionable age
of the early twenties and have matured
enough to avoid peer pressure, how are
you going to deal with the fashion conscious and trendy youths who you now
find yourself surrounded with?
Vourneen, a student studying TSM
English, aged 52 and single mother of
two, is now in her Senior Sophister year.
She is not the kind of lady to be intimidated by others, but reveals that she did
feel under pressure to alter her attire
when coming to college. Vourneen
moved to London in her early 20’s and
was very fashion-forward as a youth. She
still considers fashion top of her list of
interests, but obviously being a student,
coupled with her family responsibilities,
she admitted to having tailored her
wardrobe away from the business side of
things and went in for a much more casual look. “It’s like power dressing in reverse”, she says, “I didn’t want to isolate
myself from the students and tried to
identify more with them”. Her biggest
fear was been perceived as rich, overeducated and intimidating, which she
thinks would have been the case had she
dressed as she would have when working in finance.
Liliane-Mayumi, aged 30, a Senior
Sophister student studying languages,
has been in Ireland for eleven years now.
When she decided to come to Trinity to
do her degree she had already formed
an idea of the campus “style” from her
colleagues and partner. In her case, coming from a less high-powered office environment, she was looking forward to
dressing with more personal flair. For
her it was a mixture of feeling older and
seeing how the students around her
dressed that made her realise she had a
chance to experiment with fashion. She
says that she wanted to avoid trying to
look like some of the girls in their early
twenties in the Arts Building, as there is
always the issue of mutton and lamb, but
this did not stop her from looking the
part of a trendy young Trinity student.
Having gone straight into the workplace
at the age of twenty, finding herself surrounded by students a decade later has
allowed her to orientate her wardrobe
away from the dull smart-casual office
wear and into brighter, more fashion
forward styles, “College gave me the opportunity to dress the way I’ve always
wanted.”
Tom is a 64 year-old retired colonel
for the Irish Defence Forces, also in his
Photo: Rachel Kennedy
P11FASHION
Senior Sophister year studying Art History and French. Although he has said
that he has no interest in fashion, he did
notice when arriving here nearly four
years ago that there was a certain
amount of the student population who
dressed to impress. “It doesn’t work like
that for men”, he replied to a question
about whether he felt pressured into
dressing a certain way. For him, after
spending 42 years in uniform, the opportunity to wear whatever he liked was
the main reason behind his student
wardrobe. He always liked to be relaxed,
in casual clothes like jeans and t-shirts.
He does, however, admit that had he
chosen the more formal suit-and-tie silhouette, worn by the majority of men his
age, it would have created a distinct barrier between him and his new, younger
peers. With over three years of wearing
this new casual “uniform” he says that
he may be more interested in his everyday style. He spoke of recently buying a
coat which he thought of as very “contemporary”, and which he remarks he
would never have bought four years ago.
Perhaps there is something to be
said for these mature students coming
out of a career, a comfort zone that they
had been in for some time and into a
wholly new surrounding, which brings
with it a bewildering new set of peers.
Both Tom and Vourneen commented on
the fact that they found it very difficult
at their age to know what to wear in this
situation. It would be ridiculous for
them to attempt to look like an eighteen
year old again, but also difficult for them
to interact with their fellow students and
lecturers if they were dressed in the outfit they had come to see as suitable for
their age-group. Whereas the age factor
cannot be overcome, they did not want
to create “more barriers than were already there” with their clothing choice.
In most cases the students interviewed
said that they chose to wear more casual
clothes to college, but by a strange contradiction, some found that when they
first arrived, there was a wish to revert
to their previous style of clothing,
“Sometimes I made the decision to wear
a suit to College, and tell myself to act
my age.”
None of the mature students will
admit to buckling under peer pressure,
but the information gleaned from the interviews suggests that they were all conscious not only of their age, but also of
the way they dressed. “At the end of the
day we are students, regardless of the
added ‘mature’ element, we should look
the part”. After reflecting on this awhile,
both Liliane and Vourneen agreed that
perhaps it’s not such a bad thing; their
new surroundings allow them to experiment, without feeling out of place or
overdressed.
P13BOOKS
Notebooks
Journals of Sylvia
Plath, 1950-1962
Author: Tennessee
Williams
Price: €41.80 829pp.
Publisher: Yale University
Press
Ranging across the author’s entire adult life (from an
insecure young man in his mid-twenties to, well, an
insecure old man in his seventies), Williams’ Notebooks
are an unflinching record of the twentieth century’s
most loved - and doubtlessly most successful playwright. The key decade - from 1945 to 1955 - in
which Williams’ produced five of his best known works
- takes up the majority of the journals, but the less
academically-inclined reader will also find details of the
author’s obsession with the cult of celebrity, his
dependency on drugs and a frank account of the
playwright’s sexual exploits. “Juicy” is not the word.
A Writer’s Diary
Author: Sylvia Plath
Author: Virginia Woolf
Price: €27.35 742pp.
Price: €13.30 372pp.
Publisher: Faber and
Faber
Publisher: Harvest Books
Previously published in a much-vilified abridged edition in
1982, it is only in the years since the death of Plath’s
equally-vilified husband Ted Hughes that these journals
have appeared in a complete form, with every spelling and
punctuation error gloriously intact. Roughly two-thirds of
the material has never been seen before and the Plath who
emerges is ruthlessly ambitious, fiercely loyal and painfully
intense - in equal parts. Lest the reader feel cheated in a
morbid way, Plath’s final two journals are missing (one lost,
the other burned by Hughes), so any insight the reader
might wish to gain into the poet’s suicide is a gesture made
in vain.
Virginia Woolf is one of those rare authors for whom the
term “prolific” is not simply a veiled euphemism for
“popular” (and therefore “unsophisticated”, “unartistic”
and even, let it be said, “vulgar”). A keen diarist for over
twenty seven years, A Writer’s Diary represents an
admirable distillation of Woolf’s notebooks and diaries
by her faithful but oft-overshadowed husband Leonard.
Prioritising extracts relating to Woolf’s reading matter,
her thoughts on the writing process, and everyday scenes
which provided the raw material for much of her work,
this book provides a ready antidote for the reader from
(often tedious) journals proper.
AUTHORPROFILE
DBC Pierre
This Thursday, Booker Prize winner DBC
Pierre visits Trinity's Literary Society.
Rahul Bery profiles the author of Vernon
God Little and Ludmilla's Broken English.
D
BC ("Dirty But Clean")
Pierre,
"Freak,
dickhead,
arsehole,
dumb, farting machine,
awkward
and
bumbling" Leitrim-Based MexicanBritish-Australian Booker Prize winner
and author of Vernon God Little will be
speaking for the Literary society on the
31st January. Coming to writing at a
relatively
late
stage
(the
aforementioned novel, his debut, was
brought to fruition before his fortieth
birthday), his youth was spent gaining
what some call 'life experience',
including, amongst other activities, a
quest to find the lost gold of the last
Aztec emperor, Montezuma. And this
unorthodox education clearly paid off
in the form of Vernon God Little,
which, though he has written a second
novel, Ludmilla's Broken English,
continues to be his prize piece, at least
until a third novel surfaces. It tells the
story of a fifteen year old school boy,
Vernon Gregory Little, stuck in a
conservative Texan town named
Martirio. His best friend, Jesus Navarro,
decides to rid the world of all of his
classmates before ridding the world of
himself. (Un)fortunately Vernon, due to
his chronic bowel problems, is
defecating in the bushes at the time. As
the sole survivor, he is immediately a
suspect in the subsequent investigation.
Pierre masterfully conjures up the
image of Middle America and their
culture of the 'television as gospel'. In a
world where 'celebrity' is the 6 o'clock
news is the absolute truth, Vernon
stands no chance and goes on the run
into neighbouring Mexico.
Often compared to Salinger's The
Catcher in the Rye, the novel is also
reminiscent of Camus's masterpiece,
The Outsider. Like Mersault, Vernon
refuses to 'play the game' that society
demands. He naively believes that his
innocence will be uncovered because
"that's what happens in the movies".
Once more, like Meursault, the refusal
to enter into the society's 'game' results
in the labelling of Vernon as a heartless
monster, which the reader knows he
isn't. He's just another slightly screwed
up teenager, in fact as sane as they
come in the absurd world of Middle
America. Outside of his work, Pierre
has earned a reputation as a 'character',
with a murky past and a reputation for
hell-raising
(during
which
he
apparently amassed debts of £150,000,
a third of which was paid back with his
Booker Prize money) enhanced by a
healthy dose of self mythologizing. His
arrival at Trinity promises to be
interesting, whether you are a fan or
not.
The Literary Society presents DBC
Pierre, Thursday 31st January, Swift
Theatre, Arts Block, 7p.m, all welcome.
P13BOOKS
Notebooks
Journals of Sylvia
Plath, 1950-1962
Author: Tennessee
Williams
Price: €41.80 829pp.
Publisher: Yale University
Press
Ranging across the author’s entire adult life (from an
insecure young man in his mid-twenties to, well, an
insecure old man in his seventies), Williams’ Notebooks
are an unflinching record of the twentieth century’s
most loved - and doubtlessly most successful playwright. The key decade - from 1945 to 1955 - in
which Williams’ produced five of his best known works
- takes up the majority of the journals, but the less
academically-inclined reader will also find details of the
author’s obsession with the cult of celebrity, his
dependency on drugs and a frank account of the
playwright’s sexual exploits. “Juicy” is not the word.
A Writer’s Diary
Author: Sylvia Plath
Author: Virginia Woolf
Price: €27.35 742pp.
Price: €13.30 372pp.
Publisher: Faber and
Faber
Publisher: Harvest Books
Previously published in a much-vilified abridged edition in
1982, it is only in the years since the death of Plath’s
equally-vilified husband Ted Hughes that these journals
have appeared in a complete form, with every spelling and
punctuation error gloriously intact. Roughly two-thirds of
the material has never been seen before and the Plath who
emerges is ruthlessly ambitious, fiercely loyal and painfully
intense - in equal parts. Lest the reader feel cheated in a
morbid way, Plath’s final two journals are missing (one lost,
the other burned by Hughes), so any insight the reader
might wish to gain into the poet’s suicide is a gesture made
in vain.
Virginia Woolf is one of those rare authors for whom the
term “prolific” is not simply a veiled euphemism for
“popular” (and therefore “unsophisticated”, “unartistic”
and even, let it be said, “vulgar”). A keen diarist for over
twenty seven years, A Writer’s Diary represents an
admirable distillation of Woolf’s notebooks and diaries
by her faithful but oft-overshadowed husband Leonard.
Prioritising extracts relating to Woolf’s reading matter,
her thoughts on the writing process, and everyday scenes
which provided the raw material for much of her work,
this book provides a ready antidote for the reader from
(often tedious) journals proper.
AUTHORPROFILE
DBC Pierre
This Thursday, Booker Prize winner DBC
Pierre visits Trinity's Literary Society.
Rahul Bery profiles the author of Vernon
God Little and Ludmilla's Broken English.
D
BC ("Dirty But Clean")
Pierre,
"Freak,
dickhead,
arsehole,
dumb, farting machine,
awkward
and
bumbling" Leitrim-Based MexicanBritish-Australian Booker Prize winner
and author of Vernon God Little will be
speaking for the Literary society on the
31st January. Coming to writing at a
relatively
late
stage
(the
aforementioned novel, his debut, was
brought to fruition before his fortieth
birthday), his youth was spent gaining
what some call 'life experience',
including, amongst other activities, a
quest to find the lost gold of the last
Aztec emperor, Montezuma. And this
unorthodox education clearly paid off
in the form of Vernon God Little,
which, though he has written a second
novel, Ludmilla's Broken English,
continues to be his prize piece, at least
until a third novel surfaces. It tells the
story of a fifteen year old school boy,
Vernon Gregory Little, stuck in a
conservative Texan town named
Martirio. His best friend, Jesus Navarro,
decides to rid the world of all of his
classmates before ridding the world of
himself. (Un)fortunately Vernon, due to
his chronic bowel problems, is
defecating in the bushes at the time. As
the sole survivor, he is immediately a
suspect in the subsequent investigation.
Pierre masterfully conjures up the
image of Middle America and their
culture of the 'television as gospel'. In a
world where 'celebrity' is the 6 o'clock
news is the absolute truth, Vernon
stands no chance and goes on the run
into neighbouring Mexico.
Often compared to Salinger's The
Catcher in the Rye, the novel is also
reminiscent of Camus's masterpiece,
The Outsider. Like Mersault, Vernon
refuses to 'play the game' that society
demands. He naively believes that his
innocence will be uncovered because
"that's what happens in the movies".
Once more, like Meursault, the refusal
to enter into the society's 'game' results
in the labelling of Vernon as a heartless
monster, which the reader knows he
isn't. He's just another slightly screwed
up teenager, in fact as sane as they
come in the absurd world of Middle
America. Outside of his work, Pierre
has earned a reputation as a 'character',
with a murky past and a reputation for
hell-raising
(during
which
he
apparently amassed debts of £150,000,
a third of which was paid back with his
Booker Prize money) enhanced by a
healthy dose of self mythologizing. His
arrival at Trinity promises to be
interesting, whether you are a fan or
not.
The Literary Society presents DBC
Pierre, Thursday 31st January, Swift
Theatre, Arts Block, 7p.m, all welcome.
THEATREP14
INREVIEW
A Western
without
John
Wayne
Words: Frances Beatty
W
ritten, directed and
composed
by
Richard
Maxwell,
Ode to the Man Who
Kneels is a self-indulgent piece of experimental theatre
which uses the Western genre to knit together a series of vignettes exploring
the emotional life of its characters. It
begins portentously with The Standing
Man announcing the title of the play: a
helpful introduction which allowed
those who thought they had come to see
a stage production of The Good, The
Bad and The Ugly to make a quick exit.
In the opening sequence, The
Standing Man points gun-shaped fingers at The Kneeling Man. Faced with
his imminent death, The Kneeling Man
INREVIEW
proceeds to give a lengthy monologue
claiming that though he is portrayed as
an actor, his feelings are real.
There is the potential for intelligent
reflection on the nature of performance,
which Maxwell fails to develop. Instead
the audience are left questioning the validity of drama that dictates emotion
rather than evoking it. As much emotion, probably more, could be conveyed
through an audio-recording with the
added advantage that it could be
switched off.
In an absence of emotional truth,
Maxwell’s relentless attempts to grapple with universal truths was futile.
Characters ponder the difference between dreaming in black and white and
dreaming in colour and say “profound”
The
Recruiting
Officer
T
things such as “Can you help me? I’m
not sure I am who I say I am”. The entire
cast indulge in these philosophical musings throughout and therefore they all
come to perform the same function – to
prove the cleverness of their creator.
The play would have been no more
smug had Maxwell himself stood on
stage reading from his thought diary.
Lest we forget Maxell’s third and
final creative talent – that of composer
– the segments of monologue and dialogue are interspersed by melancholy
Western folk songs, the majority of
which sound like variations on “Chopsticks”. It came as a relief to find that
the cast could vary the pitch of their
voices although, unfortunately, at least
half of them genuinely could not sing.
he Abbey’s production of one of the last
plays by George Farquar, the C17th
playwright from Derry who attended
Trinity, lacked the comic exuberance and
pace required for an intricate
Restoration-era plot full of disguises, forged letters,
duels, soldiers and damsels.
Despite valiant performances from most of the
principals, Lynne Parker’s direction failed to fully
invigorate this 300-year old comedy about the trials
and errors of a recruiting officer (Garrett Lombard)
and his suave captain Plume (Declan Conlon) as they
search, respectively, for new army ensigns and love.
The transposition of the play from its original
setting in rural England to the wild countryside of the
west of Ireland was an interesting choice and was
cleverly realised in the set. Ferdia Murphy’s design
contrasted a beautiful photograph by Ros Kavanagh
of western bogs and distant mountains under a
sublime sky (which functioned as the backdrop) with
painted architecture, flying on and off the stage and
folding out to make streets and houses with playful
self-consciousness of theatrical artifice.
The sense of one culture being imposed on a
completely indifferent landscape was very strong and
was an interesting pronouncement about Farquar’s
No doubt Maxwell was challenging our
perceptions of being “in tune”, but it did,
at times, feel as though the songs had
been shoe-horned into the production
as yet another testament to his ego.
The sole aspect of the play in which
Maxwell’s input proved effective was in
one of his directorial decisions. A spotlight housed in a rickety wooden box in
the front row of the auditorium fixes its
wobbly light on the actors throughout
the play, casting shadows of the characters on to the blank canvas screen behind the stage.
This constant, sinister, shadowy
presence created more ambience and
said more about the human condition
than either the actors or the script managed to convey.
relationship with England and sense of place.
However, relocating the play in Ireland diminished
the imminent sense of violence in warfare which
pervades the soldiers’ language and might have given
the play a darker and more complex dimension.
Helene Montague’s score made a delightful
accompaniment to the piece and it was refreshing to
hear it played live by a small ensemble. Cathy Belton,
who last excelled as Sonia in Uncle Vanya at The Gate,
was an excellent, sparky Silvia, the belle of Captain
Plume, who cross dresses to see what her lover is like
as a soldier before she marries him. Miche Doherty, as
Worthy’s rival Captain Brazen, showed brilliant comic
timing and nuance; however, as Melinda, the object of
the two mens’ love, Kathy Keira Clarke lacked comic
flare.
Why Parker did not endeavor to pace the
production better remains a mystery. At three hours
long, the play felt stretched, limited and mediocre. At
two, it doubtless would have had a punchier impact.
The themes of the play – the sexual corruption of
the army, which brings chaos to whatever town they
encamp in, finally put in check by marriage, were not
complex enough to warrant such a drawn-out
conclusion.
Pollly Graham
Words: Polly Graham
Grace
through
performance art
P15THEATRE
C
laire Butler, a Senior Sophister Drama
student, decided to use theatre to communicate to her fellow students the significance of Grace Week. On the steps of
the Chapel in Front Square, she and two
other performers sat in silence for half an hour. Each
figure bore an outward sign of their distance from others; one wore headphones, another’s mouth was gaffer
taped shut, the third was blindfolded. Respectively the
three figures held signs saying “Sorry for not hearing
your cry”,“Sorry for not speaking out”,“Sorry for turning a blind eye”. To the side of this scene stood an intermediary figure between the performers and the
audience, bearing another sign: “The name of Jesus has
been tarnished by things done in his name”.
Claire was originally inspired by the idea of humanity
only having one body in the eyes of God and how this
ideal so often does not translate into our daily actions:
“If a limb is suffering, we take action to heal it, but people, and the church so often block the suffering of others out.”
“Drama is conflict”,Claire explains, “What we’re trying
to do is acknowledge how we have failed to confront
the truth of other people’s suffering. Throughout history, the church has failed people, sometimes through
action, sometimes through inaction. It is our error
which makes us need God’s grace.” A sense of conflict
and inbuilt tension was at the heart of this performance. The stillness of the three figures was striking and
challenging. Claire says that, “As a performer, you re-
alize how difficult it is to stay still on stage for half an
hour, how terrifying to be blindfold and to know people are scrutinizing you.” In terms of the audience, this
stillness captured people’s attention because it strongly
contrasted with the usual pace of life that rushes
through Front Square and allowed the audience space
and time to consider the ideas of distance between
human beings and our collective insufficiency in the
face of suffering. How we respond to this message is a
personal choice, of course, but as a tool for communication, Claire proved the theatre to be potent. “Perhaps it’s performance art rather than theatre, no one
moves or speaks and there’s a kind of symmetry and
aesthetic in the arrangement of the figures.”
INREVIEW
S
taging a play dealing with
autism was a brave move for
director Chris Collins and
Find Me proved to be a strong
work. The trauma of Verity
and her family was handled capably by
a solid cast who swapped characters as
dextrously as they twirled chairs across
the half-lit stage, and Collins’ use of
sound, animation and movement left a
powerful impression of distress.
However, although his artistic
depersonalisation
and
decontextualisation of Verity’s life was
impressive, it sat uncomfortably with
the play’s representation of an outdated
incomprehension and fear of autism
and especially the message that
everything would be better if only there
were proper facilities in which to
contain autistic children. The play’s
overwhelming nightmarish atmosphere
was also unhelpfully ambiguous: was it
an expression of Verity’s pain or that of
her family?
At times, the effect was that of a
horror
movie
about
demonic
possession, while Verity herself was
given little direct attention and
remained distant in spite of the play’s
title. Find Me’s strongest scene was its
least distressing. It was simultaneously
hilarious and painful to watch Laura
Nixon’s Verity drive her family mad
during a disastrous lunch in France. In
an otherwise gruelling play, it was
humour that induced the greatest
empathy.
Dominic Esler
Find
Me
ARTP16
T
Turning n
your T*Art
Trinity
Arts
Festival
2008
he Trinity Arts Festival
stands alone as Ireland’s
only students’ arts festival.
TAF is a non-profit event
and we are proud to say the
students, for the students, run it all!
Every year, the TAF brings together the
best art, music and fun that Trinity College and Dublin can offer. Through a
week of events, both day and night,
TAF seeks to bring some art and cultural creativity to College, even if only
for a week! However, please remember
that TAF is about art-happy-fun not
revolution.
Launch night for Trinity Arts Festival kicks off the week before, Wednesday 6 February, with Neosupervital Live
and Space Camp DJs at The Button Factory. The Trinity Arts Fest, now in its
third year, has been a huge success with
its modus operandi to unite the arts of
Trinity College and we know no better
way than to kick it all of with an epic
opening party!!!
Neosupervital have been busy
building a name for themselves over the
last few years. The band consists of front
man Tim Vital, Jessie Love Action, Miss
K and DancinVin, and in addition to
some fairly wild (and frankly envious)
names, they’ve also got a scandalous
amount of talent! They’ve played festivals such as Oxegen, Castlepalooza and
Electric Picnic in 2007, been played on
MTV2 and brought their live show
around the UK and Europe as guests of
The Human League in December 2006.
Described by many as Ireland's answer
to Hot Chip or LCD Soundsystem, Neosupervital could possibly more accurately be described as a mixing of
elements from the Beach Boys and The
Human League to create fun, funky,
smart and danceable electronic pop
music. See how much TAF loves you!
But that’s not all, oh no! To spoil you
kiddies altogether, Neosupervital will
then be followed by the sensational
Space Camp Dj’s. Space Camp is one of
the Dublin's most successful and diverse
nights out, with guests ranging from Bill
Brewster, Dancepig, Joakim (With
Shock) I:Cube, *In Fligranti (With
Shock), Prins Thomas, Reverso 68, Pilooski, Shit Robot and Todd Terje. The
guys have a talent of knowing when to
keep the music down-tempo and when
the party needs an injection of something more diverse and high octane. Expect the guys to surprise and entertain,
see you on the dance floor! Now honestly, I’d TAF that…!
The celebrations continue with our
“I Want to Score” Night in the SugarClub, on Tuesday 12. Sexy name, one
hell of a venue! Featuring some amazing, eclectic and inventive silent films
made by the talented Dublin University
Film-makers. These are aired alongside
a host of sensational musical pieces by
P17ART
mark on TAF 2008! Plus, what better excuse is there to avoid the library for an
extra fifteen minutes? Cup of tea and a
bit of art?! We are all T*Arts at Heart
after all…
As well as thee events, we will be
running workshops throughout the
week, ranging in everything from mask
making, make-up, clothes customising
and African drumming so drop in and
join in! Keep an eye out for event
posters and keep up to date on what will
be going on. You’ll see us, hear us and
maybe even love us. This is Art for
T*Arts Sake!
TAF: Abb.
1. Adj.: Fun and frolicking involving everything arty.
2. Noun: Week of art-tastic events from the 11 – 15 February.
3. Verb: to TAF: to unite the societies of Trinity in arty endeavours.
You may not know much about art, but by the end of February, maybe even this section, you will love TAF.
Words: Katarzyna Murphy
and Caroline O’Leary
a variety of musicians, a comedy sketch
by the acclaimed Mercer Island Rodeo
(described as fresher than the morning
dew, faster than a really fast child and
packed to the gills with funny stuff), all
crammed into one night, and followed
by a DJ set, which is going to make one
impressive party! Sold out event last
year, so let’s do it again!
Nighttime acivities are only the tip
of the iceberg, with the real artistic substance of the festival taking place all
day, everyday for the duration of the
week. The most prestigious of these is
the Architectural Association of Ireland
exhibition taking place throughout the
week. The IAA has been supplying annual awards for architectural excellence
for more than twenty years and we at
TAF have organised an exhibition of
the submission pieces made for the
2007 AAI competition. The exhibition
will be made up of 40 A1 size boards designed with a variety of elevations,
plans, sketches and a host of images alluding to the creative and complex processing of ideas that unite to form a
coherent architectural design. TAF provides a distinct and unique platform to
merge a variety of the college’s art disciplines, regardless of faculty, and in
turn raises awareness of the range of
artistic and architectural initiatives that
are run around the country. Having
such a prestigious and rare collection of
such pieces here on our doorstep for the
week is a true testament to the endeavours of TAF. In addition to the week’s
fantastic kaleidoscope of artsy and architectural events, we will also be running our stimulating Architectural tours
of Front Arch, New Square and the library buildings. We hope you enjoy.
Our other major arty fixture for the
week is Campus Canvas; Boys and girls,
grab your paintbrushes and get creative! All day, every day for the whole
week of the festival (repeat after me 11-15), we will have a range of multisized canvas propped up in both the
Hamilton and Arts Building for you to
paint anything you want-make your
FOR YOUR CALENDAR
Monday 11 February
• All Day: Campus Canvas in the Arts Building and the
Hamilton
• 1pm – 2pm: Costume Customising in the Arts
Workshop
• 7:30pm – 9:30pm: Dance Workshop in Regent House
• 7pm: Opening Night in the Atrium with music by Co
CoPhOnE, visuals by the Dublin University Visual Arts
Society, art work by the Trinity Arts Workshop and
Dublin University Photographic Association and a live
interactive audiovisual installation by Roberto Pugliese
followed by afterparty in the Bleu Note Bar, Camden
St, featuring music from the Dublin University Jazz
Society.
Tuesday 12 February
• All Day: Campus Canvas in the Arts Building and the
Hamilton
• 12pm – 1pm: Tour of the Provost’s House with Dr.
Eddie McParland
• 1pm – 2pm: Drumming Workshop with the Trinity
College Dublin Afro-Caribbean Society in the JCR
• 2-3pm: Make-up for Film Workshop, TAW Studios.
• 2:30pm – 3:30pm: Architectural Tour of the Berkeley
Library with Ms. Ellen Rowley
• Mask-making Workshop, TAW Studios.
• 8pm: “I Want to Score” with Dublin Univesity Filmmakers, the acclaimed Mercer Island Rodeo, followed
by Mark Hughes DJ set in the Sugar Club, Leeson
Street
Wednesday 13 February
• All Day: Campus Canvas in the Arts Building and the
Hamilton
• 1pm – 2pm: Beat-Boxing Workshop in the JCR
• T*Art Attack in Front Square
• Architectural Tour of the East End
• 12-2pm: Camera Obscura in Regent House
• 2-3pm: Make-up for Film Workshop, TAW Studios.
• Dublin University Orchestral Society performance,
“Nutcracker Suite”, the Chapel
Thursday 14 February
• All Day: Campus Canvas in the Arts Building and the
Hamilton
• Capoiera Workshop
• Pollock Painting in Hamilton Green (or the Arts
Workshop)
• 12pm – 1pm: Tour of the Provost’s House with Dr.
Eddie McParland
• 4pm – 5pm: Graffiti Art Workshop with Aran Young in
the Arts Workshop
• 6pm – 7pm: String Octet Performance of “Strings in E
Flat Major” by Felix Mendelssohn in the Chapel.
Friday 15th February
• All Day: Campus Canvas in the Arts Building and the
Hamilton
• 2:30pm – 3:30pm: Tour of the Libraries with Ms. Ellen
Rowley
• 5pm – 6pm: Learning is Fun
• Drum & Bass Workshop with David Knight
• 6pm – 7pm: Dublin University Orchestral Society
performance “Nutcracker Suite”, the Chapel
• Stephen Mulhall “Educating Rita” Installation
• Architectural Association of Ireland travelling
exhibition – will run all week.
Timetable is subject to change.
EDIBLESP18
p
i
l
REVIEW:
F
Lemon
60 Dawson Street, Dublin 2 /
66 South William Street, Dublin 2
I
Flop!
It’s almost Shrove Tuesday
A guide to making the best pancakes in town. Words: Beth Armstrong
P
ancake Tuesday marks a last
day of excesses before Lent
begins. Also called Shrove
Tuesday, the original aim of
the day was to use up rich
ingredients such as eggs, milk and sugar
before Lent fasting would begin. However, with those ingredients now part of
everyday consumption, Pancake Tuesday has deviated from its traditional
liturgical past and is now a day to eat,
make and toss these delicious creations
to your hearts content. You may prefer
the thin French crepe to the fat American breakfast pancake, but there is no
denying that when eaten with a variety
of toppings, savoury or sweet, they are
superb.
To make your own pancakes this
coming Pancake Tuesday, your shopping
list should include plain flour, salt, eggs,
milk and butter. These ingredients are
essential for the thin, French crepe.
However, if its American style pancakes
you want, you should also buy baking
powder. Also buy whatever toppings
you want to serve with your pancakes lemons, sugar, chocolate, fruit… the list
is endless. You should also be in possession of a frying pan, a whisk and a
palette knife (or something similar.)
Now you have your ingredients assembled, the time to create your pancake mix has arrived. Add 110g of plain
flour and a pinch of salt to a large bowl
(with 1 teaspoon of baking powder if
you‘re after American style pancakes) If
you don’t have a mixing bowl, you can
use a pot. Make a well in the centre of
the flour and add two eggs. Then mix
200ml of milk with 75 ml of water. Begin
whisking the eggs and add your watermilk mixture slowly as you whisk. Add
50 grams of melted butter to your mixture and it is complete.
If you are overly impatient, it is possible to get straight into cooking your
pancakes, but it is best to leave the mixture in the fridge for an hour or two so it
can set. When ready to cook, add some
butter to your frying pan and wait for it
to get really hot. Drop a spoonful or two
of batter (depending on the size of your
frying pan) into the pan and tip the pan
from side to side so it is evenly coated
with batter. After a minute of so, use a
palate knife to flip the pancake over
onto the uncooked side. When both
sides are cooked through, toss in the air
to your hearts desire. Be warned,
though, the first pancake made is usually
rubbish, so it might be best to toss it into
the bin.
Continue making and tossing pancakes until your batter is used up and
serve with as many toppings as you can
muster… apple and cinnamon is delicious, as is banana and chocolate. The
traditional pancake is served with lemon
and sugar.
You could also be adventurous and
add Grand Marnier liqueur for a Crepe
Suzette or else chose a savoury filling
such as ham and cheese or bacon and
egg. Most importantly, enjoy.
f you don’t have time to make
your own pancakes this coming
Pancake Tuesday, instead head to
Lemon Crepe and Coffee Co, a short
stroll from the Arts Building on Dawson Street and also situated on South
William Street if you fancy a longer
stroll. Lemon is the home of pancakes
in Dublin. The Dawson Street branch
is a favourite amongst Trinity students and with its delicious menu, it
is obvious why. On offer are sweet
and savoury pancakes, hot sandwiches, waffles and a full menu of
hot and alcoholic drinks -with the
coffees regularly touted as the best in
town. Sitting down among the Trinity
masses, I perused the large blackboard style menu. Although many are
wary of the idea of a savoury crepe,
thinking pancakes are for dessert purposes only, I can reassure. I opted for
the Club Crepe, a pancake with
streaky bacon, roast chicken breast,
tomato, iceberg lettuce and mayo, at a
cost of 6.75 euros and it was delicious. My fellow Lemon addict opted,
controversially, not for a crepe, but
for a hot bacon sandwich, costing
5.35 euros. This was not an ordinary
toastie, however. Cooked on the hot
plate to a golden crispy texture and
served with Ballymaloe relish, it was
described as being out of this world.
Despite a carb overload, we decided
to split a dessert. We opted for the
Choc Ice, with melted milk Belgium
chocolate buttons and vanilla icecream costing 6.30 euros. Halving it
was perfect. It was so rich, illness
would have been the only possible result of a whole one each! It was the
perfect end to a scrumptious meal.
Despite the excellence of the food, it
must be noted that Lemon is pricey.
One way to avoid the cost is to order
to takeaway, as the prices are up to 1
euro less expensive. You should also
be warned that the open style, cafeteria seating means that private conversations are a no-no! It does fill up
quickly at lunch and on Pancake
Tuesday has notorious queues. So, go
at an off-peak time and munch away!
Rachel
Allen
reveals all
Rachel Allen, the Irish chef du jour and part of the famous Ballymaloe dynasty
appears on numerous cookery programmes shown as far afield as Australia and
Africa, and also produces cookbooks by the dozen. Beth Armstrong caught up
with her, asking her how student cooking on a budget can be adventurous and
tasty without breaking the bank.
R
achel Allen began her career as a chef by pretending to be Delia Smith, baking biscuits with
her sister while growing up in Dublin. After an
education at Ballymaloe House, Ireland’s premiere cookery academy, the prolific “Irish
Cookery Queen” (as deemed by the BBC) became a tour de
force, and ended up teaching her teachers at the cookery
school. Her star continued to rise, and ultimately she was
courted by both RTÉ and the BBC, resulting in numerous televisions programmes and a collection of cookery books, such
as Rachel’s Favourite Food and the recently published Rachel’s
Food for Living. In the wake of the campaigns to improve
school food, it has never been such a good time to ask this
world-renowned chef how student cookery can be improved.
Despite many students being packed off to college with a
plethora of cooking utensils and various cookbooks packed
by anxious parents, it is the truth that we live on certain staples, be they the often-cited examples of beans and pasta or an
oven pizza from Spar.
However, help is at hand. Allen’s aim in cooking has always been to produce great results with simple ingredients,
and as such, her recipes are ideal for student cooking. She empathises with the fact that students are on a tight budget and
that it is often tricky to find the time to make a decent meal.
However, she believes that “you cannot beat homemade
soup”, which is “seasonal, cheap and really good!”. Her recipe
for Spanish Chickpea and Chorizo soup, which she describes
as being “a comforting soup for a rainy day”, with flavours
reminiscent of summer, is produced below. In stocking a student store cupboard, she believes the essentials are simple…
(potatoes, onions, garlic, pulses and beans) and can be used as
the basis for delicious soups and salads. When cooking for
more than one on a budget, say for a dinner party or the like,
Allen believes that it is possible to produce delicious food
without hurting the bank balance and she says “A lovely stew
is always good and nutritious and does not have to be expensive, as stewing cuts of meat are actually cheaper than prime
cuts of meat like the fillet and sirloin”. Her recipe for lamb
stew, with pot barley, red onions, celery and garlic is cheap, quick and is
Spanish Chori
zo Soup
produced below. She also recomA comforting so
up
fo
r a rainy day - m
mends cooking in bulk and reheatcan be reheated
akes 4-6 servin
.
gs, which
ing food throughout the week as an
easy time-saving option, noting
Ingredients:
that her recipe for Spanish soup
1 tbsp olive oil
reheats well, with the flavours ac110g / 4 oz chor
izo , diced
tually improving.
1 onion , finely
ch
opped
So, bar a microwave (for re2 celery stalks
,
fin
ely chopped
heating purposes), what cooking
2 cloves of crus
he
d or grated garl
equipment does she class as es1 x 410g / 14oz
ic
tin
of chickpeas
sential? Well, apparently not
2 tins of choppe
d tomatoes (o
much equipment is needed to
r 8 fresh ripe to
peeled and chop
matoes,
ped)
cook well, with only one or two
1 litre / nearly
2
pi
nt
s
chicken stock
sharp knives, a wooden chopSalt and pepper
ping board and a frying pan
110g / 4oz spin
ach , destalked
needed to create gourmet reand finely chop
spinach leaves
ped (or baby
le
ft whole)
sults! However, she does say
that if you get your hands on a
Method:
spare 25 euros, a great investPlace the olive
oil in a large sa
ment is a Microplane Grater.
ucepan on the
the diced chor
heat and add
iz
o. Cook for a m
Allowing for the quick and
inute or two un
chorizo releases
til the
its oils then ad
easy grating of flavourings
d the chopped
and garlic. Coo
on
k
ion, celery
on
a
ge
ntle heat, with
such as garlic, lime and lemon
saucepan until
the lid on the
th
e
on
io
n
is completely co
zest, ginger and hard cheeses,
minutes). Add
oked (about 10
the chickpeas (a
allowing remarkable tastes to
nd all the liquid)
tomatoes (and
and the
all the liquid) an
be easily added to your
d the stock. Se
and pepper an
as
on with salt
d
br
in
g
to
the boil. Simmer
dishes.
utes until the to
for about 20 m
m
at
oe
s
inare soft and th
This food guru, who deleased all their
e chickpeas ha
fla
vo
ve
ur
s.
re
Ta
ste for seasonin
scribes her food heaven as
salt or pepper
g and add mor
if it is necessar
e
“lobster… and lots of it”,
y. With the mix
add the spinac
ture still boiling
h. Cook for ab
believes that on a student
out a minute un
is just soft. Serv
til
the spinach
e in a big, warm
budget, you can produce
ed bowl. Pasta
be added to th
or
is
Rice can
to
m
ak
e
a more substant
nutritious and delicious
ial meal.
foods quickly and at a low
cost. Don’t believe it? Try
her recipes for yourself…
Photo: Peter Rowen/Dubliner Magazine
P19EDIBLES
ENDNOTESP20
Snazzy dresser,
will sing.
Dear Mrs Fix-It,
t shoes,
I’m a well-dressed boy with excellen
hang
I
wit.
arp
excellent hair and razor-sh
’re
they
l,
wel
e,
out mostly with boys becaus
I
en
wom
Any
.
easier to make friends with
I’m
e
aus
bec
know all think I’m amazing
girls
kind and give great advice. Thing is,
e
don
I
e
hav
at
never want to date me. Wh
wrong?
Confusedly, Anton
H T
Dominating an
interview
Dear Mrs Fix-It,
I had an interview
last Friday. It went
really
well except the in
terviewer kept look
in
g at me
weirdly, like he wa
nted to ask me so
mething
but couldn’t bring
himself to do it. I’v
e just
found out that on
e of the things that
prospective empl
oyers do is look at
someone’s
Facebook page. O
n my page, my in
terests
include: Men, Hor
se-Riding and Be
ing in
Charge. My worr
y now is that my
new boss
with think I’m just
a wanton dominat
rix, when
in fact, I’m just a
sporty bossy girl.
Help?
Worriedly, Barbar
a
Dear Barbara,
Dear Anton,
A
sporty bossy girl is
a dominatrix, exce
Are you currently a member of a
pt with
be
tte
r clothes and more
a
in
n
bee
r
eve
you
accessories. I think
e
Hav
d?
Boyban
co
you
uld definitely turn
this to your advant
Boyband? You seem the perfect
age.
In
ve
st
in
so
m
e
e
styl
leather jodhpurs an
candidate: You’ve got the hair, the
d practise your
sneer. It’ll get you
the
Try
.
ality
far.
sexu
le
nab
stio
que
and the
ng
following- can you recite the followi
e
plet
lines by One True Voice with com
way
sincerity “If I had Shakespeare’s
with words/ I’d write you a
sonnet/ Put your name upon
it”. Did you manage? Great.
Give Louis a bell, he’ll set
Dear Mrs Fix-It,
it?
lestones. Is it worth
you up.
High heels on cobb
Gemma.
ty?
High and migh
Dear Gemma,
ning ankle.
have but one functio
to
er
ef
pr
u
yo
if
y
Onl
Have you got problems of your own that need fixing?
Email Mrs Fixit at [email protected]
Competition: Los Campesinos
In Music, TN2 interviewed the the fantastic Los Campesinos! and we have two pairs to
give away, simply answer this question:
On what page of TN2 did Los Campesinos! feature?
Answers to: [email protected]. First two correct answers win a pair each!
xkcd.com
no.355
“A somewhat surprising contender for our blemish banisher was nannies’ favourite Sudocream.” FASHION P10
Mrs Fixit
Duvet Days: A real fire, a DVD
box set, and a lectire missed. In
a word: Heaven
Celebrity Babies: Christina
Aguilera’s Max Liron. Nicole
Richie’s Winter Harlow. Mathew
Mc Conaughey’s girlfriend is
pregnant. Hollywood’s never
been so maternal.
Arts Block Bingo: Did you spot
that guy that always wears red
jeans? He’ll score you ten
points.
Charity
Collections:
Love, I can
barely afford
lunch, let alone
setting up a
monthly
standing order.
Blue Monday: There was a
reason last Monday was so dire.
21 January: officially the most
depressing day of the year.
Competitive exercising:
When did the gym turn into
Beyond Thunderdome
N T