I gazed at the mountains encircling my mother's hometown. I had been travelling in China for a month, constantly apologising for my broken Chinese. My mum once told me...
My pandemic summer was spent staring at a computer, but these were a startlingly productive and educational few months and, as with most exciting things in my unexciting life, it starts with a blank page.
Back in my childhood bedroom, I am stuck in an unpleasant time-warp, sixteen again and agonizing over awful boys, listening to utterly miserable Smiths songs. It’s the deja-vu experience no one wants.
I’ll miss the little things, most of all: the warm chaotic hubbub of too many people in one bungalow, fighting over who gets the sofa seat with the footrest, and maybe most of all, the smell of cooking wafting from the kitchen.
Surely having that moment to celebrate and realise that “yes, I made it to f*cking Oxford during a worldwide crisis” seems quite affirming and in line with the Government’s message of being able to have a ‘proper University experience™’, whatever that means.
"'Horror movies and porn movies are structured in exactly the same way,' he begins, 'the narrative is structured as a pretext for a number of these explosive climaxes. One victim at a time, one sex scene at a time.'"
Dessert has the opportunity to hold such creativity and glee, and yet the dry, misshapen lumps turned out year after year hold nothing but an unbelievable amount of fruit. They also hold a considerable serving of history.
Before the coronavirus pandemic, Oxford students who wanted to catch infectious diseases had to venture into Cowley. Back in the ‘old normal’, Temple Lounge...
"The veggie haggis should indeed gain a position as a roasted staple around the British dinner table; cheap, healthy, easy to cook and universally delectable."
“Why do we care about this? Well, it's like a parallel earth. It's the same size as Earth, made of the same sort of materials formed around [...] the same amount of time ago. But it's evolved really differently with this huge greenhouse effect.”
Potatoes are a-plenty, but keep an eye out post-halloween for sweet-fleshed pumpkin, all kinds of leafy green veg, beautiful purple beetroots and the unassuming fennel, cabbage and cauliflower.
It may be flavour-packed but it only requires one pan, and shockingly few fresh ingredients, making it the ultimate student kitchen fare: cheap, delicious, simple, and nutritious!