COBALT May 14

COBALT featuring

MAY 14

ORIGINAL CREATIVE CONTENT

by Warwick students

EXPLODING ONTO CAMPUS!

THE OSCARS #FOODPORN GAME OF THRONES TRILOGIES BUTTERFLIES STREET ART BABY STEPS COMIC BOOK AND MORE

ISSUE 1 CONTENTS

Contributors 004 Editorial 005

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#FoodPorn 006-010 Going up/Going down 011 Autographistory 012-013

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Neon Nights 014-017 Baby steps 018-020 “Alice” 021 “Of Memories and Mountains” 022-023

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“Oh Willie Mae” 024-028 Cobalt Arts 029 Street art 030-033 Battle of the Bands 034-035 “Black Sunshine” 036 “Orange Sky” 037 Generation Oscar 038-041

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50

Selected poetry of Joanna 042-043 Jakubowska

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This Is Me/Cinema Chistine 044-045 Game of Thrones 046-047 Game of Clothes 048-049 Cobalt from the blue 050 John Zuur Platten interview 051 Cat Mafia comic 052-068 A Word on Trilogies 069-071

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The Poltergeist Formerly 072-074 Known as Margo “Grinderman” 075 Scud comic book review 076-077 Selected poetry by Gabriella 078-079 Watt “The White Pillow” 080 The Summer of 2006 081-083

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Josiah Adojutellegan • Ahlam Al-Abbasi • Victoria Botella • Emily Buckley • Hannah Campling • Farah Chaudhry • Samuel Fry • Jonah Haffner • Jamie Hardwick • Aakanksha Jaiswal • Joanna Jabubowska • Lauren Jane Ross • Samuel Stone • Andrew Sztehlo • Jonella Vidal • Radu C Vlad • Gabriella Watt • Christine Wong • Jonny Young

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CONTRIBUTORS

Eleanor Hastings • Josie Throup

Welcome to the first ever issue of Cobalt Magazine! The whole reason for starting Cobalt was to provide a medium for all Warwick students to express their creativity. We’ve been blown away by the sheer amount of talent at this university; there are artists, photographers, authors, poets, reporters...and all of them have a story to tell. We are so proud to be able to publish their work, and hope that their hard work will continue to be recognised! I’d like to take this opportunity to thank each and every person involved in making this issue possible, because the simple fact of the matter is that without the enthusiasm and commitment of our contributors this publication just would not exist. We truly appreciate your involvement and look forward to working with you all in the future!

We’re new, we’re blue and we’re on your internet enabled device. Welcome to Cobalt, the student arts magazine you always wished you had, but could never quite be bothered starting up. Luckily my friend and editor Ellie Hastings has got the kind of motivation that puts us all (especially me) to shame. Don’t miss the biting wit of Jonny Young (page 69) or the inspirational Baby Steps. If you thought the whole degree thing was hard work, read about Lauren Jane Ross, who manages hers alongside being a mum (page 18). Gabriella Watt’s poem “Of Memories and Mountains” also deserves a special mention (page 22). When reading it, bear in mind that her Dad said he wanted it written on her gravestone, and hold back the tears for the next 50 lines. Thanks to our writers, thanks to our readers and now let’s #cobalt !

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#FoodPorn

Farah Chaudhry Emily Buckley

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tarting university is a daunting experience. Despite all the encouragement and support, the promises that these will be the best years of your life, beginning that new chapter is still pretty terrifying. And perhaps the most petrifying aspect of all is the fact that you are solely accountable for providing yourself with edible food. Like, you actually have to learn how to cook it. Yourself.

Today, with the likes of the prevalent ‘food porn’ trend, the pressure is on to be able to cook dishes that look good enough to make others envious. It’s easy to feel that food is the least of your worries at the start of the year, armed with a month’s worth of your parents’ frozen home cooked dinners and a brand-spankingnew student cookbook.

Having to feed yourself is an alien concept. ‘How did I get into a Russell Group university when I can’t make myself a decent meal?’

Not only do you keep your eyes peeled for the more experienced cooks sharing your kitchen to casually ask for tips (and then make sure that they don’t see your simple dish of pasta and semi-melted grated cheese), but you also swear to yourself that you’ll learn to cook.

You won’t resort to ready-meals.

You will use that student cookbook.

In a utopian world, the

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cookbook’s deeply grooved spine will demonstrate thorough usage, and by the end of the term you’ll surprise everyone at home with your fantastic, new-found cooking skills. You’re not trying to be a Michelin-starred chef, you just want food that doesn’t look or taste burnt. How difficult and time-consuming can that be?

However, this doesn’t happen. Be it deadlines, hangovers, or generally just not being in the mood, the cookbook gathers dust as tinned food and pasta transform from the role of emergency reserves to the entirety of your cupboard.

You’ve broken your promise to yourself, and to add insult to injury, your social media timelines are jam-packed with motivated peers sharing links to images of their #FoodPorn.

As previous outsiders to this growing trend of Instagrammable meals, we decided to bite the bullet and cook a feast for our flatmates.

Even as amateurs, we managed to produce aesthetically-pleasing food using our fairly basic knowledge (and it tasted pretty damn good too)!

The aim of this article is to not only spread some quick, cheap and delicious recipes, but also to motivate those of you who have resigned yourself to a lifelong dependency on toast and frozen ready-meals.

The beginning of your cooking journey starts now!

Equipment: Baking tray, knife (for scoring) and cling-film.

Ingredients: Chicken (drumsticks or wings) and Nando’s Smokey Portuguese BBQ Peri-Peri Marinade (this is enough marinade for about 20 pieces of chicken).

1. Remove the chicken wings and/or drumsticks from the packaging andplace them onto a tray.

2. Score each piece of chicken two or three times on each side (this will help the deeper layers of chicken absorb the marinade too and enhance the overall flavour).

3. Now is the time to get your hands all sticky. Rub each piece of chicken with a generous helping of Nando’s Smokey Portuguese BBQ Peri-Peri Marinade (£1.99) – and don’t be afraid of getting that goodness right into the grooves.

4. Once this is done, cover the tray in cling film and leave to marinate. Although we left the chicken for an

BBQ Chicken Drumsticks and Wings

hour and a half (which was plenty of time to get some work out of the way), the marinade bottle says that a minimum of 15 minutes should still do the trick!

5. This is probably obvious but in case it’s not - wash your hands after handling raw meat, that stuff has some nasty bacteria and stuff on it.

6. Pre-heat the oven to 180ºC around 10-30 minutes before you plan to start cooking your chicken (depending on how good your oven is).

7. Remove the cling film from the tray and put it on the top shelf of the oven for 20 minutes. Next, rotate each piece of chicken and spoon any marinade that has dripped onto the tray back on the chicken. Cook for another 15 minutes.

8. Your finger-lickin’ chicken should now be ready for your consumption – make sure you have kitchen roll beside you to mop up any remaining marinade from your hands and face (or a finger bowl with lemon juice for a classier look)!

Silky Sweetcorn Rice

Equipment: Mug, saucepan with lid, and spatula (preferably) or tablespoon.

Ingredients: Rice, olice oil, sweetcorn and/or peas.

1.

2.

3.

Pour one small cup’s worth of rice into your saucepan (half a mug per person is a good estimate). The kind of rice you cook is up to you, but for this recipe we used long grain.

It ain’t called silky rice for fun, so smother the rice with olive oil and make sure each grain is covered, as this ensures that the rice will not clump together and has a silky texture. A spatula would be ideal for this stage, but a spoon can do the job too.

TOP TIP: To get perfectly cooked rice without using a colander and adding to the washing up, add two parts water to your one part rice. If you choose to add 3 heaped tablespoons of sweetcorn too (why not get a few veggies in there?), add extra water to compensate. Feel free to swap sweetcorn for frozen peas, or even have both with your rice if you’re feeling extra healthy. Put the lid on the pan and keep the rice on a low heat throughout. Your rice will be complete once all the water has evaporated.

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Creamy Potato Salad

Sweet Potato Chips

Equipment: Pan, knife, colander.

Ingredients: New potatoes (a handful per person), onion and garlic dip.

1. Wash the potatoes and cut them in halves (if you wish).

2. Place in a pan and fill the pan with water, add a teaspoon of salt.

3. Bring the water to the boil, and boil the potatoes for 20 minutes.

4. Check the potatoes are soft in the centre, and if this is the case take them off the heat, drain them, and sit them in cold water to cool them.

5. Once they are cool, add a couple of spoonfuls of the onion and garlic dip, according to just how creamy you want your potatoes. If you want to serve it really cold then put into the fridge before serving.

6. Serve them as an accompaniment to a meal, or as a snack between lectures!

Equipment: Baking tray, peeler, sharp knife and spatula.

Ingredients: Sweet potato (roughly ½ per person), olive oil, salt, paprika and honey.

add some salt, a light sprinkle of paprika, and a drizzle of honey. Shake the wedges about to make sure they’re evenly covered with flavouring.

5.

Put them in the oven for 15 minutes, then take them out and shuffle them on the tray. Place them back in for a further ten minutes.

1.

Preheat the oven to 180˚C, drizzle olive oil onto a tray and place into the oven.

2.

Peel the potatoes and chop them into wedge shapes, ideally no thicker than your finger in order to reduce cooking time.

3.

The oil will be heated within 10 minutes – when this time is up, take out the tray and put the potatoes onto it; beware of spitting oil.

4.

For the essential taste:

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Turn the oven temperature up to 200 ˚C to get the potatoes crispy. Leave them in for 10 more minutes (taking them out to shuffle them around halfway through).

7.

Remove from oven only if they are cooked through and crispy looking!

Serve with a meal, or alternatively they make a great accompaniment to a lunch with chopped cucumber, carrots and houmous.

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o make this cooking experience all the better, try it as part of 'communal cooking’.

Cooking for other people as well as yourself can seem unnerving at first, but we’ve found that it is really worth taking the plunge.

Although from time to time it can have some disastrous results (especially if you have an unhygienic flatmate, or one who is prone to setting off fire alarms), it is something we want to encourage, and following easy recipes like ours will make it a sure success. If not – well, it’ll be something to tell the grandchildren.

Not only does it suit lazier folks who don’t want to cook every night, it’s also great for making sure you and your flatmates spend time together. That extra time spent having stimulating conversations at the dinner table can make all the difference, or in our case, the occasional food fight can make for great bonding!

Be brave and show us your c r e a t i o n s On InstAgram or Twitter by using #CobaltFoodPorn too!

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llocating pairs and cooking on a rotational basis each day according to a set budget seems to be the best way to go about communal cooking. It’s great to escape from the comfort zone of your usual eating habits; someone is bound to cook you something exotic that you’ll love! It’s also a great way to pick up the odd cooking tip and you’ll be wanting to compile your own communal cookbook in no time.

So go on! Give communal cooking a go, and use our recipes to help. Make “mouth-watering yet simple” your motto if you’re not so confident, and you’ll feel like a culinary Instagram-pro in no time!

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THE ‘UGLY’ SHOE

Birkenstock, Prada, Topshop, everyone’s at it. We’ve been told this is the trend to look out for but we’re still not convinced...

NO MAKE-UP SELFIE

Avoid the critics and just donate to charity, because it’s all about the Sellotape selfie now i.e. how to inflict as much pain on yourself as possible.

US SUPER-TV Game of Thrones. Breaking Bad. The Walking Dead. True Detective - big budget cinematic masterpieces, and we can’t get enough.

JUSTIN BIEBER

He spits and gropes at his fans. He sticks his tongue out at a prosecution lawyer. He gets bodyguards to carry him up the Great Wall of China on their shoulders. Enough.

MYSPACE Yes, you read that right. The music website has been part-bought

by Justin Timberlake and has been given a make-over - so when Facebook becomes boring and Twitter just plain dull, MySpace is where we’re all going to be heading.

GOING UP// GOING Down 11

CREATIVE PATISSERIE

If the cronut (croissant/donut) craze wasn’t tasty enough already, they’re now being used as the bun in a sweet-bacon-maple-glazed burger. So wrong, but so so right.

AutograpHistory Oscar Wilde, Arthur Conan Doyle, William Morris, George Bernard Shaw and Bram Stoker…

What do they all have in common?

Well, my great-great-grandfather, Charles Holloway, collected letters and autographs from all of them (as well as many other people).

He worked at the Pall Mall Gazette in the 1890s, and later became Financial Editor of the Daily Sketch until he retired in 1938. He had an office in Fleet Street where he apparently ate cod and cabbage for lunch every single day, and was an avid collector – birds’ eggs, butterflies and moths, coins and stamps as well as the letters and autographs of famous people.

When I opened the first

scrapbook and a letter from George Bernard Shaw fell out, I knew that this collection was special, and I wanted to write about it!

So I set up a blog,

au to g r ap h i s tor y. wordpress.com and I am (very slowly!) working through some of the letters and autographs. I try to find out a little about the person behind each document, as well as exploring their letter and why they wrote it.

For example, I started off with the first letter I read, from George Bernard Shaw.

It begins “Hang it all!” and proceeds to set out why Shaw is really pretty annoyed with the Pall Mall Gazette because he has been writing a lot of articles and not being paid enough. He finishes the letter

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with: “How is a man to live?

Yours, face to face with ruin, G. Bernard Shaw” I love the dramatic “face to face with ruin” thing, and it’s just such a great note, full of a kind of tongue-in-cheek annoyance!

When I did some research to find out where Oscar Wilde’s autograph came from, I found out that he wrote over 80 reviews and articles for the Pall Mall Gazette between 1885 and 1890, which fits in with when Charles Holloway worked at the Gazette.

My next project is a letter to the Gazette from Arthur Conan Doyle about coal (sadly not very mysterious or Sherlock-esque!) So far in my research into this letter I’ve discovered that he was very supportive of coal found in

Hannah Campling Kent which, as he later said, “seems to have had the appearance and every other quality of coal save that it was incombustible."

Not ideal for coal, really!

And there’s a brilliant typed up little note which I will tackle next, written by someone (sadly there is no name) in Mafeking in the Boer war, telling us that “life in the trenches is not all beer and skittles”.

That is what shines through this collection, the lives and stories behind the writing. I love the idea that these fascinating people held the same letter I can now hold, over a hundred years later, and their writing holds so much of their character and is like a glimpse into their lives.

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in advance and withheld from his knowledge with utmost secrecy. ‘We should go back in soon,’ ‘Are you cold?’

‘It isn’t that.’

‘No? Your arms have goosebumps,’ he noted, and dropping the stub of his cigarette he took her forearm with the tips of his gentle fingers and lifted it into the glare of the security light and they looked at the tiny hills in her skin, accentuated by their shadows.

‘Oh,’ she mumbled, embarrassed by the black hairs on her arm but enjoying the feel of his fingers on the soft underside of her arm. ‘I hadn’t noticed I was so cold,’ ‘It’s the alcohol, I still feel quite toasty, though there are probably ice cubes running in my arteries by now,’ he said, with a smile that petered out quickly, the sides of his mouth turning up then down again as he stared at the laces in his shoes. His momentary smile warmed her more than the alcohol.

‘I don’t mind staying out a little longer, if you want to,’ she added, rubbing her goosebumps but leaving the arm resting on his fingers. ‘We have been out quite a while now I suppose. I’m sure they don’t miss us, and I like being under the stars,’ she said, and regretted it. Purple autumn clouds were hanging low in the night sky and obscuring all but the occasional glimpse of a star. Looking up he watched a star slowly smothered by a cloud and thought how much it looked like the cigarette light slowly fading between her fingers, though he kept this to himself and simply nodded and began to wonder if they would sleep together tonight. He let her arm fall into her lap and wriggled closer until their hips were touching and dropped his head onto her shoulder. He closed his eyes and breathed in her familiar perfume, the perfume he would smell every now and then on his pillow and in his sheets. She smiled nervously and wished she had drunk enough so that she could smile broadly, without reservation. Instead however, she tried in vain to suppress the self-doubt that always swallowed her on the hungover morning afters when she watched him pull his jeans up and politely leave, frowning slightly and holding his shoes with a finger in each

hey were alone and perched on the edge of a skip full of plyboard and chunks of wet plaster that had curled and wrinkled like human skin. As they talked their wrists collided and dropped ash into one another’s laps. Not noticing the piles of grey and dying orange on their knees they continued talking, emitting smoke then small-talk through voices turned husky in the damp air of the dancefloor. He wore an untucked oxford shirt open at the highest button, she a red skirt that spread out from her hips to her knees. Their eyes sparkled wet and bright in the security light. They sat there, shoulders hunched forward like the concrete bollards in the car park beyond their desolate alleyway, where the rusted chains between the pillars hung limp; swinging and whistling in the wind. Spinning blue clouds from the dance floor smoke machine slid under the fire exit and he hoped it would mix with the cigarette smoke and become so thick as to close him into his own private swirling smoke cubicle. She hoped the smoke would fill up his lungs and put a distant smile on his face and a glaze over his pupils like when he smoked marijuana. She wanted him to leave his own head and love himself and maybe one day her, but instead he took shallow breaths and resumed his gentle self-loathing. The metal clatter and hum of the air conditioning units had a refreshing honesty, compared to the wipe clean vinyl surfaces and hyper lights on the inside of the nightclub. The paint was old and flaking off in fist-sized clumps on the walls of their private smoking area, leaving bare patches of brickwork around the rusted white units. Their small-talk reached a natural end and they let this new silence hang in the air and wash over them until it dissipated into the sounds of the night that slipped suddenly back into their consciousness. The muffled sounds of the club’s music through the slightly open fire exit and the chatter of the kebab shop behind the opposite wall and the late night taxis hidden from their secret alleyway by high wooden gates at each end. A siren wailed in and out of hearing and she began to speak, as though this were a cue, agreed upon

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see you in there later.’

‘Uh-huh, we’ll be in soon.’

‘Mike feels sick.’ blurted Allison, hating the sound of her voice; its high pitch and the way it echoed up the walls like the smash of broken glass. She wanted to look after Mike, to protect him.

‘Shall I get you some water, Mike?’ suggested their friend.

‘It’s okay, I feel much better now.’

‘Are you sure? I -’ ‘Yeah, we’ll be in soon.’

‘Okay, see ya.’

‘See ya.’

The door slipped almost closed once more, and looking away from the door they found that the security light had burned orange circles in their retinas that flickered and slowly shrank into black spots in the corners of their vision. ‘Why did you lie?’

‘Why are we out here?’

‘It isn’t because I felt sick.’

‘Then why?’

‘I don’t know.’

She didn’t know either, not really, so she let it go and let his hand slide from hers and walked towards the door, trying not to look over her shoulder to see if he was following

heel. She’d cover herself with the duvet to block out the sound of him padding back to his room and stay in bed until long after the sun had set once more, wanting never to see him again and more than anything to have him beside her, smiling and making her laugh.

The warmth of his breath made her earlobe damp and she forced herself to remain there, tensing her thighs and curling her fingers under the rough metal edges of the skip. The desire for more alcohol to put away the butterflies in her stomach made her mouth dry so that her sandpaper tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth.

The door swung open and she squeezed his palm and he sat up, blinking into the security light and trying to identify the silhouette moving towards them. ‘Dan?’ ‘Allison, Mike, you okay? We couldn’t find you,’ ‘Yeah, it was… well… I guess, we just came out for some air or something,’ Mike replied, cringing at the implications of his careless suffix; ‘or something.’

‘Oh, it’s good out here.’

‘I know, I like the- the air.’

‘Yeah, yeah. Well I’m glad I found you, I’ll

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her. He was. He pulled the door shut behind them and smiled at her, before touching her cheek. Something in him wanted to look after her, in the way she looked after him, but he couldn’t think how, and the thought of being responsible for her in this way - within the parameters of some kind of conventional relationship - terrified him, made him want to throw himself into the skip and wrap himself

forever in sheets of rotten plaster. His father called this cowardice and he knew this was the truth. It was a naked, undeniable truth like the spots in the wall outside where paint had long since fallen away. ‘You’re really cold, I didn’t realise how long we were out there for,’ she nodded and held his outstretched hand for a moment then pushed it away and mumbled, ‘I’m going for a drink.’ She walked away

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taxis headed towards their lonesome dorm rooms. He was in a corner by another bar with his friends who were laughing and buying short drinks in thin plastic tumblers which they dropped to their sides when they were empty, kicking them away on the volley with their heels. The cups skidded away, instantly forgotten. Mike found the group and bought a jagerbomb and sipped it, swirling the sticky liquid around his teeth before tipping the drink back, straight down and tossing the tumbler away. Dan came over and made a joke about a boy in white trainers at the other end of the bar. Mike smiled widely and politely.

Allison returned to the group with a tumbler almost full of rum and coke, the excess running over her knuckles in sticky trails that she wiped into her skirt. She stood quietly with their friends, nodding to Mike, and waited for the familiar tingle of artificial happiness.

before he could offer to accompany her. He watched her leave then he turned and went to look for their friends on the dancefloor.

Dan had met a girl in a tight white dress and bought her two drinks and kissed her, tasting the vodka and coke on her tongue. He wasn’t sure where she was now but he hoped she would find him before they left in great black

Looking around Mike realised the night was headed down the same well-trodden route it always took. The steadily increasing drunkenness, the shouting across the dancefloor, more cigarettes in the official, crowded smoking area then perhaps they’d see a fight in a kebab shop before the taxi ride home. Allison might touch his knee in the taxi and he would play with her hair and follow her to her room where they would giggle a little as they tried to ignore the alcoholic spinning of the room and have sex in the dark and bump heads and fall off the bed at least once. When he came she would bite his neck so that he could not deny to himself what had happened in the morning after he had slipped away. Though he knew exactly why it was she bit him he thought it rude to ask her to stop, or to stretch his neck away or attempt to prise her mouth off with his hands. These thoughts of the immediate future were interrupted by Allison who he now noticed was smiling widely and distractedly at him, beginning to entertain pleasant thoughts of having him in her bed.

The predictability of everything made him feel a little sick but he pushed this feeling away, determined to drink himself into the mindlessness of it all.

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Baby steps

Lauren Jane Ross

I

have experienced many new beginnings over the past three years. I finished school; I moved into a house in London with six strangers; I fell in love.

Starting university has been a big new beginning, terrifying and exciting in equal parts. I commute to university, and therefore don’t have the same experience most people have of campus life.

I didn’t have that halls-given-gift of guaranteed friends. I have extra bills and money worries and I have to be extra vigilant for last minute room changes or lecture cancellations.

I also experienced another new beginning in this time, something somewhat unique to myself among university students; I gave birth to my daughter.

Motherhood is something entirely other, a status that you can’t prepare for. All of a sudden I became life-support for this tiny, helpless thing. I gave birth on my 20th birthday. This, with the gravity of parenthood looming over my boyfriend and me, was nothing short of terrifying.

What if we didn’t have that instant bond, that flush of love that everybody talks about? What if I hadn’t read up enough about vaccinations or co-sleeping or breastfeeding? What if I was a useless mother?

All those perceptions were shattered the second I held her in my arms. I was a natural, as most new mothers are. That maternal instinct clicks into place and,

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although it’s a cliché, you do immediately know what to do with your own little human. And you know you would, quite literally, walk through fire backwards for them.

The problem was juggling Uni life with a small child. I’ve been desperate to go to university since I was little. That was always a non-negotiable part of my life.

I’m one of those people that gets what they want, I always do what I say I’m going to do. But be under no illusions, I didn’t have an easy ride. For some reason, society believes that motherhood and ambition are mutually exclusive, that you can’t ‘have it all’. My family openly derided me at first. They asked me “What happened to your ambitions? I thought you wanted to be a writer!” One person even confronted me: “If you think you will be able to have a child and go to university, you are extremely deluded. Your child will have a horribly disadvantaged upbringing. How selfish of you.” Two years on, these messages are still painful to read. They showed me that women in my position are viewed by society as lost causes; that once you’ve birthed a child, that’s it, you’ve fulfilled the biological imperative that you as a woman are there to accomplish, and nothing more is expected of you. Heaven forbid you choose to pursue both a career AND motherhood!

When I was due to start at

university, somebody even told me to hide the fact I had a child from fellow students and tutors. She said I wouldn’t make any friends, that they’d all be polite but would secretly judge me. I would become some kind of social pariah.

I entirely intended to follow this advice until I found myself confronted with a language test I’d been unable to revise for in the early weeks and I self-consciously scrawled an apology for not studying at the bottom of the paper, describing my situation and emphasising that this did not reflect my actual ability. After this, I decided that if people judged me for being a mother and continuing to further my education, then they were not the type of people to hang around with. I’ve since found that yes, people at university do want to be my friend and that my tutors have been continuously supportive and helpful. And I like to think I’m on somewhat on a level playing field with my friends from university - when they roll into seminars at 9AM, hungover, exhausted and bewildered, I feel equally terrible after having been woken up at 4AM by a toddler, having sung twinkle-twinkle little star five times in a row and run around tidying up the perpetual mess in the daytime, and somehow fit in reading and assignments alongside.

you sacrificed? A social life maybe?” And yes, I have to an extent. I am no longer able to stay out in town until the early hours, spend frivolously or keep up with all the hobbies I once enjoyed.

My choices are no longer whether to go out or stay in, they are whether to compose educational activities for a knowledge-craving toddler, or start on my reading. But my friends did not abandon or judge me as my family said they would. They carried on with their own lives, of course, isn’t that what 18-21 year olds do? There is a hell of a lot of growing up to do between these ages. People move away, get jobs and alter their lives and opinions irrevocably. But still, every holiday and at odd weekends, I still receive the affectionate messages I used to: ‘Hey, I’m home!

Let’s meet for coffee.

It’s been too long since I’ve seen you.’ And of course, my daughter’s self-proclaimed aunties and uncles adore her.

During a routine check-up, my GP said to me “You’ve moved away from your family, got a job, had a baby, gone to university. How have you done it? I mean what have

How could they not?

She’s

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a wild-haired, giggly, brave, clever little ball of sunshine.

She is what keeps me going. I’m here at university to better myself and to give my daughter all the opportunities that I was fortune enough to have as a child.

And, just as importantly, I’m here for me. To prove those who doubted me wrong and to pursue the education for which I’ve always thirsted.

An old friend recently remarked “I always say becoming a mum is the best thing that ever happened to you, Lauren.” I wholeheartedly agree.

a poem by

Gabriella Watt

Fell down the rabbit-hole, And found the world Upside-down, Topsy-turvy, And all as it should have been.

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Of Memories and Mountains You and I, we would walk.

Just walk.

There was never a reason, would never need to be; We were voyagers.

Mountain gravel splayed beneath our feet, And when the stile loomed, your arms Would ferry me safely across the plank Where crocodiles snapped, and dolphins danced, Beckoning me to the safe earth where you placed me.

The object of our whispers were unknown To all but us.

The vertical climb would mar our senseless talk Of inconsequential things; Breath focused on the hard slog To the zenith, Olympus void of clouds.

Our haven.

Such inconsequential things – Was that what they were?

No. A precise order of syllables only you and I could speak.

You strode up, onward, sweeping over grass and stone, Your back erect, solid, everything I knew.

And I would follow your step with three of my own Crimson cheeks and muddy boots, Scuffing soil and stubbing toes.

Only once, my fondest memory – You paused to raise me above your shoulders And burdened me to the top.

And we spoke of such things up there In our castle mountain overseeing the kingdom, The landscape of Crow Valley.

I walk that trail in my dreams, Forever chasing the markings of your tread in our homeland mud.

The tips of my heels drag But the ache, the breathlessness we shared on our pilgrimages Do not exist anymore.

You carry me, now, in other ways, and soon I will carry you.

I, Artemis, and you, Zeus.

And when those days are gone... when you are gone, Our castle will go with you.

I will walk, but find just a mound.

Just a grassed mound without history, time or place.

Back then, it was only a mountain, Now it is a moment in time.

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a poem by

Gabriella Watt

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t was the year of 1937 when Robert Johnson, aged 26 years, and Alex Miller (professionally known as Sonny Boy Williamson), aged 25 years, found themselves on this particular freight train headed towards God knows where, anywhere that lies under the sun for all they cared. Sonny never liked travelling on the freight trains because they were uncomfortable, hot, and sometimes they would get kicked off if a guard came snooping towards the back of the carriages. For Robert, however, it was a way of life. He liked the motion of it, the feel that he was headed somewhere. He never knew where he was headed, for often Robert would just point his finger at a freight train that was loading up, and sneak his way aboard, and would only get off that train when he felt like it. But having lived in this moving condition for some time now, a map had been built in his head, and as such he always roughly knew about where he was. Right now, they were in southern Mississippi, near Hattiesburg. He didn’t want to jump off at Hattiesburg, in case police were near the train station. Once he had got off at Tupelo, and been fined for illegal passage; considering he only had the suit he was wearing and his guitar, he had to labour for a few weeks to work off the debt.

But after that, as ever it was, the road lay out before him.

It was about two in the afternoon when the train began to slow down, approaching a small town just before Hattiesburg. Robert kicked Sonny awake, and with a grunt he looked up.

“Where are we?” Sonny inquired.

“We’re ‘round Hattiesburg. Figure we should jump here to avoid the law.” Robert stood up off the floor of the dimly lit carriage and dusted off his suit. It was important to him that he kept up his appearance, and let no part of his suit go unclean for very long. Sonny, on the other hand, was the opposite; he led a less travelled life, and as such never had the urge to clean his clothes in such a manner, for he could simply afford to wait until he was once more home.

Robert slid open the massive door of the carriage. Swinging his guitar over his back, he kicked Sonny once more. Sonny, taking his guitar, stood next to the open way. The train was still moving, but Robert was undeterred; and with a crazy look in his eye, he jumped off the train.

He landed safely, and as Sonny looked at him in wonder, Robert motioned for him to do the same. Sonny did so; but his landing was quite different. The shock that jolted up his legs threw him onto his back, and his guitar off the side and into a bush. Robert walked over, and, seeing him on his back, urged his pace.

When he came upon him, Sonny was sitting up.

Robert gave him a hand, and Sonny took it gratefully.

“You insane bastard! How’d you do that jump?” shouted Sonny.

“With a lotta practice. Come on. We gotta get to a bar, get a show and get a bed.” Robert led

by

Andrew Sztehlo

Sonny along the railway, walking slowly and without passion. Robert knew that he would be stuck in this small town for the next few days. He would play his guitar, of course, he would drink, and perhaps he would meet a girl or two; but as he became stationary, the anger grew within him. The road was his life; this was not.

The walk into town was mostly silent; they stayed on the path of the railway until a highway intersected, eventually traveling parallel to the railway. For ease of walking the pair switched to this highway and followed it into town.

The town was very small, consisting only of a short High Street crossing back roads that lead into residential quarters. There was a general store, a clothes store, a butcher, and a bar. Seeing the bar, Robert nudged Sonny and the two walked up to it and through the open door.

The place was cramped and darkly lit, but empty of people. There was a stale scent of cigarette smoke, whiskey, and sex. Robert surveyed the place and, upon seeing the bartender, walked over to him.

“What can I do for you this fine day?” asked the bartender.

“A whiskey for me and my friend here,” replied Robert.

The bartender began to pour the whiskeys and eyed both men up and down suspiciously. He finished pouring and passed both along. Robert downed his immediately, whilst Sonny coughed, uncomfortable with the hard liquor.

“Say, what are you two doing here? I ain’t seen you round here before.”

Robert answered, “We’re looking for work- we’re performers. You expecting customers tonight? We’ll work for food and board.”

The bartender smirked, looking at both of them. An uncomfortable silence flooded the room.

He settled his eyes once more on Robert.

“You serious?”

“Yeah, we’re serious. We’ll play audition if you want.”

“But I ain’t expecting too many customers tonight, boys. Any other evenin’ and I’d hire you.

But not tonight. You’re welcome to sleep here for regular minted coin though.”

“But… what do you mean? How can you not be expecting business?”

“It’s Christmas Eve, son.”

Upon hearing this declaration, Robert glumly lowered his head. Ordering another whiskey, he turned to Sonny.

“I’m going for a walk. I’ll be back in fifteen.”

He downed his second whiskey and, leaving his guitar with Sonny, walked out the door. Sonny and the bartender’s eyes followed him until he left; and yet they continued to look, as if they could stare

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through the wooden exterior of the bar and follow the mystery.

“What’s he down for?”

Sonny replied, “He don’t like Christmas.

Finds it depressing. Neither of us knew it was Christmas; had I known I’da made sure we stayed on that train.”

“Why so?”

“He’s going to drink tonight. He’s going to drink a lot. And he’ll moan for Willie Mae.”

“Willie Mae his woman?”

“Not anymore.”

“Well, if he’s just lookin for a woman for the night, I can get some over. That’s no problem, we can get a regular party started.”

“No, that won’t do anything. He loved her.

He loved that girl, but she was too good for him, he reckoned it and so did she. That’s why she left him. Couldn’t keep up with him. He’s real intense you see.”

The bartender looks confused. “In what ways?”

“Well you see he’s real smart. Smarter than most, but not in the way of arithmetic. He’s a poet you see, a real poet and thinker. He knows about life more than most of us do. He travels, he walks, he consumes everything and when everything’s gone and done, he’s thirsty for more. It leads him down bad corners of life. Bad things have happened to him, and I reckon the world’s not done with him just yet.”

“Lord, the guy needs a drink. And a woman.”

“Not tonight. That’s not what he needs tonight at all. You see, he’s like a hurricane. His passion, it afflicts him. It builds up and it makes him do crazy things that in the morning, he’ll rot inside for the shame of it.”

“What can be done?”

“We wait here. We sit here tight and wait for him to stagger back from this haunt and we’ll not say a word about it and we’ll sit and talk. Can I count on your support?”

“As long as it’s supported by coin, yes you can.”

flowers, after a few months travelling, expecting to see her and his son (but he wouldn’t have minded a daughter) run out to see him; instead he was greeted with righteous speech, talk of God and Devil and filth and evil. Her father smacked him on the face. To Robert though, he had been smote.

As he fell back, the world declined into nonsense.

He reeled, staggering away; Robert would throw up behind the barn in delusionary sickness. He passed out in the work shed, and when he had awakened, it was night-time. He walked solemnly, dejectedly, towards the graveyard.

Seeing her gravestone, he fell to his knees, clasping the loose earth atop the coffin. He cried for her, because it was true; his lustre had infected her, but it had not been a bright lustre; it was a black one,

*

It was only recently that Christmas had become a difficult time of year for Robert. He fondly remembered the Christmases of his childhood, wherein his mother would prepare a feast for every worker on the plantation. Robert would sit next to her, and she’d cut up his food for him. It seemed a long time ago now.

Things seemed to be getting better when Willie Mae arrived; young, beautiful, headstrong, she was everything he had wanted in a woman.

She didn’t mind his nomadic life style. His lustre had infected her deeply. She had loved him, and he thought she was too good for him. Too pure.

He was right.

When she passed, her family blamed it on him. He remembered arriving at her door with

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black as the starless night heavens.

When he looked up he saw a man, dressed in fine clothes and with grey hair slicked back.

He was leaning against a dirty spade, stuck in the ground, his white hair curling back over his forehead. He was shadowed by a moonlight bone-tree that stood behind him, masking his identity. With a devilish grin, he looked upon Robert, and with dark eyes he was reminding him of his transgressions.

It was then that Robert realized that Willie Mae’s father had been right; he was damned. He was finished. His damnation had been part of an elaborate guise beforehand, though; now it was complete and pestilential. It was not a public damnation, not a performance; in every complete sense of the words, it was private, never-ending, torturous, and a very

personal hell. He was damned until the end of time, and now fiction had become fact. His damnation was his soul and he would carry it out until the ends of the earth. He would carry it always, in his head, in his hands, in his heart, in his soul, in his music.

And since then he had so utterly thrown himself into his own damnation, and had written and performed about it so explicitly in his music, Christmas time was always the hardest time of year.

The devout population would suddenly gain some moral superiority, and whereas the week before they were dancing to his music, now they were throwing him out onto the muddy streets at night, and for an eternal 12 days, he would be sleeping in the dirt, intensifying his self-hatred and misery. And misery would breed more misery; and he would think back

to old Willie Mae, to that most perfect of women.

The liquor and women had taken their toll on him too. He would get into a movement in the evenings of his performances, in such a way that he could not stop for fear of inertia. First would come a whiskey; then a second; and a third… and eventually, after many more, he would approach some woman, and thinking she was Willie Mae returned, he would take her in his arms and love her. Only to be awoken in the morning with fresh misery, as he turned his head and he saw that in fact this woman was not Willie Mae; and that Willie Mae was still in the ground. And his torture would begin all anew.

Robert stopped, leaving his daydream nightmares; and when he looked up, he found himself outside of a church. He must have walked far, as

he had not reckoned on a church being in a town of this small size. He considered walking in and going to confession, but he rejected the idea; he had tried to do so many times before, and the church would always reject him. He smirked, for he realized the irony of his situation; religion had been founded to help people in the most dire of circumstances, and his circumstances were the direst. But there was no help to be had. The hypocrisy made him laugh.

Robert began the long walk back to the bar.

*

When Robert returned to the bar, it had struck six. The evening was beginning to darken, and Sonny was helping the bartender put up wooden shutters behind the windows. Robert walked in glumly, and Sonny and the bartender both stopped their work, starring at him. Robert motioned Sonny to talk privately with him.

“Sonny, I figure we should get going before hassle drops on us.”

“No, no, it’s ok, I’ve talked to him. He’s cool.”

The bartender piped up, gesturing inquisitively to Robert. He motioned them to sit down at the bar, and both he and Sonny did so. The bartender disappeared behind the door, and they could see he was tinkering with a gramophone, placing a record on it.

Robert shouted to him, “Hey! How’d you get a gramophone in these parts? A bit expensive aren’t they?”

“Thought it’d be a good investment, get some more business going. Didn’t really help in the end. We’re in quite a rut. So mainly I listen to my own records on here. Now, listen to this.”

He placed the needle upon the record, and the gramophone immediately began to relay the hiss. And then a careful guitar picking, sliding out of the darkness, reverberated around the room, skipping along to the beat of the guitar. Robert looked at Sonny, shocked. And then, a voice from the darkness…

“And I feel so lonesome, you hear me when I moan When I feel so lonesome, you hear me when I moan Who been drivin’ my Terraplane, for you since I been gone…”

“I got Skip James, Blind Blake, Son House… and I got you, Mr. Johnson.” The bartender smiled and came out of the dark backroom, heading towards the counter. He stared feebly at Robert, an awkwardness introduced into his presence. He looked away, shy.

“For you and your friend, Mr Williamson, drinks are on the house. And I’d be grateful to extend to you an invitation to stay for Christmas day.”

He went to pour a whiskey for Robert, but Robert stopped his hand.

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“Thank you. You don’t know what it means to a man like me, that you don’t turn me out. It means a lot.”

“Turn you out? You? Man, you walked in here and I knew you had some shadow following you.

I knew you was special. Knew it. Heck with the others.

Don’t worry about it. Now, you want a whiskey?”

Robert looked at Sonny, a question in his eyes. Sonny conceded.

“I don’t think so. I think food is in order, if you have any.”

The bartender looked extra pleased. He ran around the counter and began to set a table, placing candle and forks on the wooden surface. He ran about wildly, collecting kitchen tools to prepare a meal.

“I can’t offer much in the way of food, and nothing particularly festive; but I’d be happy to serve you a meal, friends. And please, help yourselves to some whiskey should the desire strike you.”

Sonny stood up and crossed to behind the bar. He poured a whiskey and pushed it towards Robert; but he turned it away. Sonny looked at Robert, and he received a smile. Smiling, Sonny took the whiskey and downed it. He went over and sat next to his friend once more.

“How was your walk?”

“Goddamn miserable.” They both laughed, and then paused. They contemplated their rare situation, thankful for this opportunity. They both turned and looked at the bartender. They could here a sizzle emanating from the kitchen; whatever was cooking smelt good.

“How are you feeling, Rob?”

“Better. I feel better.”

“That’s good to hear.”

“You’re a good friend. A man has to appreciate good friends in life.”

Sonny smiled. The bartender walked in and told them to sit down at the table; the food would be coming through shortly. Both moved over to the table and sat opposite each other, with a third chair parked at the end for the bartender. They sat in silence.

When the food came through, Robert and Sonny followed the plates as they landed and settled in front of them with anticipation. There was chicken, corn, hash browns. A simple meal, but a good one.

The bartender sat down at the table, and looking at both of his new friends, and he said:

“Merry Christmas.”

They talked as they ate, and they had many laughs. Robert shared some of his adventures on the road, encounters with police, with women, and a fistfight or two. Sonny had not as many stories; but listening to Robert speak, to tell his stories, this was enough for the present company. Come the end of the meal, as they all sat reclining in their seats, Robert asked Sonny a question.

“Where’s my guitar?”

“By the door.”

Robert turned around in his seat, and his focus settled on the door, and he followed the wall to the right until he saw his instrument, his voice, sitting by it. He stood up from the table, slowly walked over, and picked the delicate machinery up in his hands.

His fingers began to pick and stroll their way across the chords, travelling through distant memories and through adventure, through the roads in his head that laid out on this land, this beautiful land, and he saw highways and railways and he saw the vastness of the country, picturesque and ever beautiful, and it was all like a wonderful painting, painted by the greatest artist who ever lived. He picked his way along these memories, sliding up deltas and streams in the chords of life. He began to sing those words: “When you got a good friend, that will stay right by your side When you got a good friend, that will stay right by your side Give her all your spare time, try to love and treat her right I mistreat my baby, but I can’t see no reason why I mistreat my baby, but I can’t see no reason why Anytime I think about it, I just wring my hands and cry Wonder could I bear apologize, or would she sympathize with me Mmm, or would she sympathize with me She’s a brownskin woman, just as sweet as a girlfriend can be Mmm, baby I may be right or wrong Baby, it your opinion, I may be right or wrong Watch your close friend, baby, then your enemies can’t do you no harm When you got a good friend that will stay right by your side When you got a good friend that will stay right by your side Give her all of your spare time, love and treat her right.”

The song finished with applause as Sonny and the bartender stood up and prospered in the afterglow of that display. Robert laughed, and he turned towards his guitar once more, as ever he did upon his journeys; and he smiled, and he figured that this was why he was here; this is why he wrote; this is why he shared himself with others.

And as he began to pick once more, sharing another story with his small but grateful audience, his soul shot out through his fingers; and as they lingered on each of the strings, as they told stories of bad women and devils, as they told the story of his life, his thoughts drifted back to her and to his son; and he was, for a brief respite, happy, as their memory no longer clouded or continued his sufferings. And with this knowledge he was thankful. And he was thankful for his friend, and for this man who opened up his home to a damned man; and he was grateful for their company, and for the food provided; and he continued to play his song.

It was a good Christmas, and for Robert Johnson, that was enough.

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Campus: Warwick Arts Centre - theatre, films, dance, music Student productions- including Warwick University Drama Society (WUDS), Music Theatre Warwick, Warwick Glee, Shakespeare society and WITS (improvised theatre)

Coventry/ Warwickshire: Coventry Art Space upcoming guided tours of Coventry’s musical past Stratford-upom-Avon - Shakespeare birthday celebrations throughout term 3

Leamington: Royal Pump Rooms - art gallery and museum Royal Spa Centre movies, theatre, arts exhibitions also see what’s on at the Loft Theatre and LAMP

Birmingham: MAC - arts centre with workshops, performances, crafts, dance, drama, music also events and exhibitions at the Library of

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Birmingham and live music at the O2 Academy

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SE TE RT ART

Jonella Vidal looks at new and

upcoming sectors of modern art and new writing around the UK.

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Vandalism,

freedom of expression, or masterpieces? Whichever you believe defines graffiti, there is no denying that creativity of this kind has changed urban landscapes nationwide. Due to a rise in recognition of the people who usually stencil and spray paint in isolation, after dark, graffiti is now widely accepted as ‘street art’ and the creations of these artistic urbanites are beginning to change perceptions on issues beyond the scope of art, and traversing across social and political issues.

In focus...Stik Making their first appearance in 2002, the simply drawn stick figures of street artist Stik’s work seem to loiter around the cityscape of London. With dotted eyes as their only feature, they introduce an enigmatic positioning for their audience, the ordinary people on London’s streets,

subconsciously becoming the subject observed by these graffiti figures.

With rectangle bodies and lines for limbs, Stik manages to strip the ‘essence of being’ down to its simplest form; by merely curving lines and focusing on the slightest body language with which we can identify, Stik enables a

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connection of familiarity with these figures, invoking a level of curiosity and even empathy within us.

One stick figure (pictured far right) stands against a block of flats on Queensbridge Road, Hackney. The figure itself stands adjacent to this main road, which leads to highly populated, upcoming areas of the bor-

ough. This positioning is significant, as the subject’s ‘audience’ may not be as aware of his presence as he seems to be of theirs. Stik’s choice to keep the gesture of this stick person very

about the artist whose nickname was originally coined for his art, a fact which is continuously emphasised

by Stik are his years of homelessness, the experience of living on the streets

In consideration of this concept, Stik teamed up with The Big Issue in March 2013 and created a set of four limited edition prints which were included in the newspaper for a week,

subtle, creates further paradox when considering the enormity of the figure.

Stik’s art seems to echo the ‘art of gesture’, which emphasises the importance of actions and direction inside a piece of art, in this case, the gestures are the encompassment of the art itself.

Though little is known

of East London, and the impact of this on his work.

Stik and other street artists such as Banksy, use their art to create a dialogue on the streets, often drawing attention from otherwise unsuspecting passers-by to issues which would not be fully explored behind the doors of galleries.

encouraging more engagement between The Big Issue vendors and the public.

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This is shows street art not only as a means of open discussion, but also opening up opportunities for us to notice more of our surroundings, and appreciate the things which are too often taken for granted.

//battle of the BANDS//

photography

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Samuel Stone

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black sunshine

a poem by

Radu C Vlad

it's high time we scrapped our wrinkles and made ridges of heaven out of them instead i'm just as lost as you are child in this labyrinthian song we might be dead in a city sprinkled with forgiveness watery alleys bubbling with the drooping dew sliding on pallisades and whorecheeks and on clandestine stoplights who the fuck are they to tell us to stop jump on my back and i'll take you wonders in the seven worlds will fold their gracious skirts beneath us as we stride atop our destriers of hope get me a drink sweet bartender of the skies and swirl my blood in throbs and throes i need my veins to splatter don't tend me child of truth i seek not your mending or have you abandoned the eyes of deceit in our haste one look behind is all it takes and we'll surge back again hey cadillac magnate pull over i don't want what you're selling how long till we hijack the gist of our fingers the bones of our faith where's your devotion you sad where's the crawling on whiskey drenched floors you've promised me where come on the great plains await to flutter us over the aether in a pullulating and capricious rage together atop unspeaking carriages of marble alike together atop the fleeting gust of spirit lest it leave us do you love the city tell me now and forever whom do you love best is it so hard to vomit the pillows of the arctic is it so hard tell me to bathe in the sake of a purer destruction for the sake of contempt and the sake of a vilified purpose of an aim to be joy scrub the bar and serve another dead man on the rocks stir the pale geese of salvation to fly you to a better sunshine one preferably less black

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a poem by

Jonella Vidal

Orange Sky I witnessed the row Which threw your pride to the ground (and it still sticks there) I saw that brick smash your brow And I am still there, Standing on the crumbling ledge You are falling, Falling to the ground.

Red sky at night, every night, every night.

Despite the sirens and the years threatening gravity and the tears battling weakness and the fears which try to coax me back down, I am still standing here, On this crumbling ledge, Watching you falling, Falling to the ground.

It’s the beginning Of an uncertain end, Maybe I’ll fall and smash, following the trend or maybe, maybe I’ll wait here, until the sky changes again.

Orange sky, orange sky, orange sky.

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Dane DEHAAN

For an actor of his talents, twenty-eight year old DeHaan has yet to become a household name. He starred as a superpowered teen in Chronicle and as killer Beat Generation poet Lucien Carr alongside Daniel Radcliffe in Kill Your Darlings. He’s also playing Harry Osborn in the latest Amazing Spiderman movie and has just finished filming the James Dean biopic Life, in the title role. The next few years will no doubt give this incredibly diverse actor the recognition he deserves.

Generation

OSCAR ELLIE HASTINGS PROFILES THE 38 NEXT IN BIG ACTING TALENT

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo propelled Mara into the spotlight as an actress that would go to great lengths, physically and mentally, for her craft.

Three years later, her career has taken her to the multi-award winning Her and the role of Tiger Lily in the upcoming Peter Pan remake.

Rooney MARA Lupita

NYONG’O Kenyan-Mexican actress Nyong’o has, it is safe to say, dominated awards season in 2013/14. She brought a breath of fresh air onto the red carpet, a lack of pretention and a serious sense of style that made even the most stubborn celebrity gossips show some respect. After steady work on a Kenyan soap opera called Shuga, Nyong’o made waves with her feverish passion as Patsey in Steve McQueen’s 12 Years A Slave, winning the Oscar for best supporting actress.

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This relatively unknown actor has been in more than you might think, and has shown himself to be incredibly flexible in his career so far. Starting out with a minor part in The Sopranos, Jordan gained some serious respect for his role in The Wire before slowly working through a multitude of American television shows.

However, recent roles look set to reveal him to the masses and include the feel-good romantic comedy That Awkward Moment, also starring Zac Efron, as well as the Human Torch, a.k.a Johnny Storm, in a 2015 reboot of Marvel’s Fantastic Four.

Michael B. JORDAN Many will recognise O’Connell from TV show Skins, where he played James Cook. This year, however, witnesses his breakthrough into the big impact movies, from violent but profound prison drama Starred Up to the visually stunning (in all senses) 300: Rise Of An Empire. In the future are lead roles in projects such as Unbroken, which hosts a wonderfully fresh-faced cast and tells the story of Louis Zamperini, an Olympic runner who was taken prisoner by Japanese forces during World War II.

Jack O’CONNELL 40

Mia WASIKOWSKA

The Austrailian-born Wasikowska has been gradually gaining recongition for quite some time, and her talent has led her to work with some of Hollywood’s biggest names. Her filmography includes Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland, Jane Eyre with costar Michael Fassbender, the gritty western Lawless with Shia La Boeuf and Tom Hardy, Chan-wook Park’s English directorial debut Stoker and chilled vampire romance Only Lovers Left Alive with Tilda Swinton and Tom Hiddleston. Future movies are only going to be bigger and better - Madame Bovary and a second adventure to Wonderland are coming in the next couple of years.

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POETRY BY JOANNA JAKUBOWSKA

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I KEEP FALLING I keep falling for people that could not even bend their knees in front of me

MY FRIEND

and the harder I fall the sweeter is the taste of blood upon my lip

my friend lent me his love for a while he said it was mine to hold and I grasped possessively onto it wishing for a well to toss a penny in to get my lucky charm an approval seal

it keeps going round minute after minute as I keep getting up and wandering again looking for answers I have never been granted before

but his eyes are empty he doesn’t speak the same tongue as me the passion I wanted to kindle with it lost in translation among Cummings and Tennyson

and I know things come and go as one pleases I know so much already but does my hand flex differetly just because I know the ground will not break my fall?

perhaps I was doomed the moment I looked at him reading his thoughts aloud inferring too much just from fickle games of words I did not grasp the meaning of at first

my heart is a silly music box that spasms every other moment perhaps one day it will be calm

perhaps once again I am the fool and I should look for something else

perhaps one day I won't be alone

never mind all the second chances I’ve granted and which had been snatched from me myself till all I had was an empty gaping void I’ve tried to stuff just so that the wind would stop howling inside my broken heart

BLIND I began to see myself through your eyes when my heart broke

I am tired of being mocked of being desired and yet feared geting my hopes up just to have everything go downhill in an hour

for its shards illuminated something hidden deep enough to simply rot and not change no mater how hard I prodded

I want love that could make me believe I am worthy enough of being held dear

perhaps that’s the fate of people like me as the beginning of an end comes too late for any lesson to be learnt and perhaps one day I will be able to tell why you haven’t been ready to love me as I am

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I love ice-cream, but I especially love trying new things. Before I had come to England, I had never bought an ice-cream from a proper ice-cream van before. So this picture represents my love of discovery, especially when it comes to food!

This is a picture I took out of a cab window the last time I was in Bangkok, where I grew up. It’s where I really transformed from a child to an almost-adult and being in Bangkok shaped a lot of the personality I have today, so knowing that I haven’t returned for a long time makes me sad.

THIS IS ME Christine Wong

I treasure the opportunities that being in England - and more specifically, Warwick - has given me. I never thought I’d be actually published. I also didn’t think I’d have my own radio show. These are, to me, really amazing opportunities and I treasure each one that comes by. So this picture of my Valentine’s article for the Boar represents that.

My sister inspires me in more ways than I could even describe. The way she continues to fight any obstacle that stands in her way, the way she pours herself into the things she loves and the way she cares about the people around her are all extremely inspirational for me. I hated being compared to her as a child, but today I consider it an honour.

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TheLastThree Movies I Watched more movie goodness at

/cinemachristine

DALLAS BUYERS CLUB GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL LEGO MOVIE

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This is a really incredible movie - it could have just been a two-hour long advertisement for brick toys. Instead, it weaved an incredible tale of the power of imagination using lots of interesting characters, namely the hilariously basic main character, Emmet. The animation is wonderful, and is my favourite part of the film. Without any spoilers, there’s an extremely poignant and heart-tugging twist at the end that made my heart swell. I would definitely recommend this movie for everyone - I think the message it sends is worth hearing by all, young or old.

ADVICE ON TACKLING THE BOOKS THAT STARTED IT ALL

AAKANKSHA JAISWAL

It’s that time of the year again. No matter where you go, there always seems to be someone talking about the new season of Game of Thrones, using references that elude those of us that have yet to be converted to hardcore fans.

A Song Of Fire And Ice is the highly popular fantasy series by author George R.R. Martin, which has gained more and more popularity since its first broadcast as a television serial in 2011 under the title of the first book, Game of Thrones. The novels are a beautiful blend of politics, fantasy, mystery and a certain amount of psychology, and are not for the faint hearted.

There are four possible scenarios which will eventually lead you to consider reading the series.

1) Your friends will bully you into reading the series.

2) You will become tired of

as a

listening to your friends talk about the series every other hour.

3) You will become weary of all the memes and references to the series, which you would like to finally understand.

4) You are looking to read a new series and this seems like a good choice.

After you’ve made all possible excuses and procrastinated as much as possible, you will eventually announce to your social circle that you’ve decided to read the series. Here is where I step in, to disprove or confirm some common conceptions about reading these novels.

“You need to have a good

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memory to understand the series” – Not at all. You do need to remember names and alliances, but that’s true for any other series. You do not, contrary to popular belief, need an eidetic memory to understand what’s going on.

“It looks like pretty heavy reading – it’s only a novel series, not a textbook, right?” - I’m not saying you’ll read a book a night, but the style isn’t so hard to read that you’ll have to look

“A mind needs books a sword needs a whetstone” - George RR Martin

next.

up words in the dictionary every five lines.

“You have to work through each one in turn to understand what is happening.”

– This one is TRUE. (This coming from someone who read the first five Harry Potter books in a completely haphazard manner and still understood.) The political nature of the series requires that the books be read consecutively.

“If you don’t like politics, you won’t like the series.” –

Ignore, ignore, and ignore.

This isn’t Machiavelli. One of the themes is political, yes, but the writing style is clear and novelistic. It isn’t political in the sense that you have to understand government policies and election ploys. I assure you, an understanding of backstabbing and corruption is all that is required.

“Once you get going, you just can’t stop, otherwise you WILL forget what happens between books.” – Unfortunate and heart-breaking as this might be for some of you, this one is TRUE. You might not understand this one now, but I strongly suggest that there isn’t a very long time lapse between one book and the

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Finally, the big one: “You don’t need to read the books, watching the show is enough.” - It’s most definitely not enough.

As an ardent book lover I have to say this: watching the show is not the same as reading the books. The show just doesn’t have the time to convey as much as the books. And when watching the show, you have to wait for the next season to be released, but you can read the books without having to wait.

One last piece of advice: if you have free time on your hands and like reading (and don’t mind a gory and, at times, grotesque story), start NOW. For those of you who are new to the series and don’t have free time on your hands, you will probably be wondering if the effort is worth it.

It totally is.

Ellie Hastings

Game

of

Clothes

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Even if you haven’t read the books or watched the TV show, you would have to have been living across the Narrow Sea not to know what Game of Thrones is. Both here and in the US, this series has gone from strength to strength, offering the perfect balance of violence, sex and, would you believe it, a damn good plot.

When watching or reading Game of Thrones for the first time, it’s difficult to process every face and plotline. However, on TV it become effortless to lose yourself in the world of Westeros because of one simple thing - the extraordinary costumes. I say extraordinary not just because they are incredibly detailed and interesting, but also because they have been painstakingly chosen

to serve a certain purpose - to be believable in a show that asks you to suspend logic for an hour every Monday (9pm, Sky Atlantic). Costume designer Michelle Clapton cites Persian, Innuit, Mongal and Japanese influences to the costumes, and she takes a lot of inspiration from the places that the various scenes are set and filmed in. The North, which is largely filmed in Scotland, features lots of dark blues and browns, with furs to keep out the cold North wind. The far milder King’s Landing is based on many Mediterranean cities, but Clapton looked to Persian books and art to create looks in silk, popping with colours. She also spent time looking at individul characters, particularly

Cersei Lannister.

“Cersei wears a lot of soft wrapped silks, highlighted with metal belts. I like the idea that she’s always wearing some kind of armour.”

The boys of Westeros like leather, as jackets, belts, breastplates, trousers and boots. As for Daenerys, her look is simple and more Grecian. Floaty fabrics eventually give way to tough linen, but the colours stay bright and airy.

Below are a few of our favourite characters’ looks, recreated with modern pieces to let your inner Westerosi free.

See the original Clapton interview at /watch?v=F_iFAjvYFo4

C

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E R S E I Little Mistress gown £65 ASOS chain belt £15 J O N / S N O W Topman leather jacket £120 Miss Selfridge faux fur stole £25 D A E N E R Y S Miss Selfridge dress £39 River Island necklace £12 New Look boots £27.99

COBALT e u bl the from

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IT’S NOT JUST THE COLOUR OF WARWICK UNIVERSITY - COBALT IS THE HOTTEST SHADE OF BLUE FOR SPRING/ SUMMER 2014

VIDEO GAME NARRATIVES

INTERVIEW – WITH JOHN ZUUR PLATTEN

BY ELLIE HASTINGS AND JAMIE HARDWICK We were fortunate enough to be able to interview John Zuur Platten, a Los Angeles-based video game and television writer, director and producer, on the intricacies of writing narrative specifically for video games, a ‘digital literature’.

Ellie Hastings & Jamie Hardwick: Hi there! So, how did you get involved specifically in writing video games after you worked in TV? John Zuur Platten: One of my early projects was for Sega - we were producing the effects of the aliens and of their ships plus all of the pyrotechnics - it was basically all of the cool stuff associated with the game. After one of our shoots, one of the execs on the project said that it be cool if we made a game for them directly. I had written TV before, so everyone looked at me and said “Hey John, can you write and design it?”. I had never done something like this before…so I ripped off Top Gun and created Tomcat Alley. It became a very successful Sega CD game, and I was on my way. Since then, I’ve written about 60 games.

EH & JH: So, of all those games which has been your favourite project and what aspect of the writing process was the most enjoyable?

JZP: I get paid to deliver approved work mit them to paper (electronically now, of ite project is probably Chronicles of Riddick; the game was very good, and I’ve remained

on time - that for me is the fun part. I think of an idea, comcourse), and then they become something tangible. My favourEscape from Butcher Bay. Working with Vin [Diesel] was a blast, friends with Vin since and written more games and films for him.

EH & JH: When dealing with studios and licensed products, how much scope for originality do you have, or are they far more restrictive on the creative process?

JZP: It’s collaborative and depends on the licensor. For something like Ghostbusters, we had a lot of leeway, but in the end, the script still had to go to the producers for final approval. You kind of learn what various clients are looking for. When I was working on Mission Impossible, Tom Cruise wouldn’t approve the script before Flint [Dille, John’s writing partner] and I took a crack at it. Every previous draft focused on the handler, the guy in the van, Luther, ordering Ethan Hunt [Cruise’s character] around. Nobody could figure out why Tom didn’t like the scripts. It wasn’t really that hard to figure out. When we shifted the focus back to make Ethan the star, and Tom instantly approved everything we wrote.

EH & JH: Your list of famous friends is pretty impressive!

JZP: Yeah, it’s weird. It kind of grows - the more work you do - the more people you know.

EH & JH: How do you go about adapting certain literary/storytelling rules to the conventions present in a video game, for example constrains on budget, technology or the attention span of your audience?

JZP: Your last point is the biggest - attention span. It is about the expectations that your audience or players have when they are watching or interacting with your content. For instance, my friends who started Machinima realize that their viewers are good for about 5 to 8 mins, and then they start to drop off. So they program accordingly.

EH & JH: One last question - what do you think is the future of video games, and what is the role of narrative and storytelling in a world with that increasingly short attention span?

JZP: I think people always want to be entertained. The basics of good storytelling don’t change, regardless of the medium. Give me a compelling characters, interesting worlds, and dynamic narratives. Make me laugh and cry. Excite me and scare me. Take me places I’ll never go. In the end, all creativity is about the emotional connection between the art and the viewer. So, I think regardless of where or what you are creating, that still has to be true. I believe we are going to see some amazing new types of entertainment that build on multiple streams at once. I’m working on a Google project called Ingress which is doing just that. We deliver the story in video, audio, memos, manuscripts, pictures, puzzles, social media posts, comics, novels…the list is endless. Individually, no single medium covers everything. It really only comes together when you look at all the parts as a whole. And even then it is subject to interpretation and speculation.

EH & JH: Thank you so much for everything, your time, your wisdom.... thank you for taking the time to answer our questions!

JZP: You are more than welcome. Hope I was able to help. Bye! -----

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Jonny Young

A WORD ON...

trilogies T

rilogies are bullshit. All too many major film and game series follow the same formula - a breakout hit that gathers massive attention, a follow up that expands on the ideas of the first and a third that has nothing to add except a wet fart and an apology. Seemingly every brand that has a (theoretical) story ending is put into this mass marketable format nowadays. There’s the newly announced Batman: Arkham Knight, the third game in a trilogy. J K Rowling plans to expand her empire with three fan-fiction offshoot ‘megamovies’ born from a slim 54-page book written for Comic Relief. And who could forget the latest 7-hour ‘New Zealand Walking Tours’ advertisement adapted from a book that takes

an afternoon to read. Oh, and Legolas is back, because why the hell not.

One of the main problems with trilogies is that they are incredibly predictable. They effectively use the proven Hollywood three-act structure but take each act as a separate plotline. Typically, the first act is used to set up the characters and plot, the second is where things start to go wrong and the villain’s plan is revealed, and the third is where they start destroying buildings, saving orphans and filming the material they need for the release trailer.

What filmmakers seem to have forgotten is that, with a trilogy, there should be three separate stories to tell, otherwise you’re just retreading old

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material. You should have a total of nine acts to play with, keeping those three traditional acts within each film. With all that exposition, it’s a padded fractal headache; by the time you’re setting the characters up for the third time it starts to feel like Groundhog Day, only with slightly fewer suicide attempts and more boredom.

Similarly, there are two roads to go down when structuring a multi-part story - you can do something akin to Mass Effect or Star Wars, where the main plot thread is thinly spread, slowly ramping up to a climax at the end, or follow the Batman route and totally ignore everything that came previously in favour of hollowing out football stadiums.

The problem is that both of these are very hard to get right; the first requires the ridiculously long plot thread to be wrapped up well, or risk facing the wrath of a thousand angry nerds on IGN forums.

Star Wars is perhaps the best example of this, if only because Mass Effect’s drunken self-circumcision of an ending actively hurt to watch. Yes, the Ewoks were kind of dumb, and Vader did sort of look like a bootlegged Faberge egg, but the finale was exciting and more importantly made sense in its own universe. Getting the balance right of story cohesion, fan service, and payoff is a tricky task indeed.

The second approach forgoes this, of course, since the plots are about as related to each other as an episode of Scooby Doo is to a documentary about Jeffrey Dahmer.

But this means it’s no longer

a trilogy, it’s a series that happens to have three parts. It could have seven for all we care. There’s no hook to keep us going back to the cinema to see the story resolved. And for Hollywood wallets that’s something of a problem.

Despite this, there are actually trilogies that worked, and the format isn’t totally worthless. Lord of the Rings is one of the obvious choices, and, other than the ‘Choose Your Explosion’ sequence at the end, the Mass Effect series had just enough revelations spread across just enough time to have the right amount of impact. However, I feel that these are the exceptions. There have been more than enough atrocities to question the overuse of trilogies, such as Spiderman 3’s splurging emo confusion or The Matrix sequels generally being, well, awful. The problem almost always boils

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down to vision. Do the creators have enough vision to see where the story is going, how it is going to end, and roughly what’s going to happen on the way? If not, there’s a large chance it’ll fall apart faster than a chip butty in the rainforest. Star Wars and Lord of the Rings worked because the creators knew what they wanted to happen. George Lucas wrote three films at once but put enough closure into the first in case he couldn’t get funding for the sequels, suitably ending that story arc. Lord of the Rings was an adaptation of a classic work which already had a proper ending, and was well handled apart from some suspect bed jumping. The Matrix, on the other hand, seemed to be the result of a daydreaming office worker trying to avoid work without masturbating or Photoshopping Kanye West’s surprised

face onto things, who somehow managed to get a budget for three films. The story blew its load halfway through the first film when Neo the naked mole rat wakes up in an H R Giger birthing chamber, and the rest of that series is either a bunch of dirty, growly men shooting at robot squids or some overly pretentious shite that pretends to be much more than it is. For a series that unravelled unnervingly quickly into nonsensical drivel, it quite appropriately ends with two men in sunglasses standing still, punching each other in a rainy sewer. Safe to say, it didn’t work.

Ultimately, the best stories are ones with a nice, neat res-

olution. If this is missing, it’s either because the show was cancelled and you will never know the resolution, or it’s an ongoing story, which is, generally speaking, massively boring. For example, TV shows stretch their plotlines to breaking point so they can make more seasons with the same characters doing their iconic thing of standing around arguing for 85% of the show, and taking drugs/killing people/solving crimes/having sex (delete as appropriate) for the other 15%. Comic books have it the worst, having lost the shock value of killing off main characters by continuing to do it…and having them pull a Jesus a few weeks later

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is as lazy as that time when a whole season of Dallas was a dream because the previous storyline was about as well received as a genital wart. Basically if you don’t know how to end the story, you’re going to lose track of what made your initial project good, or simply run out of ideas and go for the shark-jumping world record.

Essentially, if you want to make a trilogy, you should try and know what bloody well happens in it before you start.

If not, don’t be surprised if you get dismantled by sarcastic pricks on the internet who write articles for student magazines. You have been warned.

T H E POLTERGEIST FORMERLY

M

A

KNOWN

R

G

AS

O

by

Josiah Adojutellegan Margo was an unhappy ghost. Not with being dead-- no wait, well actually: yes with being fucking dead, but not mostly or even necessarily as a direct result of it so much as she was just unhappy as her general persuasion. She had been born kinda happy but her whole life was basically just her personal shitty decision conga line and now BOOM. She was dead on the floor, lying in the gutter with her shirt half tucked into her skirt, blood seeping out a hole in her skull with just a smidge of leftover cocaine under her nose. Getting murdered high in the mid afternoon was just classic her.

“This is the sort of thing mum was always saying... Horrid, HA! Wait fuck, she outlived me.”

As Margo somehow managed to sink into self-pity with the realisation a mother had just survived her only child, a skinny, balding fox emerged from a puff of black fire behind some bins.

“Sum’wne sounds cozee” The fox said, with a voice both so incredibly cold and gravelly it sounded like freshly grit A2 after a February hailstorm. It should be noted here are not many reactions one can have to suddenly being approached by talking animals but Margo had considered quite a few. She was thinking that you could run but that’s a bit knee jerky, even for her tastes, or you could try fighting it even, which would seem great after already being dead because what’s it gonna do? bruise your ectoplasm? - but intangibility had made entire point moot so that left a couple more scenarios like trying to fly away or talking to it but at that point Margo thought she had spent so long just standing still staring at it that it would just feel too awkward to try starting a conversion.

So Margo, after discovering that even without a body she was still overly self conscious, decided to stand there like a gormless idiot for a literal minute. You can time a minute now if you like. For added effect I recommend standing in front of a mirror pulling the most blank face you can possibly imagine. For reference it resembles a more anatomically correct version of a zero followed by an underscore followed by another zero. I would tell you that on paper but that would be unprofessional narration (semi-colon, closed bracket).

Anyway, after a minute of that the fox, who’s name is Gibbs by the way as no one will ever ask the poor creature, decided to continue like nothing happened. It was an awkward and unnatural way to start a conversion but Gibbs had a job that required him to talk to people. He was aware of the risk of Margo being a... Well Margo, as soon as he saw her.

“Soreey luv. Didn’t mean to spooke ya, its just we’y gut ta ‘urry up ore I’m gunna goo eff skeduel.”

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Margo still didn’t move thus officially crossing the barrier of reasonable agoraphobia to just being kind of a dick.

“O’right then.” Said Gibbs, trailing off with the realisation that there was no point continuing trying to be polite to Margo. I mean why would she spent so long doing nothing like it was the most normal thing in the world in order to purposefully avoid conversation. I don’t want to get into it but Gibbs is going through a lot of serious shit right now as well so today is not the day to mess with this guy. I mean worst than getting bludgeoned in the head, like a serious “fuck you” conga line.

He’s already going home after a long day of work to a crappy little rented out place that he’s illegally rooming with a vampire and getting screwed on rent because no one in the south is renting. out to a fox, which he understands given the stereotypes given to fox looking creatures but he still believes is a serious form of ignorance, and so that creepy dick David is making him pay like 65% which in my opinion is outrageous and Gibbs should be considered a patron saint for not biting his face off but whatever we’re getting off topic sorry.

“Yoo raar dead. Ya undastand so fer rite?” Said Gibb, annoyed

Ever so slightly Margo nodded...

“O’right gud. ‘n irm a repa.” explained Gibbs, slightly less annoyed “A rapper?” asked Margo, because Gibbs can’t catch a damn break

“Nur, a repa. Dat dunt evenn muk any saynce.”

“Oh, a reaper. Alright for a second I thought I was going insane for a second, thank God! It’s makes so much more sense that the talking fox is the physical manifestation of death rather than the idea that maybe he just has good rhythm and cadence.”

Gibbs sighed. “Ur dun?”

“Well and I suppose personality. Now I’m done.”

“O--” “--Also it’s all who you know right? Like Drake was just a middle class dude who was on TV and knew like Lil’ Wayne or something.”

“OK!” “Alright, Jesus.”

“Etts feyne. New Irm ‘ere ta take ur sool ta da oftalife.”

This time the silence literally lasted for half a minute. Now I suggest for the full effect that as you return to the mirror to make the blank face; you imagine that your boss, who rejected you last year at the New Years party right before she got promoted over you and who it’s been totally awkward trying to talk to since and you would make a thing about it (because it’s like making it all super hard to do your freaking job) but you’re afraid of coming across a bit entitled and sexist and you just don’t need that kind of dump on your already disgustingly, pitiful self esteem (because really, the problem with accusations like that is how you feel about yourself afterwards isn’t it?), is slacking off ever since she got engaged to that dick David and is both passing the excess off to you and docking your pay every time you’re late, and that some freaking skeezbucket that should already be halfway to nirvana is just spacing out for figurative aeons (but again: quite literal minutes) and asking the most redundant questions in between making you now change your face to a capital d, equals sign, more

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than sign and say in your head “Oh feck, 4 minutes late to the orphanage fire, oh sweet mother!” in the thickest accent you can personally imagine.

“Ur knut guning oft ta clud cookoo agun!” very understandably screamed Gibbs!

“Sorry. It’s just... I don’t wanna go like that” “O’... Sawry beet dars naughting wey cun do ‘nlass ya wonta bey a poultrygeist.”

“A what?”

“Lok’ a whoretar” “What did you say!?”

“Nahnahnah I seyd “WHOR-ENT-TA”. Lok u’d jest stay en das plain. Etts feck borang da sa etts eitha ya muk may do a lud o’ papawork or partee eet up with all ya feyverite dead blokes!”

I will skip the next 6 minutes of discussion that take place and will simply skip to the point Gibbs went back to the Land of the Dead, fetched his binders and pens and spent 15 minutes filling out haunting forms with Margo who decided she wanted to just stick around for 200 years with her soul tethered to the alley she died, rather than just move on and quit the Realm of the Living whilst she was waaay behind and just mess around having ghost adventures and junk. Maybe catch her killers but mostly just hang out with the locals and get free cheap beer with ghost powers. In fact Margo would go on to continue being a sarcastic, narcissistic, rude yet socially awkward and generally skeezy ghost haunting English cities and frequently possessing young girls. Wonderful. “..’und sighn heer ‘und... wey just fagnashed da papawork fur a complately yooless, sellfase luf deseesshome whatch hus ralleshed mey ta ello’ ebout twaelve daffrarent wondarang sools ento ‘ur diemenshone.”

“Well, who’s fault is that.”

Gibbs blankly stared at Margo for literally 3 seconds.

“See, just wasting time with this stuff. Come on man, get on the ball.”

The rage Gibbs felt cannot be put into words. Try imagining what fire tastes like. Now think of the sounds of the smell that you might get if you had a mouthful of it and some scotch whiskey. That’s how he felt if I were to describe it in words.

“So is there gonna be like a “WHOO you’re a poltergeist!” party or something? I don’t know about you but I could really use a drink.”

“YOO NED A!? Fak eet ell: cungrudulayshones! ‘Ur sellabratory wone urn chayze well bee given nayver un I still hope yoo choke orn eet, die ugan, pull dis crup en sumwhen elsz urn hat’ ‘very sacanned o’ ur staypid, feckin’ rayturd whorent!”

Gibbs trotted off behind the bins and opened a smoky portal hole into a howling, pure black skyline “You don’t have a girlfriend do you?” said Margo and with tears in his eyes, Gibbs turned to her one last time: “NO MARGO!” said Gibbs sobbing and wheezing with a furore “NO I DON’T!” Gibbs was now barely keeping his pathetic, little face from dropping to the dirty alleyway floor as his salty tears rolled down his fur. It was really just generally kinda sorta sad.

Margo nearly actually experienced empathy.

“IMMA FECKIN’ UNDEAD BUURECRAT!”

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And lo, from on high, the messenger has come. Words, Entangled within his crusted rusted heart, defiled into his mind and floating on air. Delicately raped into the black box, dark horses and trampled bodies dumped into mass pits.

And the messenger bowed his head, recapitulating messages fucked into him exploding like candles into his eyes.

And he said, silently, wistfully: “My master is Grinderman and his word is as thus untold to thee: Crimson slash upon white poppy flowers, Innocent virginity exploded into the moon.

Dark magicks and lustful void, queen of satire And unholy matrimonious disease, infection.

Grinderman is the howling wind, the caress of Tainted angels descending from flawed paradise.

Digging graves for corrupted necrophiliacs, Tainting innocent young girls with slashing razors, for Teeth. Grinderman declares incesticide, cocks marching to endless Reigning death. Grinderman is explorer the first, Lashed onto rockets shooting into first light of night, Genocidal fire-demons plucking fleshful humans from Rotten cores of apples, Entrails dragging on blood and coughing black tar and disease.

Grinderman orders spiritual dissection.

Exhumation of Ed Gein and Jeffrey Dahmer, cannibalized cultureKids: Terror and perversion soaked in bitter honey. Control thine will And life.

The Age of Grinderman began long ago, When this was once a dark place, When all inhabitants indulged wildly in the black forests.

When the trees veined into the soil, When the moss sinewed upon stone, When the alligators barked at the air.

When the Sumerians walked, Grinderman Followed. Honey dripping beauty stalker, built on TREES and flames and blood. Grinderman exists In the depths of time, where blackness Is constant and soul impoverished. Grinderman the eternal, whose word is hallowed and hush.

Silently he lies, waiting. His message: DESOLATION.�

a poem by

Andrew Sztehlo

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Jonny Young O ne day I found Homestar Runner. It was some point in

2008 when the ridiculously named Strong Bad’s Cool Game for Attractive People rolled up on the WiiWare store, featuring people with no arms but twice as much leg to compensate, a depressed rhino with a droopy condom for a face and a Mexican wrestler with boxing gloves for hands. Given how completely dumb and stupid it was, I totally loved it, and proceeded to find the website and watch every single episode online in the space of about a month.

However, it was during one of the Halloween episodes, in which characters dress up as pop culture references as they tend to do in cartoon web series, that I discovered today’s topic, allowing this ridiculous chain of mildly irrelevant filler to end.

Pom-Pom, a sort of giant spherical pimp that speaks like a drowning bubble bath, was dressed in more yellow than usual with a splintery heart logo and a bad case of heterochromia, and for some reason I liked the marginally changed colour scheme enough to try and find which pop culture reference it came from. Lo and behold, I discovered Scud: The Disposable Assassin, a tongue in cheek 90s comic book written and illustrated by Rob Schrab that’s even more completely fucking nuts than Homestar Runner, only with blood and sex and swearing and all that other stuff that 13 year olds think is the best thing ever.

This is where I will try and sum up the plot, and also where you’ll discover if you love Scud instantly or com-

pletely hate it. You might be one of those irritating people who don’t form opinions until they’ve fully experienced the thing in question, in which case stop reading this, go away and do more popular things like partying or dogging.

No, the general plot is that of a vending machine robot assassin who realises that he’ll self-destruct upon killing his target. So, instead of killing the mousetrap-handed, plug-headed monstrosity with an octopus strapped to its stomach that only talks in film quotes from mouths on its knees (I told you it was nuts), he amputates the thing four times and goes off on merry adventures with a sack of zips with infinite storage space, a sexy lady with a robot fetish and an undead Satanist Ben Franklin. Oh yeah, and the monster they battle against is female and called Jeff, because there wasn’t enough bat-shit in the room already.

Of course that description barely does the actual events any justice, as the freelance assassin setup allows for completely non-sequitur plotlines that attempt to remain as sane as Hyacinth Bucket visiting Bransholme council estate.

One sees them visit a beach undergoing a live recreation of an 80s slasher film, while during another they travel to a planet of deaf people that only communicate via lip reading, leaving the mouthless Scud at a mild disadvantage.

Anything that was put into Scud was put in simply because it would be cool to see.

Would it be cool to see a high security prison assassination gone wrong? Yes, put it in. Would it be cool to see a Shakespearean werewolf in

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space? Of course, in it goes. Would it be cool to somehow weasel heaven and hell in to a story about sentient robots, Voodoo and dinosaurs? By God definitely. None of it has to make sense, this particular universe doesn’t give three gerbils’ bollocks about making sense; as long as it’s entertaining and even more crackers than Wallace and Gromit’s cupboard, it’ll be in there somewhere.

As a whole it’s much more of a series than a serial, and the completely unhinged nature of it makes each story wildly unpredictable. Maybe unpredictable in a nonsensical, left field way, written by a man who apparently had one too many Jelly Babies while watching endless reruns of Gundam Wing, but he still manages to fit all of this insanity into a story that works and feels cohesive. The tone is somewhere between John Woo, Deadpool and Noel Fielding, and so an almighty knowing wink is aimed at the reader every time anything happens at all, not least of all in the action sequences.

This brings me neatly to the art. Scud was printed entirely in black and white, which might seem like a negative but gives it a very distinct flavour.

It’s obvious that the artist was not trained by a massive studio or took a lengthy art course; the whole comic was initially an attempt to win over a potential girlfriend, and his ability to simply draw cool things happening shows through.

The quality of each page grad-

ually increases as the series goes on, even sometimes over the course of a single issue, and the actual design of the main character alters dramatically further down the line.

Smooth clinical shapes are replaced by fluid lines, giving the thing an incredible sense of pace and motion.

Of course, not being an experienced professional in the field has its drawbacks, and there are occasionally whole pages that don’t look quite right, as if each third of the page was drawn when under the influence of an illegal drug with a bored monkey telling him the panel layout in semaphore, but it still has a charm of its own. The plot has such a devil-may-care attitude that the occasionally wonky drawing just seems to fit, just like the shite grammatical ability displayed in this review.

Given the complete chaos that seems to happen on each page it’s remarkable that most of the characters don’t get lost in the background, which is mainly down to the visual designs. As mentioned earlier, the main threat Jeff is a fever dream of a creation, a being that makes less than zero sense and could be played for laughs, but is instead genuinely terrifying. Whole sections are dedicated to her monster movie rampages, playing out like she’s Jason Voorhees or Michael Myers and not something stitched together by the bastard child of Drs Frankenstein and Seuss.

Scud himself is a very simple character, essentially a thin yellow mannequin with a cylinder for a head, which makes him both memorable and visually flexible given his tendency to slip into Ma-

Scud: The disposAble assassin

comic book review

trix gunfights and Stallone one-liners. Even minor supporting characters are visually recognisable, like the giraffe with a Roomba for a head, or a huge muscled freak with smiley faces for nipples and an industrial crusher where his mouth should be. Now that I think about it, a lot of the characters are just things with other unrelated things replacing part of their head, like Wayne Rooney did with his hair.

Aside from that the whole story isn’t particularly long; only 24 issues with the last 4 being rather short semi-issues, completed over a decade after the previous 20.

That’s a lot

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of crazy to pack in to such a short time frame, and Schrab somehow goes overboard on the number of bizarre characters, elaborate plots and detailed backgrounds, which is impressive given he was the only person working on it. The short, sharp burst of mental is refreshing to read, and is one of my favourite ever comic books.

It helped shape how I draw, how I write and how I speak, and that’s definitely not because I am easily influenced by things resembling a Tarantino drug trip. Highly recommended.

Butterflies

a poem by

Gabriella Watt

The details of life are these: We live and die.

It begins in the void, A red room where desires are conceived, Where all other thought and emotion is suppressed.

The unknown is all that we know.

It ends with a wistful sigh that rises From the core of the world, And the warmth of a pale hand Pressing our chests for the final breath.

All else between is an existence In the state of metamorphosis.

Enclosed in the chrysalis Comfortable, yet unfulfilled.

In dreams and fancies butterflies ride On the winds of time, Seeking eternity, fleeing fate.

But in waking A truth shatters our wings.

We cannot fly, nor flee.

The pupa will forever precede the butterfly.

And we will emerge from the chrysalis As providence requires, Cold and shaking, our eyes to the sky, Wings beating a familiar pulse, preparing to fly.

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X

a poem by

It marks the spot.

What spot?

Why endless toil along suspect dots?

It is buried, let it lie.

Don’t laugh at my fear, Mother.

Can’t you see?

Such small dots, never-ending reams, Oozing veins of ink.

That path will not fit me, My cumbersome joints.

Gabriella Watt

Let me not stray through forests of spiders Or dance with honey-scented devils To find that unholy thing.

I don’t want it, Nor need it.

You are the one that bathes giddily Naked with desire, Tearing up pages with greedy claws.

Stop it.

STOP IT. Take the map, Move it away.

Lock it away.

Padlock and key, It’s a fiend!

I fear the lines that run straight!

They seep, spearheaded, always, always, Pointing to ‘X.’ Stop laughing.

The bear-patterned blankets cannot protect us.

What, spades?

No. No, no, no, Please, no, mother.

We mustn’t disturb the ground, mother.

Not even you know what lies beneath the earth, Mother.

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a poem by

Victoria Botella

the white pillow The beginning of your lips intrigues me, I explore it timidly, Hoping to catch an unpublished story running away from them.

The beginning of your fingertips scares me, They play around my arm, Fight against my warrior palms, And get lost in the maze of my hair.

The beginning of your laugh quenches my thirst, As if all the fountains of cold water had decided to make a sound together A two syllable word that echoes.

The beginning of you And your smile, and your fingers, and your laugh, hides behind a white pillow.

It smells of humid summer nights and sweat, Of silly giggles and heavy breaths, and when I try to touch the pillow, it’s not there anymore.

For the beginning of you, was the end of me.

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the summer of 2OO6 by

Ahlam Al-Abbasi

R

the type that blithely paddles across your face when you look back at fond memories that are firmly tucked into a box labelled ‘The Past’. The kind that are left abandoned under the bed or on top of the wardrobe for you to find when you happen to do the annual hoover-under-the-bed spring clean.

Rossnowlagh, thinking of Rossnowlagh-dreaming of Rossnowlagh- makes you smile like a monkey. Eva Ibbotson, in the pursuit of an acknowledgement that true happiness could in fact exist in this world of artificial shit with its artificial shoe and its artificial pavement, revealed that joy and passion and true love can be found in that scrunched up urchin like face. Wrinkles ga-

ossnowlagh is a fantastical part of the Irish coastline that shimmies along the Atlantic in a typical seaside rusticky sort of fashion. Unsurprisingly small, not the loud vudumba bug that Bundoran always was, or the sweeping swoons that picturesqued the Sligo county bright, this bed of rural domesticity wrapped around its inhabitants, and seasonal visitors, like a woollen quilt woven from the strands of course harsh Irish summers; of yells in the coul water; and of sand in your nickers. It was the sort of place that twenty or thirty or forty or fifty years down the line would make you smile.

Now I don’t mean that placid sort of smile,

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ing type books. Indiscriminately old, it would have been finicked away at the back of the library, the dust cover would have been lost and, like a little green gnome, it would have sat and grumped on the shelf all dog eared and waiting to be sold in the second hand book sale.

Yet, funnily enough, I opened a different book (even though the name, oh sigh, was CANAVAN). I’d first picked up my little friend in Edinburgh of all places. She was a Waterstones’ baby and had travelled from Glasgow to the Highlands to Belfast to Portadown with me. I cracked her open on the beach that day and basked in the Kyralian cold.

So, while the world revolved, time got on and marched to the distance, as if life were that linear string that went on and on until you were quite literally dead and chanting at the cursed wake; I sat on the beach and basked in the inadvertent Melbourne sunshine in the cold winter of a fictional land that existed in ONE imagination and took my own dreams by the hand…

They always talk about the dance of a lifetime, the moment of a lifetime- the moment that defines a lifetime. I was taken by the hand and transported from the real present to the fictional present.

As simple as that. And that’s where I’ve been ever since.

I didn’t hear the dragon. I SAW the bastard. He was right up there and he was huge. Sometimes the sky can shine a particular pearly grey over the ocean.

It can show you immensity and suffocation in one shot and throw you to the doldrums if you’re not careful. Now, I want you to think of that pearly grey, and then I want you to think of what blue is supposed to look like. Not summer blue or pool side blue, or even Sorrento blue (although it is a close contender). No, I want you to think of the blue of the soul. Pure blue. He leaped,

lore. Gleaming eyes. Stained teeth- sign of the good life. Happy lines. Memories mapped across the skin in endless woollen threads…

I suggest you try it. I’ve got it down to a ‘T’.

Anyway. I found myself there, oh, it must be eight years now. Just sitting there. I was on that part of the beach just before the sand gets all tough and wet where the fine powder, while shockingly irritating, can for the briefest of instances turn into the best body shaping natural pillow you will ever find. That’s, of course, before the flies come and play hop-along across and up and down your legs. But yes, I was sitting there and looking at that beautiful dame that was the Atlantic and I could sort of hear the faint strains of My Heart Will Go On making its very personal and garbled rendition in the back of my mind.

I looked into the distance and laughed to think that just beyond the black line at the end of my vision there was something else. I laughed at the idea of those Yanks walking along and not knowing that I was watching them. Street lights, Street lives. Fashion, money and fameoh, THE DREAM! How big are their hearts? I wondered. How big and unlimited were their lives? And here I was, sitting in stark and devastating contrast on this cold Irish beach and fancying that I heard a dragon brush the air above my head.

For of course, steeped, by Christ, STEEPED in mystique the island was.

Or you’d think it was, wouldn’t you? Cú Chulainn and the gang chillin’ on the beach with me. Having a poke with a Flake in it. Watching the ice cream running over the cone and your fingers and drip dropping all over the sand. It was a nice place to rest. It was a nice place to watch. If this place had been a book it would have been one of those bulg-

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my peripheral vision, showing me light where there was a shadow and shadows where I thought the sun had set up camp.

Conjurors and sand and endless beach that danced in and out of my vision…

I humbly honour the debt I owe to you by remembering you and immortalising you in my memory…

I honour you when I think of Laurena…

I honour you when I bow to Jordan and his folk…

I honour you when I sit up to dawn just to revel in the death throes of nations and villains and heroes…

I honour you when I weep for the dead who fought not only against the dark, but against the non-believers, the doubters and the sarcastic perpetrators…

I honour you when I don the armour of another battle, of another foe, of another plight of the desperate…

The Atlantic can be a sleepy body of water when the evening comes. When you see the pixies and the elves kick back their heels around gas cookers brewing the evening tea. When you see that godlike lion put his back against the old lookout post and yawn. When you see the magicians lay their robes out to sleep on. When you see that King of Nothing tense in the growing shadows. When you see the assassin’s knives glinting and hear the Necromancers bells gonging. When the ground yawns beneath you and the land shifts in the womb. It is then you know that it’s time to say nite nite to the dream, to the mystic present, to the transcendent dream. But the best thing about going to sleep, when you’ve been raised on high, as I have, on that cold and beautiful Donegal shore, is that you never have to be afraid again. You’re still in the dream on waking. You have become part of a life that is something layered on top of the dirty grit. You’ve found gold bits in the sand.

bounded and screamed defiance. The colour jumped into my heart and made me gasp. Whistling air through lips that quivered. GASP! I told you-Transportation.

My neck swayed as Macavity swayed, following the sinuous movements that they- you should know who they are- had pitter pattered about but never quite got right. Or maybe they had seen another Dragon and I had the utmost privilege of seeing this particular beast of cruel temptation as it weaved again and again among the clouds. Do you know what…I was feeling so privileged I actually curtsied. Don’t tell anyone, though.

This new world was an ephemeral one and, I think, one that had been lost when childhood had packed its bag and shut the door quietly a few years ago. There comes a time when the stars don’t glitter but just sparkle far away. A time where the vastness of a small town becomes just the dust and pavements of docile existence. Where warmth used to be, there was just heat. And where orange was the background to an endless series of immortalised pictures, it has just become harsh yellow sunlight.

But my new awareness had lifted me, floating, above the cloudy dust. The land was breathing once more. A tightness had escaped down the bunghole and there was a new hope that pervaded every sense. Common sense, though, had fled out the window. But that didn’t matter, because that’s when I fell in love with him. Oh, yes, him. But it wasn’t me, it was Sonea. But then, I am Sonea and Sonea is me. Oh, you. There are words that never leave a heart and you opened mine to the world. Not only could I visualise, but I imagined worlds that existed only in realms within my mind. In my heart.

That heart of hearts.

I walked along that beach and he and his magicians would dander in and out of

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COBALT

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MAGAZINE

ISSUE 1 2ND MAY 2014 WARWICK UNIVERSITY