'Emily in Durham'

Arjun Seth

*caution contains spoilers and a very profitable idea*

As we are now well into term-time, and have many a deadline looming, I thought it would be fun to imagine how our lockdown pal, Emily Cooper, would enjoy some time away as a second year student in Durham. Swapping beret for puffer jacket, heels for white trainers and boulangerie for Greggs’, our pandemic alter ego, Emily, is ready to take on the North-East. Let’s hope the producers don’t read this before I’ve sold the rights and made a buck or two.

Emily, of course, would choose to bring all her wardrobe with her. Yet, as with all the other cool kids,

Durham Council set to welcome Greggs to 77 Hawthorn

Ollie

McKenna

On 30th January 1823, a day etched in history, the first sausage roll was rolled. A hundred years later, on 30th January 1923, the first steak bake was baked. And, on the 30th January 2023, Durham City Council opened a Greggs on 77 Hawthorn Terrace. This is a tale of engineering, bakery and deceit. My story begins, as most brilliant things do, with 10 white male students and a crate of brewskis. A er musing our way through discourses of spring weeks, internships, and skiing, we finally arrived at an important topic of conversation: sausage rolls. In our state of deep she’d of course be residing in the Viaduct. Due, to limited space options, she would be required to pay two rents to keep all her clothes. contemplation, hunger and drunkenness, we agreed that the two Greggs in the city centre could not fill our insatiable appetites. We needed more, lots more.

But at least she’d get some chic paparazzi shots outside of the North Road betting shops.

Instead of running into Camille or fashion executives, she would instead make eye contact with her tutor and her onenight stand at Market Square Tesco despite having been “too ill to get out of bed” an hour prior.

In the classroom, Emily’s contributions would provide eye-opening clarity and clearcut answers to all the big problem questions straight away. Tutors would beg for her to be dropped from their modules. Otherwise, nothing would be le to be debated or pondered.

Emily could turn Spags and its famed ‘penne alla vodka’ into an overnight sensation a er posting a cute date night pic. Spags would naturally go on to win a Michelin Star, leading Emily to become informally known as the ‘Nonna of the North’ amongst the two local Italians.

Emily’s contributions would naturally provide eye-opening clarity and clear-cut answers to all the big problem questions straight away over drinks at the North Road Spoons. With just a few posts, she could save the place from closure and put the street on the map more than levelling up ever could. fund opening Durham’s 3rd Greggs. We continued our drinking and allowed the thought to dissipate through gentle sips of Carlsberg.

Emily would grab that shoe… I mean Jimmy Choos’ and drink straight from it before stumbling her way up Silver Street to Jimmy’s ‘just to see who’s about’.

In the romantic smoking area LEDs, a setting more aesthetic than any Parisian streetlamp-lit boulevard, Emily would find her Gabriel, perhaps not a famed chef, but indeed a DU Rugby C team player who reheats pesto pasta for each meal.

With some minor tweaks, Émile à Durham could work and easily knock its continental spin-off right off its perch, driving PalTV to overtake Netflix as the world’s favourite streaming platform.

The next morning, I stumbled out the door and silently crept my way into my seminar. A er 2 hours of trying to convince my group members to lend me £100,000 and join me on the pastry coated path to wealth and health, I succumbed to the greasy truth.

Perhaps my dream was nothing more than hungerfilled hallucinations.

A er my seminar leader reaffirmed my assumptions that I was indeed a fool, and was indeed going to fail her class, I skulked my way into the city centre and bought a sausage roll (not a vegan one for obvious reasons).