Behind the Fridge A young man at the age of 25 bought a small, humble cottage near his mother’s residence in Co. Dublin, Ireland. When he moved there, he noticed some cracks on the wall near the fridge. Immediately, he called a construction crew to fix them and also install solar panels on his roof. He then went to work at Apple. When he got back, the cracks were still there and the construction team was nowhere to be found! As he looked around, he noticed a strange, red stain on the floor. He ignored it and continued with his life for the next week, yet after that, strange things started happening. At first, the food in the fridge started disappearing. Then the cracks seemed to grow. He was certain that he could hear voices coming from the fridge. By the end of the month, he was sure he could hear a baby laughing. Finally, he lost it. He stormed over to the fridge, shoved it onto the floor and…… froze. He saw a terrible sight so evil, it is impossible to describe. Tentacles shot out of it. He tried to resist. It was all in vain. He was dragged behind the fridge. Georgy Dementiev
Amelie Buzay, Form IV
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Paper plates It was 5am when I texted you. I knew I was too late. The bed wasn’t made. Then again, it never had been before. I lay in the semi-darkness, waiting and dreaming in a half asleep state, floating above the pool of sleep like an iceberg just breaking the surface into alertness. I was already familiar with this state. Waiting for an answer, never sure whether or not I would get one, worried about seeming obsessed but still worried that you would forget me. The bathroom light was still on. The bulb flickered and hissed like a dying animal, trying to hold on long enough to live, but with the absolute certainty it would not make it much longer. Strips of pictures from photo booths ran along the walls, hung off the chipped gray paint. They seemed like pictures of a fake me. A strange me. A me that filled me with hope and yet still regret. I had torn these photos off the wall many times. I had thrown them in the bin or under the carpet, all with the same result. A frantic scramble to dig through every crevice and aperture to find them, all with a slight sick feeling in my stomach. Not quite butterflies but it was still there. I looked around. Nearly everything here belonged to my old roommate, who had long since moved out. That didn’t make me sad; I never liked him. Still, it was better than having no one around at all. I got up and walked to the kitchen. The giant coffee stain bloomed on the once clean counter like a flower in spring. The walls had a few cracks, a few stains, but nothing that could distract from the pictures of the warm sunny days of our past. The cheery sign reading “Home is Where Your Heart is” hung from the pegs I had stolen off my parents. I smiled. This is my home. It’s a little damp and a little cramped and sure, you snore and there’s not much light, but when it comes down to it, I wouldn’t leave if you payed me. I put on a pot of coffee, and grabbed a box of Cheerios. I sat down at the table, where last night’s dinner still sat on paper plates. I stuffed a handful of Cheerios down my throat while I tidied up, feeling unclean. I hated feeling like this. When it all feels like such a waste, eating Cheerios off paper plates.
Story continued on page 7
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In Defence of Oedipus “A rich man, with eyes to see‒ but when he knows the truth, a beggar, with a blind man’s staff!” The fate of Oedipus Rex, Oedipus the King, slayer of the Sphinx, is known to all. It’s praised by Aristotle as the “perfect tragedy”. It has the key elements: the clichéd fall from grace, moments of realisation as well as moments of suffering. Not to mention that the fact that Oedipus means “swollen foot” is pretty cool.
Paolo Garcia Leslie, Form IV
There is conflict within every turn of the play, but the biggest conflict of all is possibly that that occurs within the reader: Can we be in favour of the man who (admittedly unwittingly) killed his own father and married his own mother? Is it still a crime if the perpetrator is unaware that it is? Is the definition of a crime justified by the detriment on the victim or the willingness and knowledge of the perpetrator? Perhaps this is the desired outcome. Perhaps when writing Oedipus Rex, Sophocles didn’t intend on people coming to a moral conclusion about the protagonist. The point was more likely than not to just leave the audience in a state of mind-blownness. I’m going to force my own conclusion on it regardless. I think a common misconception is that Oedipus’ tragedy begins when he discovers he has killed his father. I think the tragedy begins at the start of the play. Oedipus is left on Mount Cithaeron to die from exposure as a baby. His hands and feet are supposedly at least nailed half-way on a rock. Oedipus didn’t even get a fair start in life. For the rest of the play, Oedipus is just your average Joe cruising around saving Thebes from a Sphinx who is murdering the townspeople. The only thing we can possibly pin on him is that he murdered a man who he didn’t know was his father on his way to Thebes. Even that can be argued as being something culturally appropriate at that time. Ancient Greece was one of the earliest civilisations. Gladiator fights were common. People weren’t exactly foreign to the act of murder. The act is not as heinous then as it would be now.
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When he finds Jocasta (his mother and wife) dead by her own hand as well as the truth of his wrongdoing, he is so overcome with remorse he gouges out his own eyes. He is so disgusted by what he has unwittingly done that he asks to be banished from the city of Thebes, the place he’s made his home. He asks to be left to die on Mount Cithaeron to fulfill his parents’ original wishes. He apologises to the people he’s wronged. He arranges for his daughters to be taken care of. These are not the doings of a man who willingly did wrong. These are not the actions of a man who is evil. Oedipus committing patricide (killing his father) and incest (marrying his mother) was prophesied. It was an inevitable outcome. It was written in the stars. Oedipus was a victim of fate. He was the perpetrator as well. His suffering is beyond anyone else’s in the play. And yet he tries, he tries his best to fix it in the end and has been nothing but a good king. So who are we to act the morally superior? Who are we to decide that he is unclean? That he is unworthy of forgiveness? What could we have done? It’s the least we can do to extend our utmost compassion to this fictional character. Sinead Cleary
Isabelle Townshend, Form VI
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Kate Higgins, Form II
For a better reading experience read while listening to: “Merry Go Round of Life” (‘The Howl’s Moving Castle’ theme) Or “In a Monastery Garden” By Albert Ketèlbey
The Place I Love That's Up Above Memories of My Summer Holidays By Shannon Dent
Summer has arrived. The bright light of the sun shines through my bedroom window. Small puffs of dust are seen floating in the yellow light. I gaze and gaze thinking of the great place I’ll visit this afternoon. Out through the door I go, wearing a strange combination of clothes that I have picked at random. My shiny bike twinkles on the green grass. I call out to my furry companion who wags her tail and jumps in glee knowing what’s to come. So off we go, side by side, moving through the streets like a pair of horses running briskly through an empty field. We exit the tall gates of our small safe neighborhood, not knowing what could lie ahead throughout our journey. The trip is long but the time goes quickly. We arrive. The sun is still shining and my companion goes to take a sip from the watery stream nearby. I drop my bike by the shade of a tree. After the long journey I take a good look at my destination. A meadow of tall grass surrounds the landscape. It flows back and forth ever so gently. Tall trees populate the meadow, each one different to the other. Some are robust and have lots of intertwined branches with hundreds of leaves that cover up the bare trunk of the tree. Others are slim and long. Almost unclimbable. Unlike the robust trees, their trunks are bare but they still have lots of leaves at the top, looking as if they had a head of curly hair. I turn away from the main landscape and look at the stream beside me where my companion is quenching her thirst. I hear the soft and relaxing sound of the sweet fresh water trickling by, making its way through little rocks and turns. Beside the stream, bushes with very small yellow flowers decorate the grass. Together they create a small hideaway where I can sit away from the sun's heat.
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Everything in this scene is quite simple except for this one particular outstanding element. A tree that is tall, robust, easy to climb and incredibly beautiful stands alone near the stream. Little birds flap their wings and fly away as I come near. They will probably wait patiently for when I leave, when they can return to their nests and continue their daily tasks. I climb the tree. I scrape my knees and ankles but I hardly notice. My eyes fixate on a long curved branch with the perfect reading seat. Before I sit on the branch I run my fingers through the trunk. I stop at a small indent in the shape of an S that I am very familiar with. I outline and caress it. I smile. The smell of tree sap and wood is all around me that I inhale and exhale very slowly as to take in all the purified air of the countryside. As I lie on my wondrous tree I see my furry friend taking a nap at the bottom of the tree. I decide to do the same and I slowly begin to close my eyes. I listen to the distant sounds of swaying grass and the chirping of sweet birds. It’s a faint sound but it’s calming and it’s something I wouldn't be able to listen to anywhere else, not like this at least. Only very rarely do I get to see the night sky from my tree but when I do, I truly feel in the present. The sun says goodbye much earlier here and the stars come out to say hello. The moon comes along, replacing the hot yellow rays with white milky lights. I know I can only take in the dazzling sight for a short time, so I enjoy it for the while. Now I know that the time has come for me to say goodbye as well. I jump off from the tree, making a large thump on the ground: This way my companion gets the idea too. I very gently pick up my bike and head back home. We move slowly, taking in the scenery all around, looking at constellations and naming as many as I know. I can certainly call this place my home away from home.
Jeanne Levesque, Form VI
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Story continued from page 2 I remembered that warm summer day when I met you. It was in Woodstock, New York, where colors were splashed on every wall, on every person; where waist length hair was the normal thing and were music and laughter were all you could could hear on an average day. I was at the swimming hole, 5 minutes out of town. There was a barbecue on the banks, and the drunken chef was serving anyone he could see. I was eating the overcooked slice of meat between the icy cold slices of bread. Children were playing in the shallows. Slivers of sunlight cut through the overhanging leaves of trees. They swam through the air, like lonely will-o-the-wisps. They swam to you. You told me you were lost, and asked me which direction town was. I got tongue tied, but you just laughed. I pulled open the blinds. The sky was a great sheet of black, with dots of light spread far apart. I could almost count how many stars I could see on my fingers. I still hadn’t forgotten what a sky full of stars looked like. The feeling it gave, the tug at your insides from seeing what is seen by most people on just a cheap “wish you were here” card, but real. A photo, no matter how great, can never capture that feeling. That feeling of awe, as the sky spreads above you, that makes you feel small, but surrounded in majesty, untouchable by anything on earth. I always found it hard not to smile under those stars. Those wide, great pieces of art, dotting the canvas of the sky. Oh, what has it all come to? Somewhere along the line, even with all of our great accomplishments, we forgot about the stars. We forgot about the caves, now stripped bare. We forgot about the forests, the clean air and shade, the dappled green sunlight. We forgot about the creatures of old, lost, forgotten in the sands of time. We forgot about the vast, unmeasured pits in the ocean. We focused on what we didn’t have, on what we “needed”. We were so zeroed in on the new that we forgot all the best things. We forgot about each other. Oh, if we could all love one another like we love our necessary “newness”, wouldn’t life be great? The world is so much smaller than it used to be. We blended together into the new, and the old that set us apart was lost. Ancient cultures, gone, forgotten, all buried in the graveyard where hopes and dreams go to lay their heads down. To be gone, forgotten. To lie in the darkness, simply content to have been the somethings in our nothings. Oh, what humans could be if we were able to lie down, forget what went wrong in the past and be content with what went right... Because in the end, when we lie down, we just want to be happy. To be the something in someone’s nothing. To be an all, an everything. To be important, to be trusted. Yet another great feeling we lost. We looked back and saw it trapped on an island we could no longer return to. We can cry and wail. We can curse our luck and search for a figure to blame, but what’s done is done. You were the something in my nothing. I don’t know what I’ll do while you are gone, but I promise, I’ll be there when you’re lost, and I’ll help bring you back home. Marcus O’Connor
Emma Hinde, Form III
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We had a really successful book week this term! A third former writes about one of the events that took place during the week... On Wednesday the 17th of October, the librarian, Mrs Kent-Sutton, and the English teacher, Mr. Jameson, took a group of Columbans to the Ballyroan library to listen to a talk of Star by Star, an award winning book by Sheena Maria Wilkinson, which was presented by Mrs. Wilkinson herself. Here is a little background. She was born in Belfast. Her very first memory of stories was her grandfather telling her wonderful and fantastical stories. She was amazed that her grandfather could make up the stories on the spot with no book. Next Sheena told us about her two ‘magic places’: the forest and the library. In these places she would imagine through books and the leafy forest. Sheena also described how books are passports in many ways; she said that books can bring you on a journey. She dubbed this ‘The journey of stories’. She talked about her many stories and how as a child and now as well she has an amazing imagination. She told us that practicing your imagination and writing is very important. Glory Popoola, Form V
In her childhood she would read many books, most non-fantasy but still some such as The Famous Five by Enid Blyton or White Boots and Ballet Shoes by Noel Streatfeild. Her absolute favorite was Harriet the Spy by Louise Fitzhugh. She liked this book for many reasons: Harriet is a little girl who wrote all her thoughts about other people in a book, she found this book very interesting because the main problem in the book isn’t the world’s destruction or an imminent war; it is simply that Harriet’s book gets stolen. To Harriet this isn’t a simple problem. It is a very personal problem because some of the thoughts she wrote down weren’t very nice. She said the plot of the story is to get the book back. Sheena likes this book because it shows that to write a good novel, you need don't need a world threatening problem but one very personal problem to your character. Sheena wrote many stories when she was young, she was perfectly satisfied to sit with a notebook or a book or, even better, both, for hours. She gave us an example ‒ her mother had Sheena when she was young so she could not get a third level education but eventually, when Sheena was the age of five or six, her mother attended the Polytechnic in
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Belfast. One day her mother couldn’t get Sheena a baby sitter she brought her into a couple of lectures that day. All Sheena had was her notebook and she was well occupied, even as a child she took writing seriously. When she reached university she was surrounded by history in an old manor-like building. She never made time to write and she was frustrated by this. Eventually she got a job and she wrote a bit here and there but never finished anything. Sheena always had the aspiration to write a novel so one day after there was an author visit to her school she made up her mind and made time to finish a novel. She did these things: ✏ She went for it ✏ she started writing ✏ Practiced ✏ Took writing much more seriously ✏ Made writing a more important thing in her life ✏ Wrote all the time
But then a life changing event occurred. She went to ARVON which is where an author can go on courses to learn how to write better. She has lectured at ARVON since her release of her novels. After all of this she did finish a novel and it was published. Many of Sheena’s novels have won awards as well. She has written seven novels and her most recent novel is Star by Star, a story about a young girl whose mother died, she was a woman who fought for women's rights. Stella, the young girl, is sent to Ireland where she also fights for women's rights. The book Star by Star is the story of a sixteen year old girl who is changing the world. At the end of the visit we had some questions, here they are: Q: Do you remember a specific book that started you out reading? Sheena couldn’t recall a specific book but remembers going to the library to read. That’s what really got her interested in reading. Q: What kind of books do you read? She told us that she mostly reads fiction, but no fantasy. She also reads historical fiction for research and leisure. Q: What would you say to aspiring authors? Read as much as you can, be inspired from the world around you. It boils down to: Observe
Read
Write
In the end she taught us to practice and make time to write. Never give up on it. Avi Johnston
Max Cully, Form I
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This cry for help was sent in to our administration team by one of our readers. Questions and thoughts are always welcome but we aren’t qualified to help with this kind of problem... Frances Wilkinson, Form V
Does Everyone Do This? The other day I was walking to hockey training about 5 minutes early as usual when I noticed that I was talking to someone, but there was no one around me. I was talking to myself, and this is quite normal, right? Everyone talks to themselves but I was actually having a full on conversation with two other people. The funny thing was that all of these people were me but only one of them was different. This third person would ask a question and the two remaining people would respond giving a single answer. It was as if I was made of two people and that there was a third person asking “us” questions. What is even weirder is that I can’t anticipate the questions that this third person asks. It’s quite freaky actually, but on the bright side I’m never alone. I think that this would become an actual problem if I couldn’t tell the difference between me or “this other person”. On another occasion I was simply doing prep and I already know that I usually think out loud but I recently noticed that I’m actually talking to someone when I do prep. A usual dialogue will go as follows: (Keep in mind that these are said OUT LOUD) Person 1: “Hey, Shannon, I think you’re doing that wrong” Person 2: “You think?” Person 1: “Just check again” Person 3: “Oh yeah! You’re right” Person 2+3: “Thanks!” Person 1: “Yup” Is this spooky? I’ve just been doing it for so long that at this point it doesn’t really affect me as much. If something really scary does happen I’ll write another article on it but for now things are as usual. Well, until next time. With lots of smiles and cheers, From all of us
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But that’s not all! Check out the Submarine on the school website for more... Despite the exceptionally busy nature of this term, many pupils manage to set aside time for creative endeavours of all sorts. Noah Leach in Form V is a guitarist, among other things, with a passion for composing. At the cost of burning the midnight oil, Noah was able to record and edit his own song for this edition of the Submarine. His song, Muse, can be heard in the magazine’s online format (you can read that through the college website)
Editor’s note Thank you so so much to everyone who has helped make this edition possible!! Both the team, including our two new editors Avi and Edna Johnston, and all of our contributors have worked really hard this term. I was blown away by the amount of submissions that got sent in ‒ there was barely space for half of them! There’s almost enough material for another edition already, so I can’t thank you all enough for being such good sports. Merry Christmas everyone!! Tania