http://mckenna.se/highres/vol54/TN2%20Vol%2054%20Issue%204

6

Caira Barrett on the art of pornography

4

Kevin Brazil examines Dublin’s food revolution

Cover Ilustration courtesy of Paul Piebinga

tn2

COVERNOTESP2

T

his issue sees a foodie feature, with Kevin Brazil writing about Dublin’s new status as a food capital. Five years ago an olive was considered the height of sophistication. Now, it’s all skinny chai lattes, sushi, Spanish chorizo and a smoothie bar on every corner.

The Stereophonics, who have just released their new album, Pull the Pin, have a rather odd chat with me, a

slightly edited version of which appears on the facing page.

Elsewhere, Music sees Hugh McCafferty talking to Hot Hot Heat and Theatre features a review of Chekhov’s The Seagull, which was performed as part of the Dublin Theatre festival.

In the Books section, the food theme is continued with reviews of student cookbooks, and there is also a piece on Doris Lessing, the winner of

O

ne thing a relationships column doesn’t often discuss is the very relationship that everybody on the planet has – even loners, hermits and people in solitary confinement, like! – and that’s the relationship we have with ourselves. It might sound a bit Oprah, but …I just think that people might neglect to think about it! You know every little detail of your mind and body and, hey, nobody knows you better than yourself! Even all your dirty little secrets!

I won’t lie. Those ads on RTÉ are what got me thinking. You know the ones, “Look After your Mental Health”. They made me wonder, how are you supposed to do that? Give yourself a pat on the head every day? Avoid anything that’s going to make you stressed, unhappy or feel bad about yourself? Or perhaps take Prozac as a preventative measure? No, somehow, I don’t think so.

My relationship with myself is pretty turbulent. One day, I’ll think I’m bleedin’ deadly. I might be having a good hair day or being particularly witty/intelligent in class. Neither of those happen very often.The problem is, it never lasts very long. The silliest things like a harsh statement or a bitchy glare can knock me for six.

Most of my girlfriends agree, it’s a lot easier to focus on the negative stuff. But if I can get dragged into a strop over the tiniest of things, why can’t a good mood last all week?

Maybe if we worked on the relationship with oneself, this wouldn’t happen so easily and we would be decidedly less bipolar throughout any given day. But what is one supposed to do? Talk to yourself? First sign of madness. Eat chocolate to boost serotonin levels? I’d have more trouble coping with obesity. We can’t win.

But I think there should be less stigma attached to mental health issues. If I was feeling depressed, I’d be extremely reluctant to admit this to a stranger and ask for their help. Should we rely on our friends? It’s worth noting, however, that turning to a mate as a confidante could result in a kind of self-obsessed crying wolf saga, where

“

But what is one supposed to do?

Eat chocolate to boost serotonin levels? I’d have more trouble coping with obesity.

”

friends would refuse to take you seriously after a certain point, even if you did hit a new low. So should we seek professional help, or talk to a stranger when we’re feeling low?

The point is, we shouldn’t be afraid to do this.

Depression is a taboo subject. It doesn’t help when friends and family say “What have you got to be depressed about, sure you’ve everything going for you?!”. I realised it doesn’t matter what other people have to say on the subject of YOUR emotions. If your relationship with yourself isn’t working, you have to do something about it, just as you would with a boyfriend or best friend.

I’m not urging anyone to turn into a total drama queen and run to the local psychologist. I’m simply saying that as rational human beings we should realise when things are too much to handle by ourselves and not be afraid to ask for help. And as decent human beings, we shouldn’t judge a friend in need if they need to talk to you or decide to visit a neutral third party. It’s better than letting their self-destructive self-relationship eat them up inside until its too late. You never know, one day You and Yourself may need a bit of relationship counselling too.

Check it out: http://RelationshipsTN2.bebo.com

COLLEGE BANDS: AlbynoRhino

In which our heroine concludes that self love is good for you...Words: Victoria Notaro

Catriona

Photo courtesy of AlbynoRhino

Notorious

this year’s Nobel Prize for Literature.

In Art, Caroline O’Leary has written a brilliant article about how to buy art on a student budget- something which is apparently far easier than you might imagine- and in Edibles, Richard Armstrong extolls the virtues of good beer. Enjoy!

Hailed by Hotpress as “the band to watch out for for the rest of the year” and the nowdefunct NME Ireland as “one of the finest raw talents for 2007” Albyno Rhino’s indieska stylings have been getting them a lot of attention over the last year or so. I met guitarist/vocalist Seb and drummer Paul on a windswept Fitzsimon’s roof terrace to see what they’ve been getting up to of late.

“At the moment we’re getting back to the chop shop, fine-tuning some of the old songs”, Seb informs me. “We’re writing better songs too”, Paul continues, “we’ve got a much better idea now of what we want to write.”

The band have already released two singles “Wasters in the End” and “Masks” on Top Dollar Records and are hoping to record some new tunes early next year in Grouse Lodge Studios (where Muse, Bloc Party and REM, among others, have previously worked).

Seb is surprisingly young for the guitarist in such an experienced band, having just done his Leaving Certificate last June. Paul, on the other hand, is a few years older, but is a more recent addition to Albyno Rhino. “I had just left my old band when these guys lost theirs.

I learned all the new songs and found out there was a gig in two days”, he laughs. “It went really well, though”, Seb adds, “I think we’re a lot tighter now, a lot more committed.”

So on the back of the success they’re starting to enjoy, are there any tales of rock n’ roll debauchery to divulge? “Er, we robbed a pint off the Blizzards once”, Paul tells me, perhaps wishing that there was more to tell, or, more likely, that there was more he was allowed to tell. Either way, they’ll have plenty more opportunities ahead of them. Expect some live shows in the near future and if their past performances are anything to go by, they should definitely be worth checking out.

Albyno Rhino are most certainly ones to watch. www.myspace.com/albynorhino www.albynorhinorock.bebo.com

Photo: Martin McKenna

P3INTERVIEW

Death, wills and wardrobes The Stereophonics get serious. Words: Catriona Gray

I

t is a grey October afternoon and the Stereophonics are sitting in a hotel room. The Welsh trio have just released their new album Pull the Pin, after taking a bit of a break for the last two years.

The Stereophonics are no strangers to Ireland, as they have frequently played here over the eight intensive years between 1997 and 2005, which saw them release five albums, score twenty Top 20 hits, rack up multimillion sales and tour the world. Kelly Jones said that “headlining Slane Castle was probably the biggest and the best, most ridiculous gig of all time, although I quite like playing in bars like Whelans, and shit like that, small places.”

Their new album was recorded in only ten days, quite an achievement when you consider that the band have no regular rehearsal times. Kelly Jones, the singer, says “It’s quite hard to rehearse when you’re in a band. You’re always doing gigs and always travelling round and you really only have time to rehearse just before a show. The songs are written on the road or written at home and they’re inspired by where I’m at or what I’m going through in my life.

Nine times out of ten, it’s about something I’ve experienced first hand”.

The bassist, Richard Jones adds, “It’s an immense amount of time hanging about doing nothing, really, being in a band”.

Kelly agrees: “You have a lot of time to

think… sitting on a plane…sitting in a hotel room”.

It is at this point that the interview begins to disintegrate. All three band members have now veered into a level of surreal conversation, presumably occasioned by too much time sitting in yet another hotel room. The surroundings are a bit depressing, actually. Richard looks around appraisingly. “I think it’s the dark wood”, he comments. Javier Weyler, the drummer, begins on the difficulties of spending so much time away from home “it’s the stuff you miss, your wardrobe, your own bed”. Richard sits up. “Do you have a wardrobe?” he asks Javier.

“Yeah”, he replies, nonchalantly. “I built mine” he adds, with the air of one presenting a winning hand at cards. “Do you want to build one for me?” asks Kelly. “I’ve just got a slidey door with a rail behind it” he adds glumly.

When I mention that I prefer to just throw my clothes on the floor, Richard looks slightly shocked and promptly starts talking about ironing. “I never seem to iron anything. I’ve got a big pile of clothes in the washroom and I never iron them”. Kelly Jones asks me whether I iron bedsheets.

“No” I reply, slightly bemused.

“That’s what I said” he replies. “My mother came round my house the other day and she brought me an ironing board and an iron, just for the craic

(“My mum did that” interjects Javier) and I came back in and my mother was ironing my bedsheets and I was like ‘What the fuck are you doing?” Then, when I saw them on the bed after she did them, they actually looked pretty good.”

“I can’t iron”, announces Richard.

“When you get a crease and you can’t get round it, it’s like..(energetically mimes ironing creased clothing) ‘you bastard THING!’, so I just leave it to my maid.” They all smirk, knowingly. “It’s called his wife”. Kelly Jones tells me.

The interview has, by now, descended into the realms of the ridiculous. It progresses into a heated debate as to what celebrities the Stereophonics want to see. “I’m working my way around”,says Kelly. “Ideally we’ll see them before they’re dead”, says Richard. “Yeah”, agrees Javier. “Well, we have seen a few after the date. We went to Elvis’s house”, says Kelly. “He was dead”, interjects Richard helpfully. “Jim Morrisson. He was dead too. Oscar Wilde. Dead…. Marx’s grave…

Lenin…Lennon….”

When asked whether they get any particular kick at of looking at gravestones, Kelly replies “Yeah. Some are lovely”. He then asks Richard what will be engraved on his gravestone. “I’m not having one”, he replies. “No fucking room. My ashes are going to be put into petrol and then distributed over a

couple of vehicles and just blown up into wherever”.

I tell him that he’s not being very environmentally friendly. “He likes his cars”, says Javier. “Anyway, I’m dead now, why would I fucking care?” asks Richard. “I don’t want to get buried”, volunteers Javier. “Good job, or the worms will have you”,Kelly Jones dourly replies.

“I want to have a Tibetan burial”, announces Richard, changing his former plan. “which is basically when you get taken up to the top of a mountain, get chopped up into pieces, then fed to the birds” “Fuck that” says Javier, indignantly. “Yeah. What the fuck is that all about?” rejoins Kelly, before announcing that he has recently made a will. I tell him that that’s not very rock and roll.

“No, trust me, it is, otherwise it all goes to the government…. There’s not a lot of rock and roll that goes on in rock and roll,” Kelly tells me in a jaded manner.

This is contradicted, immediately,

by Richard “there’s a lot of rock ‘n’roll going on in rock ‘n’ roll- that’s why you die, and the reality is that you have to leave a will behind so that some fucking bastard in a suit doesn’t take your house”.

Wise words indeed.

The Stereophonics play the RDS on 29 November.

FEATUREP4

Dublin: Food Capital?

How Dublin is at the forefront of an Irish food revolution.

Words: Kevin Brazil

I

t wasn’t so long ago that the closest you could get to good food in Dublin was while nursing a pint in a dingy pub, listening to a friend tell a story about this incredible meal this guy he knew once ate in some restaurant in Rome. Or by standing outside the Georgian doors of venerable Kildare Street institutions hoping for a whiff of the wonders inside. Now, with Dublin having become a shiny, expensive, traffic-clogged, vibrant European city, it seems that in the past few years or so, good food has finally caught up with the wealth.

Of course everyone’s definition of good food is different; for some, no less than a full-blown five course dinner at Restaurant Patrick Guildbaud will suffice; for others nothing more complicated than a simple insalata caprese with vine grown organic tomatoes, fresh basil leaves, mozzarella di buffala and a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil is food heaven. The change in Irish food attitudes lies somewhere in a convergence of these two extremes.

Gourmet food and all its stuffy pretensions and class snobbery, has long been with us – just think of Charlie Haughey spending IR£15,000 a year dining in Le Coq Hardi.

Simple meals of meat and spuds will be familiar to any Irish person who grew up in the country, as will their

turgid tastelessness. Rising wealth thanks to that mythical beast, the Celtic Tiger, and all the associated benefits like increased travel, as well as deepened ties with Europe, have led Irish people to rightly expect more from their food and, increasingly, to do it themselves.

Coupled with this is the world-wide concern with the quality and the ethics of the produce we cook with: air-miles, organic, locally-produced are now all words in our food vocabulary, as is the notion that perhaps when it comes to food, cheaper is not necessarily always better. Perhaps the most important factor, however, is a type of rising selfconsciousness about Irish food. It’s no good simply aping the cuisine and eating habits of other countries – all this requires is money and pretension, two qualities long present in Dublin. What we have seen in recent years is a realisation that Irish food, cuisine, chefs, sommeliers can be as good as those anywhere else and that local Irish produce can be of the highest quality and can be the answer to all our concerns about where out food comes from without compromising on taste.

Fallon & Byrne on Exchequer Street, is one of the most obvious manifestations of this change. As the Bridgestone Guide to Food in Ireland 2007 says: “Life in Dublin can be summed up in two ways: before Fallon and Byrne and after Fallon and Byrne”.

Rachel Firth, a Trinity History alumna, is the manager of the food store and she explains the store’s food philosophy as providing the freshest produce and the widest variety of goods for every budget.

“We visit the vegetable market in Dublin every morning, we get fresh fish brought up from Castletown Bere in West Cork everyday and we use the same products in our deli production kitchen to ensure all our food is a fresh as possible”, she says. According to Firth, Fallon & Byrne was intended to be more than a speciality store; “We wanted to create a store where people could shop here everyday during the week for their groceries and then perhaps come in at the weekend for that special treat: a nice bottle of wine, or some cheese for a dinner party”.

The approach seems to have clicked with Irish customers, with the establishment becoming a huge success since its opening in April 2006. In Firth’s view the reasons for the Irish public’s changed attitudes to food are travelling and immigration, both linked to rising wealth. “So many Irish people are so well travelled”, she says. “So many people have perhaps lived abroad and returned to Ireland or own property abroad, so that even when you jump into a taxi, you could have a conversation with the driver about your favourite types of Spanish chorizo or Serrano ham”. Immigration too, is a big factor.

“With so many different cultures now living in Dublin, there is a huge awareness of different types of cuisine.

We all have friends who grew up in different countries and when we go to visit them, we encounter different types of food”.

This has resulted in Irish people becoming more interested in the provenance of their food, something which Firth finds especially exciting: “While Ireland may perhaps lack the type of indigenous food culture one finds in Italy, in places like Tuscany or Umbria, for example, this is countered by an open-mindedness to foods from other cultures, as well as an increased interest in foods of our own. For example we had Seán Fitzgerald, who is the producer of Cratloe Hills, an Irish organic sheep’s milk cheese from Co. Clare, in the store doing a tasting yesterday and this old farmer who is almost 60 drove up from Clare to be in Dublin for 9am on a Saturday morning, and wasn’t finished tasting until 7 o’clock in the evening.

I said to him: “Seán, you must be wrecked and that huge drive back home ahead of you”.“Rachel”, he said “I am on such a high, your customers were incredible!” People had taken such an interest in his cheese, where it came from, how it was made and once he had explained to them why it cost that little bit more than mass-produced cheese

P5FEATURE

Above and left: Some of the atmospheric surroundings of Fallon & Byrnes, Exchequer Street and Berry Bros and Rudd, Harry Street.

Right: The Temple Bar food market on a Saturday morning.

Photos: Martin McKenna and Stephan Hugel

they were actually more willing to buy some, because they understood the time, care and effort that goes into such a organic, local and sustainable product”.

This willingness to enquire after the provenance our foods come from is one the big changes in Irish attitudes to food.

With Ireland a nation of drinkers, it is not surprising that there has been a huge increase in wine consumption in recent years, connected to changing attitudes towards food. As Jessica Lavin, manager of Berry Bros. and Rudd wine merchants explains, “Wine is meant to be drunk with food, to bring out its flavours and enhance the experience of both eating and drinking”.

Since the opening of Berry Bros. and Rudd on Harry Street in 1999, Lavin has seen the Irish customer become much more sophisticated in their approach towards wine drinking.

“People definitely have become much more sophisticated in their approach, they are no longer drinking just to get drunk, they want to appreciate the best that wine can offer. At Berry Bros. we see ourselves as more than just sellers of wine. We provide advice and education to our customers and we have seen huge demand for our wine school classes, which we have expanded dramatically over the years”. So much of the snobbery attached to wine drinking has also melted away. “More and more people are buying wine not just for a

special occasion, but for everyday consumption, they are buying midpriced wines to have with meals at home, with the result that fine wine drinking has become much more open, communal, and now everyone has an opinion on their favourite wine.”

In the future, Lavin sees education as key. “Wine is quite a complicated drink and it can seems quite intimidating, but the more people are educated, the more they will enjoy it”, This is particularly applicable to students who, in college, are forming their drinking habits for the rest of their lives. Her advice is to get educated and get tasting, taking advantage of special offers, or wine sellers expertise. For example Ali Floyd, a Trinity student who works at Berry Bros, is running a special promotion where Trinity students can buy cases of high quality wine at large discounts. He says he has been “really surprised and really pleased” at the success of the scheme, and encourages his fellow students to get in touch at Berry Bros.

It is not just that attitudes towards the food and wine we buy to consume at home that have changed. Rising interest in the provenance and quality of food can only lead to higher expectations of the food we get when we eat out. And it is perhaps because of these higher expectations that dining out in Dublin can be a frustrating experience; it is the

least impressive aspect of our food culture. Trevor White is the editor of The Dubliner magazine and author of Kitchen Con and is known for his trenchant opinions and often acerbic put-downs of over-priced, sub-quality establishments. He minces few words about the general state of Irish dining.

“Ireland is an also-ran in the restaurant revolution”, he proclaims.

“Unlike most European states, we have contributed little to modern cuisine, and for an island nation we are remarkable ambivalent about fish, our greatest culinary resource”. When asked about the rise in quality Irish food produce, White agrees that things have improved dramatically.

“In public, we critics rave, with good reason, about the quality of Irish produce. In private, we deride the general standard of Irish cooking. Most chefs who stay in Ireland are in thrall to in French cuisine in which butter and cream sauces often feature. Butter and cream are made here in Ireland. Hence the mistake: basic, lazy and all too typical”. In response to requests for where to find good food on a budget, he points students towards the recently update edition of “The Dubliner’s 100 Best Restaurants”, of which he is the editor.

A particular favourite is L’Gueuleton, which the boy wonder of Irish cooking Troy Maguire has just left

after establishing a restaurant with “superb cooking, where the atmosphere is charming and the prices are remarkably low for food of this quality”.

Gruel at 68 Dame Street provides poor scruffy students with “cheap nutritious homely food”. For a cheap but brilliant lunch, he recommends Honest to Goodness in the Georges Street Market Arcade whose soup and sandwich takeaway for €6 is one of the best deals in town.

So while there may have been a revolution in Irish peoples attitudes toward food, it seems that Dublin restaurants have not yet matched this change. But perhaps this is a good thing, encouraging people to seek out producers and suppliers themselves, rather than rely others to do it for them, to educate themselves about wine, rather than take the work of an intimidating but useless waiter with a wine list.

As Fingal Ferguson, the artisan producer of Gubbeen bacon and salami who rears his pigs organically and humanely on his family’s West Cork farm, says: “The best thing anyone can do to support Irish food culture is to get out there to the Farmer’s Markets, to ask questions and to get educated about your food and to support and encourage local producers”. Irish food may be on the up, but it is a still a revolution in progress.

FILMP6

The art of pornography

Words: Ciara Barrett

Y

ou don’t need ever to have seen a porn film to have some idea what’s in one.

Just like you don’t need ever to have seen a slasher to know you’re going to get some guts and gore and squealing if you go. So why, without ever having seen Night of the Living Dead, might we call director George A. Romero an auteur (for being sick in a good way), and Gerard Damiano (Deep Throat) a dirty pervert (for being sick in a bad way) in the same breath? They’re both filmmakers, after all, and if film is an art, are they not art-makers both?

For anything has the potential to be art, as long as it has in some way been declared or “processed” as such. It is in the act of processing, or sensation/perception (but not necessarily evaluation or qualitative judgment) that the art object thus emerges as “art-ful”. Artfulness is the potential to communicate ideas coming from a material object or objective idea; it is not the state of having inherent meaning—and it is with this in mind that we must consider the visual art of film as thus (paradoxically, arguably) inherently artistic. Because in the very act of filming, of pointing a camera at a given object, it is declared that “you will see this object”: the sensation of that object is communicated and it is accordingly and impulsively perceived by its audience.

Now, this is all very serious and technical language for an article about porn, but maybe it’s time we started taking porn more seriously, or at least consider its impact on our intellectual—and not just sexual—lives a little more deeply. Porn film and—references to it—have so infiltrated our popular culture, have so spilled over into our social and political lives that we are almost always just one URL letter away from a dirty web page, or we’re confusing that Watergate informant with the infamous Deep Throat (for the record, the former was named after the latter, and the question remains: which one corrupts the other by association more?) Anyway, porn, for better or worse, is part of our cultural consciousness like sex is part of our cognitive awareness: it keeps on coming up, sometimes when we least expect it, sometimes when we don’t want it—don’t want to even think about it—but it definitely keeps on coming up. Do we see sex where there isn’t any explicitly because

we want to see it or because we’re made to see it?

One thing is for sure, porn unabashedly makes us see sex. And, because we’re not talking about it here in the context of sexism or its socio-political ramifications, but merely in the dry context of porn as (potentially) art text, perhaps it’s even its saving grace that it is so up-front and honest about what it depicts. There’s no smoke or mirrors. Porn as film, as moving image, declares, “I am to be looked at!” while porn as sexual imagery doesn’t have to declare anything—it doesn’t even have to try to arouse most people, as it is assumed before it is even purchased that it will be capable of doing so. It represents, satisfies and affirms— communicates—an idea of what is sexual (if not sexy), and oftentimes more than that, it elicits a physical response. But can we really call porn “art” like we classify other cinematic forms?

The categorization of film texts into genre is a tool or enabler for the perception of filmic images’ meanings. Before we even press play on the movie we have purchased, we have consumed it, and not just in the fiscal sense: we have already bought into an idea of its “meaning” because of its title, its tag-line, and significantly, the genre section of the store in which we bought it. Genre is a significant symbol in and of itself that says not only what to expect narratively and visually from a film, but also that because it has been classified as a type of art. It is art.

Porn is as much genre as the Western, as the sci-fi, as the melodrama, as the rom com chick flick—and not just because we’ve given it a name. It has a visual iconography just like the Western typically has cowboy hats and Indians; the sci-fi, laser guns and space-ships; the melodrama, weepy faces and the rom com chick flick, pastel colors and at least one gay best friend. Only the

P7FILM INREVIEW: Director: Robin Swicord Cert: PG Running Time: 106 mins Words: Sinead Ide Moloney

“A GALAXY OF ACNE, NO DOUBT” MARTIN AMIS REVIEWED BOOKS P12

porno’s iconography automatically gets the film a rating of over-18s or NC-17 or XXX, or it’s called “dirty”, “adult”, or indeed “pornographic”—perhaps because such visual stimuli are not merely cognitively affective, but physically as well. A few of these are the erect penis, the naked (and obviously surgically enhanced) breast and the cum shot; these are pretty much guaranteed to turn the majority of people—if not on, per se—onto the fact that it is supposed to make people horny because, look, here are horny people doing it!

Perhaps we have a stronger physical reaction to pornography more immediately than, say, to docu-drama because sexual arousal drives us to perform a full-fledged act, to achieve— or at least try to achieve—orgasm.

Melodrama makes us cry and we cry because of what we see and, accordingly, have formed some attachment to or between characters or events onscreen, and related to them. Porn makes us horny, basically, because it is our body’s reflex, developed evolutionarily, to get turned on in response to other sex acts.

But it is still a cognitive process, however quickly it functions and transfers the cognitive thought “That’s hot,” to the physical compulsion to get it on, however auto-erotically, homoerotically, hetero-erotically, or even poly-erotically you so fancy.

Because we all, each and every one of us, have sexual preferences, and with this in mind, we must consider the highly subjective nature of porn and how we judge it. One person’s European arthouse cinema is another person’s smut. But so too is one person’s hardcore smut another person’s softcore smut; one person’s “adult video” is another person’s erotica. It all depends on people’s various personal histories of experience and exposure to film, genre, sexual mores and taboos and systems of meaning. So just because porn sex is (usually) real sex, it’s no less symbolic— and therefore meaningful—to us when we watch it. It may not be symbolic from within its own text, but it is symbolic of our own desires and sexual preferences.

In such a way, perhaps, we might see it as not the antithesis of filmic art, but rather as one more version of it. We might not like what it has to say about each of us personally, but it communicates more quickly, more deeply, and more immediately an essential tendency of ourselves as bodies and minds together (not one in the other) than sometimes a self-consciously “artistic” film is able to do. We don’t even ever have to watch a porno film to learn from the very basic idea of it whether it will turn us on or turn us off.

So don’t knock it till you’ve at least thought about trying it and then you can knock it all you want.

The Jane Austen book club

Jane Austen has been described as the mother of the rom-com, providing the template for a vast genre of movies and literature.

Whether you subscribe to this theory or not, it can’t be denied that the life and work of Austen have been mined endlessly for inspiration in the cinematic field.

The Jane Austen Book Club is another variation on this theme, based on the novel by Karen Fowler.

It focuses on the romantic entanglements of six people who, united by a love of Jane Austen and a need for escapism, form a book club solely devoted to the author.

The film opens with a quote from Pride and Prejudice, “Is not general incivility, the very essence of love”, paving the way for a narrative filled with the misunderstandings and heartbreaks that stand in the way of the characters finding happiness. When Sylvia is left by

Director: Kirsten Sheridan Cert: PG Running Time: 100 mins Words: Conor O’Kelly

August Rush

Take two star-crossed lovers whose orphaned child is searching for parents who don’t realise he is alive, throw in Robin Williams channelling Fagin out of Oliver Twist and stir it all up with a rousing and impassioned classical score. I give you August Rush – this film defines schmaltzy. It’s a shame we had to wait six years for Kirsten Sheridan’s first directorial outing since the hugely popular and stylish Disco Pigs, it’s a greater shame that she has chosen a hugely insipid and, frankly, ridiculous story.

To be fair, the plot rests on some sort of musical magical realism which, if we suspend our scepticism and accept, excuses the coincidence laden plot. Our young hero, August Rush (Freddie Highmore) is the orphaned child of two musical talents. Lyla Novacek (Keri

her husband of twenty years, Jocelyn, a woman who has lost interest in love, and Bernadette, a woman of experience who still believes in love, decide to form a book club as a distraction from her pain. Sporting a strong ensemble cast, the film becomes somewhat episodic when trying to keep track of all its characters, some of whom feel unexplored and underused. The most fully realised character is Prudie, whose extreme self control is still barely repressing a tumult of pain and rage. Her back-story is explored in more depth and she is played beautifully by British actress Emily Blunt.

The ending of the movie is a disappointment as after 105 minutes of dissecting the formula of Austen’s work and numerous references to the books’ disregard of life after marriage, the film falls back on a trite and saccharine conclusion, which wraps proceedings up much too neatly and with some cringe worthy moments. As a feel-good movie, The Jane Austen Book Club succeeds but ultimately it leaves the viewer feeling a little hollow.

Russell) is a classical cellist whose one night stand with rock musician Louis Connelly (Jonathan Rhys Meyers), is so powerful that their resulting offspring is destined to be a musical prodigy.

Now, I like a bit of magical realism as much as the next man, but this is such a literal and boring idea that it really doesn’t work. Where, for instance is the random beautiful chance and surprise in the idea of two musicians spawning a musician?

Will there be a sequel with two painters begetting a painter? This is not the worst of it: the autistic, expressionless and emotionless acting of Freddie Highmore is as dire as the equally histrionic and highly strung performances of Russell and Rhys Meyers. Robin Williams phones in a mixture of the previously mentioned Fagin mixed up with some pseudo philosophical ramblings not unfamiliar to anyone who saw him in The Fisher King. Kirsten Sheridan has already proven she can direct competently, hopefully her next film will be based on stronger material.

MUSICP8

t f o s e th bulletin Words: Carolyn Power

T

Hot Hot Heat performing live in Brighton. Photo: Daigo Olivia

ART P17

Turn up the heat STUDENT’S GUIDE TO BUYING ART.

aking the current band explosion into account, it’s difficult to find a group that can create a second successful album, never mind one that can forge a lasting career.

So for today’s musicians, the idea of creating songs that they’ll be singing decades from now is mainly redundant.

Of course, this could have its upsides.

Changes in language, cultural references, in-jokes and even the law can mess up the wonderfully pithy or innocently throwaway line; the rest of the time, you can simply get too old for your words to have their intended effect. In other words, you try to look like a creative musician type and you may end up looking a bit of a…well…prat.

“My Generation” is a savage number, but possibly not one to be cranking out at the karaoke bar for your 60th birthday bash (of course, this can also be a dangerous one to cover coming up to the big day, should you have any relatives or friends especially eager to help you with all that ‘hope I die before I get old’ jazz). And we all love a bit of a Monkee walk down Grafton Street after a sociable evening at the watering hole, but one can only keep singing “We’re the young generation” for so long before it exudes about as much youthful spirit as a Croydon facelift.

As for baiting the law with your throwaway lines, well: “She was just seventeen/you know what I mean?” Yes we do – and so do the California courts, my boy!

So what’s in store for our current radio gems? As the P.C. police plod on to the future, lines like “I got love for you/if you were born in the 80’s” will be stamped out as ageist, “Chelsea Dagger” will be a no-no for unfairly bigging up a football club and in the wake of increasing reports of our growing obese child population, “Gimme more” will have to be digitally amended to “Gimme as much or as little more as the health board advises to provide me with a balanced and nutritious diet and outlook on life”. Yeah, I’m lovin’ it.

Ho hum. All this overthought can be depressing – but don’t worry, global warming or WWIII will take are of us before it ever happens. So chin up, and go check out Fight Like Apes live if you need a bit of a lift, they’re hitting Whelan’s on November 16th. Good for what ails you, as they say.

Hot Hot Heat guitarist Luke Paquin contests the notion that his band have opted for a more commercial sound on new album Happiness Ltd. Words: Hugh McCafferty

O

n answering his mobile phone, Hot Hot Heat guitarist Luke Paquin was a little confused. He had been expecting the call an hour earlier and it seemed that I had interrupted the band just as they had begun a very rock ‘n roll visit to, er, Disneyland. Despite the rather rude interruption though, he was more than happy to take a few minutes out from hanging with Mickey and crew to have a chat.

First thing on the agenda was the current tour.

For Paquin, playing new songs this time around has been a release of sorts. “We wrote a lot of songs during the 2005 tour. So there was a long time when we were road-testing all of these new songs that I was more excited to play, but that nobody had heard. Now when we’re playing them, you get kids singing the words back at you, which is cool.”

New album Happiness Ltd. is the first record Paquin has recorded with the band as a full-time member. He joined back in April 2005 after the departure of Dante DeCaro (currently of Wolf Parade and Johnny and the Moon) and just as Hot Hot Heat were starting to make it big. An intimidating task? “At first, it was a bit daunting, yeah. I’m not by any means the greatest guitarist in

the world and they could’ve found plenty of people who are better than me. I’d been hanging out with the guys for a while before I joined, though, and they made it clear that I wasn’t just a hired gun. I appreciated that.”

Front-man Steve Bays has described the new record as “big” and “aggressive”; however “ho” and “hum” might be two better choices. It’s clear that the band have well and truly abandoned the spiky energy of earlier work in favour of Killers-esque stadium-fillers. Paquin doesn’t agree, however, with the notion that they’ve gone for a more accessible, mainstream sound.

“I don’t know about the word mainstream. I don’t think it was a conscious decision. We worked with people like Rob Cavallo [producer who has worked with My Chemical Romance and Greenday] but that doesn’t mean the record is going to sound like American Idiot.”

Unfazed, then, by critical reaction, the band have a tour of Europe ahead of them, including a date in The Village on 9 November, followed by further touring with the Killers and Snow Patrol in the new year. For now, though, there was an important meeting with Goofy, Pluto and pals to attend to.

P9MUSIC

Independent promoters in Dublin: A beginners’ guide Words: Rahul Bery

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ithout being presumptuous, I would hazard a guess that newcomer and seasoned Dubliner alike will be respectively shocked/sick and tired of certain aspects of the city’s music scene. Quality of bands aside, more often than not we are expected to pay vastly inordinate amounts of money to see the bands we love in the same old rubbish venues- pricey, ridiculously named, with battle-seasoned bouncers scrutinizing our every movement as we gather like cattle, weighing up the quality of the experience against the ticket price, thus ruining the experience. Of course, this is just the music industry per se, like all industry, only concerned with the product it peddles as a means to a (highly profitable) end. In Dublin, however, it seems especially bad, with certain promoters approaching monopolisation, both of venues and prices. But music is not a product, and luckily, wherever business attempts to destroy individualism with homogeny,

there is always opposition. For those who like their music without a latte, panini and a bankruptcy notice, there are many places to turn, courtesy of the kind people devoting time to creating alternatives to the dire Dublin mainstream. Here are just a few: Skinny Wolves (www.skinnywolves.com): Collective putting on regular, medium sized gigs in friendly environments with a wide selection of music, mostly from the more extreme end of the indie spectrum. Nearly all their gigs are in the Boom Boom Rooms, which is definitely a plus.

GZ (www.myspace.com/gzdublin): A lot more DIY than SW; though they work in a punk framework, they do everything from folk to grindcore, again, in friendly environments, usually the Lower Deck in Portobello, a wonderful place to see music.

Lazybird (lazybird.org): Even harder to define, so I resort than their myspace description: Alternative/Experimental/Other, with the emphasis on “Other”. They have recently moved their nights from

the International Bar to Anseo on Camden Street. I can’t say much more than “Just go to one of their nights. They are really good.”

Kaboogie (www.kaboogie.net): “Dublin’s finest in dubstep/ ragga/ jungle/ mashup/ breakcore business”.

Need I say more? Far-out electronic stuff, good for those who want to stay up past 12.

Special credit should go to Ballroom of Romance (www.ballroomofromance.com) about whom Carolyn has written an excellent article in this month’s Analogue and Leechrum, who seem to have disappeared for the time being, but should they resurface will be bound to put on some amazing stuff, possibly in a field!

And of course, there is you! Don’t put up with this crass monoculture, this pre-packaged music scene, undistinguishable from the cosmetic products that are closing in on it day by day! Make harsh experimental bands, put on situationist gigs in zoos and churches, in the Provost’s garden! The future is unwritten!

ALBUMREVIEWS InRainbows

For Emma, Forever Ago

Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace

Radiohead

Bon Iver

Foo Fighters

“some of the band’s most self-assured and contented lyrics with simple, direct songwriting”

“a sensuous army of overlaid falsettos pulling against sparse, barebone instrumentation”

“A return to form and proof that the raw-boned old veterans can still hold their own”

Radiohead’s self-produced and self-released seventh album, In Rainbows, is quite possibly the most unRadiohead album yet. Whereas many fans are used to angst-ridden lyrics of alienation or mistrust of authority and heavily layered mixture of sounds, In Rainbows projects some of the most self-assured and contented lyrics with simple, direct songwriting.

Some songs break this archetype like the psychedelic freak-out in “Bodysnatchers” or the electronica percussion in “15 Step”; however, most songs utilize repeating bass lines and melodies relying solely on standard rock instruments plus some string arrangements.

The lyrical theme of the album portrays the band tranquilly surrendering to Mother Nature. In “All I Need”, Thom Yorke proudly announces “I’m an animal…I’m all the days…I’m a moth…I’m just an insect”. No more doom and gloom for Rock’s most brooding band. Radiohead seem to have shed yet another artistic skin with In Rainbows, and the result is beautiful and refreshing.

Dan Brill

Bon Iver is misspelled French for “good winter.” The name is in part an allusion to the season when Justin Vernon (who makes up all of Bon Iver) withdrew to a cabin in the midwest United States. There alone, he recorded For Emma, Forever Ago. Inside there’s layers of fire-warmed vocals. Outside you can hear the snow forming drifts on the walls of his songs.

“Only love is all maroon”, he sings over spindly, steely guitar, “sky is womb and she’s the moon.”

It is an album of contrasts, to be sure—Vernon’s sensuous army of overlaid falsettos pulls against the sparse, barebone instrumentation while in the lyrics, the natural is yoked to the abstract. Slow-moving and pensive, these nine songs are the work of a man with time and space to himself to retreat, to regret, to miss.

Captivating in its quietude, Bon Iver’s good winter has made for a good fall too.

Everyone’s favourite melodic rock juggernauts are back with their most coherent album yet. After getting all angsty on 2002’s One By One and losing the run of themselves with the sprawling In Your Honour, Echoes... is like watching Rocky get back in shape and flooring the first young upstart he sees.

Everything that makes them great is here: magisterial, stomping rock that makes you feel like a Premiership footballer (“Erase/Replace”), floaty melodies that hang over chugging noise (“Come Alive”). They’ve finally grasped the melodies they were striving for on In Your Honour‘s quiet bits.

“Ballad of the Beaconsfield Miners” is a glimmering instrumental shuffle, while the autumnal, piano-led “Statues”– with its Mick Ronson-esque guitar flourishes – is as serene as Dave Grohl himself.

A return to form, then, and proof that the rawboned old veterans can still hold their own against those skinny nu-rave kids and side-fringed emo horrors.

Tim Smyth

Sam Maclaughlin

FASHIONP10

Ted Baker’s new premises at 42 Grafton Street Photo: Ciaran Durkin

Have you met me friend Ted? Words: Patrice Marian Murphy

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rafton Street’s shopping Mecca of high-end high street stores has been expanded with the addition of Ireland’s first Ted Baker store. Previously only available as one of many franchises in stores such as BT2, Brown Thomas and House of Fraser, Ted Baker has firmly stamped the storefront between La Senza and Topman as its own.

Whilst the brand produces an admittedly enviable collection of ridingboots and saddlebags in delicious buttery-leathers, the store’s array of horsey and riding memorabilia as decoration is, as far as I could see, inexplicable.

tn2says

Yes Words: Patrice Murphy

The rest of the store, however, is a debonair mix-up of classic wood and silver fittings with old embossed wallpaper revamped in this season’s blues and purples, glass shelves juxtaposed with floaty white net-curtain panels on the wall – making an effective contrast with the heavy patent belts and dark bulky knits (hats, gloves scarves – the accessories of the season!) on display.

The numerous displays of various coloured glass bottles seemed to say “don’t just shop here, enjoy your afternoon poking around – look at all the quaint and interesting things we have!”; although the display of jars and bowls of accessories amongst the caketrays full of black-forest gateaux,

strawberry pavolva and little tarts may not, as one could easily be led to think, be an invite to stay for afternoon tea.

You might wish you could stay for tea and a chat as some of the retail advisors are as delicious as the cakes!

The motif of old-fashioned opulence was carried onto the decadent changing rooms; good-bye to harsh lighting and pine-painted doors and welcome to rich velvet curtains, plush carpeting and a circular leather loveseat; the décor is the Ted Baker underwear range hung on the wall.

The men’s changing room was even more lavish and sensual than the women’s; draped in rich black velvets and brocades and highlighted only by the majestic chandelier in the centre –

very much like a gentlemen’s club with class.

Ted Baker as a clothing brand offers high-fashion alongside truly spectacular basics – not the usual boring white shirts and jeans – but the Audrey Hepburn-style classics that will easily flit from season to season and only get better with wear.

While you can get Ted Baker’s line from whatever franchise you frequent or even from the internet when you go home to the little village you loved before you came to Trinity, for a shopping experience which we are seldom offered in Ireland, go to the Grafton Street store.

Ted Baker, 42 Grafton Street, Dublin 2.

Tel: (01) 881 4111, www.tedbaker.co.uk

The leading story – Brown Thomas have covered up their windows in preparation for the Christmas-scene unveiling!!! We will bring you our verdict asap!

I can’t wait ‘til Christmas – presents, yes… but red-cheeked and tousledhaired men in cosy sweaters and scarves is what I really love to unwrap. N.B. Guys, you’re aiming for a warm snuggable boyfriend look here; patterns generally look like your granny knitted them – choose with caution.

The L.A. trend for twinning (see Paris Hilton and Britney Spears in matching

mini-dresses and one fishnet-clad leg each) is alive and well at Trinity – the girls in the Arts Building worked it; the blonde in a navy sailor-stripe jumper and green scarf, the brunette in red stripes with a blue scarf and both in jeans and trainers. Cool, casual, but with effortless student style.

Matching metallics; shoes and bags in silver, gold or bronze make an outfit of jeans and a t-shirt – and don’t bother splashing out; this is one trend Penney’s has mastered.

For true Trinity style; accessorise with a

grande Starbucks take-away and a tiny Brown Thomas bag. Smart but simple…

A quirky classic – berets are so in right now. Dress up jeans and a tee, or just add a little je ne sais quoi to everything else – just wear it with confidence; and don’t touch the navy with white pinstripe from the cart outside Brown Thomas – it’s mine.

How can some girls look too cute in shorts and jumpers or dresses and boots?!? I just don’t understand how they are still tanned and not completely freezing!

P11FASHION

Who is Lainey Keogh?

As Ireland’s leading knitwear designer turns fifty, Ciaran Durkin looks at the influence Lainey Keogh has had upon the fashion industry.

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here are not that many Irish designers around these days, so why is it that every time I mention Lainey Keogh, I am greeted with a blank stare? A pioneer such as she was, should be ranked alongside Philip Tracey for putting Ireland on the map, not to mention breaking the mould of the quaint tea-cosy using, Aran jumper wearing, thatched cottage dwelling, darning socks by the fireside image of Irish life and knitwear which had been the view of every tourist to the Emerald Isle in the 80’s and 90’s.

Lainey, who started off knitting for pleasure and creating her own clothes, quickly got noticed, so much so that the demand for her creations made her decide to change from working as a lab technician to fulltime designer. Since her stunning debut show in the late 90’s, thing really took off and from later collections devoted fans and famous friends such as Kate Moss, Kate Hudson, Elizabeth Taylor and Jennifer Aniston have worn her creations.

To the unexpected shopper who happened upon the first floor womenswear-international designers in Brown Thomas two weeks ago, they may have thought themselves face to face with a faun’s wet dream. Mannequins posed stylishly mid-aisle decked out in the finest of knits in cashmere and wool, crochet and embroidery. The colours were vivid and in stark contrast to the

tn2 says

No

Words: Patrice Murphy

Ugg boots?? Really? We’re still wearing those?? Well...I won’t attempt to dissuade the masses on this one; but please, get Uggs and not Fuggs – stay away from the lace up ones – and learn to walk in them. Girl on Dawson Street had walked through one side of her faux Uggs – she was going nowhere.

Please do not insult me with mentions of Crocs – fur-lined does not make a winter shoe.

Trinity College has long been overrun with tourists visiting… well, us…but can someone please tell them that NO-

predominantly black, grey and brown of the contemporary autumn-winter collections around them. On a glass dividing wall were the pages of long-lost fashion magazines whisking the viewer back to the late 90’s when the supermodels reigned and the attentive viewer may have seen such faces as Naomi Campbell or Helena Christensen wearing a slinky see-through mesh-like dress or a flowing gown in brushed cashmere and feather boa.

This was not Brown Thomas’ attempt at Hollowe’en decoration, no, it was a retrospective exhibition held to showcase the last two decades of Lainey Keogh’s career and to coincide with her 50th Birthday. As most people are aware, knitwear has made a huge impact in this season’s wardrobe and it seems more than appropriate that the knitone-pearl-two queen herself celebrates her 50th this year, as it is exactly 10 years since she first burst forth and changed the face of knitwear forever. Back in 1997, her first collection was launched in the autumn-winter London Fashion week, and it was said to be the “Jewel in the Crown” by Vogue’s Anna Harvey.

Lainey’s work has got her recognised by fashions elite, she is even the recipient of the Prix de Coeur by Christian Lacroix and her legacy has changed the face of the tired Aran sweater, which for generations had been the traditional face of Irish knitwear into a striking and sexy blend of cashmere, colour and couture.

ONE in Ireland wears Aran sweaters anymore? Even those strapping blondes in the ads are Danish.

Black nails? Too Lindsey Lohan two years ago – try nude, pale pink, or this season’s staple – navy blue. Even I can’t explain it, it just works!

Brown and navy together. Eugh. Some people can carry off brown and black – don’t attempt at home; and black and navy can look very cute if you get it right. But take my word on the brown and navy.

Hooker “chic” is running riot in Dublin

– and, yes, even Trinity College – and it’s not chic. S&M was on the catwalk, but somehow it’s not translating onto our sidewalk. But it is one of those horrific-carcrash-can’t-tear-my-eyes-away things – keep a lookout for it!

78% of all Dublin girls being the same mocha-colour. Eugh.

What I refer to as curtain or wallpaper prints. You know, so many flowers and colours all over one outfit – its like the 50s are back, and not in a sexy pencilskirt way. It’s been done for months already…

BOOKSP12 The new students’ cookbook

The student vegetarian cookbook

Real fast food

Author: Carolyn Humphries

Author: Beverly LeBlanc

Author: Nigel Slater

Price: €5.99

Price: €15.20

Price: €13.55

Publisher: Foulsham Books

Publisher: Virgin Books

Publisher: Penguin Books

Beans on toast, seven days a week – no more! The New Student’s Cookbook tells you the basics – what to stock your cupboard with, how to boil an egg, ways to cook various vegetables and so on. For the particularly inexperienced and nervous student cook, this is a lifeline. The recipes are pretty good too – simple to follow, with easily accessible ingredients that keep a budget in mind. Sometimes the recipes can even be too simple and once the student cook becomes more confident, they may be able to spice them up further.

The life of the student vegetarian can be tough and if they aren’t careful, they may end up subsisting on pasta, noodles and beans. However, this cookbook has come to the rescue! It’s chockfull of tips on how to lead a healthy and balanced lifestyle on a student budget, as well as oodles of recipes ranging from nibbles and substantial dinners to desserts, dips and cocktails. Even for meat-eaters, this cookbook provides tasty inspiration and it could well prove to be indispensable for any vegetarian battling their way through college culinary life.

Nigel Slater’s book is perhaps for the more confident student cook, but he does still guide the reader through essential basics, such as scrambled eggs. So enamoured is Nigel with scrambled eggs, in fact, that there is five pages dedicated to variations on them alone. Nigel’s writing is peppered with short anecdotes and lip-smacking descriptions that make it a good book to pick up anytime. Although it has little emphasis on budget, most of the recipes don’t call for expense and, as such, this is great for some extra inspiration in a student kitchen.

Delightfully understated Paul Earlie reviews Martin Amis’s Experience

T

he front cover of Martin Amis’ delightfully understated memoirs, Experience, displays the author in question at the tender age of ten. His face is tense, his back is arched, his boyish blonde hair is cut in a rough line across his forehead, a cigarette dangles scandalously from his lower lip. Later, Amis will demurely note: “In my house, back in South Wales, you could have a cigarette on Christmas day at the age of five”. But this isn’t Christmas and “Mart” certainly isn’t smoking. He is hamming it up deliciously for the camera, relishing in the satire of his father Kingsley, playing with a paternal stereotype which will be written and unwritten throughout the next 350 odd pages.

The celebrated author of more than twenty comic novels in his own right, Kingsley Amis hangs over Experience’s narrative like a gentle – if ambivalent – sun. Martin is never far from conjuring

up the ghost of his father in order to illustrate a point with one of Kingsley’s anecdotes or quips. “What’s under your fringe?” he asks of a gawky, teenage Marty, “A galaxy of acne, no doubt.”

Nowhere is the intimacy of the relationship between father and son more pronounced then in the letters Martin wrote his father while still an undergraduate at Oxford: “Fucking thanks for lunch, Dad,” he writes with sincerity, as if he has just discovered the various merits of that most useful of expletives. For all this wit and warmth, however, there is an equal measure of self-doubt and anxiety as Amis mulls over the sheer weight of the loss he feels: “The intercessionary figure, the father, the man who stands between the son and death, is no longer here; and it won’t ever be the same.”

Nevertheless, Experience is no elegy: it’s a great, rollicking gallop through the sixties, seventies, eighties and nineties with Martin Amis - quite

possibly the wittiest man alive - at the helm. And though Smarty Marty’s disdain for lax grammar and sloppy writing is well-established (“Can’t believe the United States proofs of The Info,” he writes in his journal, “A termitary of imported commas, each one like a papercut to my soul”), the author’s talent for self-deprecation and egodeflation is on display here for the first time.

Various Martins are offered up to the reader, all of them walking masses of vulnerability and insecurity: from the spotty, gangly haired youth to whom Oxford seems a “grandiose” fantasy (Amis famously graduated first class, somewhat uniquely among his literati contemporaries) and who worries frantically about the comparative size of his behind to his more somber, middleaged incarnation who grapples with fame and whose anxieties have shifted from his buttocks to a rather nasty dental abscess: “My teeth”, he grumbles

modestly, “made headlines.”

Amis’ powers of observation are arguably his greatest strength after his ability to infuse any situation – no matter how awkward or tragic – with a heightened sense of the comic. He is at his very best when both of these strengths are working together in total harmony. Here he is, for instance, on that distinctively masculine rite of passage, buying your first condom: “You will. of course, buy something else too, as a (ridiculous) diversionary tactic … like shampoo or vitamin C (but not E).”

It’s in this ability to turn the knife of comedy on himself that the greatest allure of the memoirs lies. The red-faced Amis who sprints from the chemist desperately clutching his packet of condoms is an embarrassing figure, but all the more human for it.

Experience shows us a side to its author never before seen, one in which he is firmly divest of his characteristic smarty pants.

P13BOOKS

The Grass Is Singing: Reviewing Doris Lessing This year, at the tender age of ninety, Doris Lessing became the oldest author to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Kevin Breathnach re-examines Lessing’s first tentative grappling with the novel form.

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here’s a reason Doris Lessing’s remarks about the Irish Republican Army were reported.

The novelist, who argued that the IRA’s terrorist campaign was worse than 9/11, has just been awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. What better time then to momentarily ignore her octogenarian ramblings (the indulgence of so many laureates: see Solzhenitsyn, Pinter and now Watson), and instead revisit her magisterial debut novel, The Grass is Singing, whose name - pinched out of Eliot’s “Waste Land” - follows in that most honourable, if esoteric, tradition of literary theft.

After Eliot, the next words to confront the reader come from a Rhodesian newspaper report. Taken from the highest to the lowest form, the whiplashed reader is told that Mary Turner, the wife of Dick, an unsuccessful farmer, has been murdered by a native houseboy, for reasons which are not made clear until Lessing’s very last pages. But the book is by no means a detective story. And so, be warned, I have no trouble telling its tale in full.

This is, instead, serious study into the moral collapse of a woman - which comes to represent the fall the white

rule in Africa - as well as an exploration into that seemingly eternal quartet of dividers - race, nationality, gender and class. A quartet too vast to detail or deal with in this small review by this smaller mind.

The opening chapter of this book reaches further into the future than any later chapter. We are introduced to Charlie, a young Englishman who has been in Rhodesia for only three weeks.

Working with Dick, he is shocked at the sinisterly casual racism of the white Rhodesian. “His ideas of right”, fostered in Britain, “were upset”. He is assured time and again, though, that once he gets to know the country a little more, he will “get used to our ideas about the native.”

And so he does.

White civilisation in Rhodesia is Orwellian in make-up. Boundaries are imposed on thought. Inside or outside them, nobody recognises their existence.

Charlie knows that the murder is nothing like the black and white, open and shut case it is widely portrayed to be. But the authorities aren’t lying when they portray it as such. They are simply incapable of contemplating the idea that the native could be anything but wholly responsible for the murder of Mary Turner. Clear mitigating factors aren’t

Nobel Prize winner Doris Lessing. Photo courtesy of HarperCollins

swept aside; somehow, they just aren’t seen. Charlie knows that the murdered had been sleeping with the murderer.

He sees the mitigating factors, but when his moral fibre is tested, he sits down as if he were already in the office he soon leaves the farm to work in, where, shall we say, he gets to know the country a little more. Charlie is our paradigm. His is the departure of conscience.

While not quite a fully-fledged roman à clef, The Grass is Singing is, to some degree, autobiographical. Doris Lessing grew up in Southern Rhodesia and there can be no doubt that this novel’s characters and these characters’ mindsets first found life not in Lessing’s words, but in Lessing’s compatriots and classmates. It’s clear she has known these people, for she still knows not just what they think, but how they think. Her narrative very sardonically and very accurately conveys the racist outlook of her characters.

When Dick falls ill, for instance, Mary keeps watch over the natives on the farm. What she sees is written as if anthropological reportage: “Thin native mongrels, their bones ridging through their hides, bared their teeth and cringed. Native women, draped in dirty store stuff, and some naked above their

waist with their slack black breasts hanging down, gazed at her from doorways with astonishment at her queer appearance, commenting on her among themselves, laughing, and making crude remarks.”

The sense of the other is made uncomfortably real. Looking at the natives’ houses, Mary imagines their construction: “it was as if a giant black hand had reached down from the sky, picked up a handful of sticks and grass, and dropped them magically on the earth in the form of huts”. Hands have no tears to flow. The natives do not even share the same white God as Europeans.

Theirs has a giant black hand to suit his giant black body.

Not long passes before Mary is pointing her watch at the natives.

Humanity may worship different Gods, but it is governed by only one colourless Time. In 1950, when Lessing’s grass first sang, time was running out on the empire. This song artfully recounts and relates the inevitable disintegration of the white psyche that preceded its fall.

For that alone, we should forgive Miss Lessing her octogenarianisms, just as we last forgave Messrs Pinter and Solzhenitsyn theirs, just as we should next forgive Dr Watson his.

THEATREP14 Beowulf presented by the Telling Theatre from Denmark.

A few weeks ago, students and lecturers gathered in The Samuel Beckett Theatre to hear a performance of Beowulf given by the Danish company The Telling Theatre. It was an exciting opportunity to experience a recital of the great Anglo-Saxon poem as it would have originally been received. However, purists may have been disappointed. Though the performance was essentially a recitation, as the Anglo-Saxons would have declaimed in the mead halls, the text was not the Old English poem; rather it was a version of the Beowulf story inspired by the poem. In fact the text for this production had originally been conceived and written in Danish, was designed to tell children of Beowulf’s story of adventure and glorious combat in Sweden. Thence Jesper La Cour Anderson and his accompanist Troels Kirk Ejsing were invited to tour Ireland and so recreated their story in the English language.

Jesper la Cour Anderson possessed the warrior-like energy needed for the demands of performing his version of Beowulf in translation, originally designed for the eyes and ears of children, but on this occasion, playing solely to adults.

The strong dynamic which ran between Anderson and his musical collaborator and fellow actor was captivating, as was the imaginative detail with which these two inventive performers had woven the piece together. Troles Kirk Ejsing’s musical accompaniment was dominated by the use of a watering can which he sang through like a trumpet, beat like a drum and wielded as a sword when he stepped into the action of the story. The merry response from the contingent of Old English scholars in the front row was testament to the fact that this was a rendition of Beowulf in its own right and not to be sniffed at simply because it was inspired by, rather than performed from, the great Old English poem. Perhaps one of the most spirited performances that evening came from Dr. Helen Conrad O’Brien who took full advantage of the interactive promenade performance and delivered an improvised cameo.

Polly Graham

Three women who face up to the realities of being diagnosed with breast cancer. Photo courtesy of Kate Bowe PR

Pretty pink ribbon Unravelling the ribbon probes the fears that the discovery of breast cancer creates. Words:Frances Beatty

C

o-written by Mary Kelly and Maureen White, Unravelling the Ribbon makes its world premiere at the Project Theatre.

Presented in association with Action Breast Cancer and sponsored by Avon Breast Cancer Crusade, Unravelling the Ribbon tells the story of how the lives of three women are affected and brought together by their experience of breast cancer. Rose is the mild-mannered 34 year old who is diagnosed with breast cancer during the course of the play.

Lyndsey is her self-absorbed, breastfixated 11 year old daughter who spends her time willing the onset of puberty so that she can wear a bra. Lola is a fifty year old “earth-mother” type who had a double mastectomy five years ago.

The most striking aspect of the play is how sympathetically the characters are treated. This is made possible by the script being constructed around a series of intersecting monologues which allow individual fears and anxieties to be explored without the interruption of dialogue. The irony of Lyndsey’s worries centring on trivial concerns about whether or not she and her friends have

passed “the breast test” aren’t belittled or exploited to make “profound” statements about the superficiality of society. The play does not excuse Rose for not giving her daughter the attention and affection she deserves, despite the sensitivity with which her diagnosis and disintegrating marriage are handled.

In a play focusing on the lives of women through the predominantly female issue of breast cancer, one of the major traps for the script is descent into a post-feminist rant about men being unable to understand or respond to women’s emotional needs. The men that people the monologues don’t disappoint, but the gender divide is portrayed as resulting from a lack of understanding on both sides rather than from the fact that all men are bastards indulging in extra-marital affairs.

Despite a wonderfully humorous and touching script, there was a problem with its construction. The emotional climax to the play appeared to come at the end of the second act, leaving the final act somewhat superfluous. Having the space of a third act and an epilogue to “re-ravel” the ribbon led to an ending that felt a little too neat. The conclusion

itself was rather saccharine, but perhaps it should be commended for its positive attitude. It seems all too often that plays tackling serious issues feel they have to end unhappily. With such a visual, sensuous script and such compelling performances (most notably from Georgina Miller, who plays 11 year old Lyndsey with incredible insight), the set made very little impact, yet it complimented the situations of the characters perfectly – from Rose’s farmhouse kitchen, to Lyndsey’s pink bedroom, to Lola’s boxed-up Dublin townhouse. Rose’s transition from diagnosis to treatment was shown solely by use of a headscarf, yet the transformation it provided to her physical appearance was immensely powerful.

Unravelling the Ribbon is a coproduction by Gúna Nua Theatre and Plan B Productions. The mission statement of Gúna Nua promises to produce work which “reflects the concerns and issues of the time”. With 25 000 women in Ireland suffering from breast cancer, the impact of Unravelling the Ribbon comes as much from the audience as the play itself.

P15THEATRE

Freely, from the soul Polly Graham examines The Seagull, brought to the Dublin Theatre Festival by the Hungarian company, Krétakor Theatre.

K

rétakor Theatre’s production of The Seagull was one of the Dublin Theatre Festival’s triumphs. Directed by the company’s founder and driving creative force, Árpád Schilling, this Hungarian version of Chekhov’s The Seagull was an example of truly original performance.

In Hungarian “Krétakor“ means “chalk circle”; in working under this name, Schilling is quick to stress, he is not explicitly linking his work to Brecht, but rather describing the ethos of their theatrical practice: “A simple circle drawn on the ground with chalk. It represents a small enclosed area designated in space, which we can point at, saying, ‘Look here, something is happening within this circle. We have condensed a piece of our existence here’.

Over time, the chalk will be carried away on people’s shoes and washed away by the rain, so we will draw another circle somewhere else and thenceforth that will be our designated space, our theatre.” Krétakor‘s power lies in this

understanding of theatre as an ephemeral artistic experience which speaks to us of the enduring realities of existence, of life, death and rebirth on this earth. Indeed chalk is a symbol redolent of this elemental cycle.

The company’s unique rendition of Chekhov’s much-produced early masterpiece was underpinned by this dynamic approach.

Schilling’s production bore no set, no costumes, no lighting design and very few props. He boldly dismissed all theatrical artifice, choosing instead to focus on the text and the energy of his ensemble, creating a level of vitality rarely experienced at the theatre. As well as deconstructing traditional systems of artifice on stage, Schilling’s production strove against the idea of “the invisible wall”, the divide between audience and actor. The play began with the house lights still up and the actors revealing themselves from within the audience.

Masha’s announcement to her suitor Medvedenko that “the play will soon begin”, looking from the stalls to the empty stage, was a moment emblematic

of the message Schilling was proclaiming through meta-theatre: there is no point where the truth on the stage stops and real life begins. All our existences are played out in drama.

Of course Schilling’s emphasis on Chekhov’s meta-theatrical tropes was not original in itself, but what was original about Krétakor was the confidence with which the ensemble appropriated Chekhov’s story and made it convincingly their own. Their acting was so strikingly unpretentious and realistic that the very notion of performing a role seemed radicalized these people were not portraying characters, they were living them! As Konstantin, the young aspiring writer, learns to understand over the three years which the play spans: “...it is not a question of new and old forms...what matters is that a man should write without thinking about forms at all, write because it springs freely from his soul”. Replace the word “write” with “act” and the connection between Krétakor‘s method and Chekhov’s text is compounded. Schilling’s actors

Players: Playing the audience Dublin University Players have ventured boldly out of their wooden haven of creativity on campus and have begun a new scheme entitled Playing The Audience. By organising discounted trips to the theatre fortnightly throughout term-time, Players hopes first and foremost to give many of their members the opportunity to get a taste of what’s happening in the Dublin theatre-world (on a student budget) and to provoke discussion and creativity.

The first of these trips was to the Project Arts Centre for Circus, a Barabbas production, one of Ireland’s bestknown theatre companies. The show itself was a public dress rehearsal and there were sure signs of the three performers finding their feet and acrobatic tools, but it was a promising piece which combined circus skills with a loosely structured plot. Two male performers represent the little-known act Gubu and Harle, who appear to be struggling through the first five minutes requesting applause for simple juggling tricks and random costumed sequences. The audience is finally relieved of this opening embarrassment when the lovely Tina Segner from Tumble Circus finds herself in the circus ring. Her performance was the joy and saving of the show: with a sweet naivety she delicately “learned” the skills needed from her new-

found companions who tricked her into being part of their routines.

Dedicated, perhaps, a little more to the skill of the circus performers and clowns than the progression of meaning or plot, the group could have benefited from more expression from the two male performers which may have made the tragic ending more emotive. But where the piece was thin on facial expression, the live sound and effective lighting made up for it, and the Project was magically transformed into a circus ring which was absorbingly close especially when knives were being thrown and whips cracked.

As a representative reviewer for the near-thirty members who came to the show, I can say that Playing the Audience at Circus was an entertaining and satisfactory experience and the first of many new ventures this year for Players in their 75th anniversary year.

If you’re a member of DU Players (or would like to be one) send an email to robinstj@tcd.ie to be put on the mailing list for up and coming trips or join our Facebook group ‘Players is Playing The Audience’.

possessed and generated a raw energy which would have been refreshing to experience in any context, but which is always particularly crucial when playing a classic.

The charms, absurdities and fragilities of Chekhov’s people were made new and made poignantly credible by the Krétakor ensemble’s instinctive and subtle acting. In casting aside all pomp and charging to the heart of the play, Krétakor’s performance achieved a feeling of regenerative ceremony and true theatrical magic – the need for which Brook announced when he wrote The Empty Space, and the provision of which signals Schilling as a great practitioner of our times: “Once theatre could begin as magic: magic at the sacred festival…today…we cannot assume that the audience will assemble devoutly…it is up to us to…compel its belief. To do so we must prove that there will be no trickery, nothing hidden. We must open our empty hands and show that there really is nothing up our sleeves. Only then can we begin.”

ARTP16

At the Padishah's Orders, by Franciszek Zmurko, 1888. © National Museum in Warsaw. Photo: Piotr Ligier

What lies beneath: symbolism and Polish painting Words: Katarzyna Murphy

I

feel compelled to tell you that this writer is half-Polish if, indeed, the name didn’t give it away! In the past few years, I’ve slowly but surely resigned myself to “lack of original name” status, the amount of Kasia’s I meet is just wonderful. But artistically speaking, it is, in fact, exactly that, wonderful. Art is a voice, a means of expression, a way to communicate with no words, regardless of language. The artists of these select works voice a time now past, though inextricably linked to the present and the imminent future. Though now long gone from this world, they remain the most profound ambassadors of Polish culture.

Though the names of Jan Matejko, Wojciech Weiss and Witold Wojtkiewicz are household names in Poland, they are an exotic encounter to us Irish. With the influx of Poles streaming into Ireland year after year, it’s only right and actually, exciting, to glimpse a world completely alien to many of us. Parallels and disparities in the depiction of a culture, in the portrayal and evocation of a political climate and right down to mere artistic styles, are begging to be picked out and explored. The histories of

Poland and Ireland walk seamlessly hand in hand, years of occupation and then constant struggle to assert nationalist bonds and retain an element of self through political turmoil and times of swift change. This exhibition, spanning the period 1880-1939, encourages a reflection on the changes and transformations undergone by the Polish nation and the ever-evolving entity that is painting as a mode of visual communication. The overwhelming success of this exhibit lies in its ability to depict that synthesis of culture and interpretation to the new visitor.

The language of symbolism is the key to this exhibit. Polish art has always illustrated a concoction of native and, therefore, familiar motifs typical and almost innate to the Polish community, so it is almost ironic that the rise of “symbolism” as an essentially “modern” concept in the mid-nineteenth century was considered an awe-inspiring development in the history of art.

Nonetheless, the character of the majority of these pieces is essentially Polish, while the style is of the age that is identified with it.

Stanczyk by Jan Matejko (1862) is number one in the exhibit, a very

unsurprising occurrence, I assure you.

This utterly glossy, flawlessly oil painted canvas depicts one of the last of the Jagiellon dynasty court jesters slouched despondently in a chair still in full ridicule costume, though completely out of character. To our right on the canvas, we are given a sneak into the flurry of activity behind the room in which Stanczyk sits – a royal ball in all its finest.

Though we look naively at the work thinking, “oh, that jester looks quite glum” we need to consider that to the Polish mind, Stanczyk was no mere court jester, but was considered one of the most major political philosophers in Polish history. His stature in the work is explained by a document discarded on the table that informs us the viewer that Poland has just lost the province of Smolensk, hence his evident sorrow.

Symbolically speaking, the abundance of lush drapery strewn around the room, effectively framing and closing in the scene, convey to the viewer a disparity between the royalty’s material wealth and abundance, while Poland as a motherland has just been physically

ART

EVENTS

EYEWITNESS: photographic exhibition

by Colman Doyle, 19 July - 5 November at National Photographic Archive SOUTH SIDE GOTHIC: sketches of inner city Dublin by Gary Coyle, 26 October 2007 - 24 November 2007, Kevin Kavanagh Gallery THE HUMAN CONNECTION: paintings and sculpture by Claire O’Farrell and Patrick Walsh, The Bad Art Gallery, Francis Street, 8 November - 6 December.

stripped of her most eastern stronghold.

The mournful, concentrated and intense downward stare of Stanczyk is captivating. It stays with you, as he does not interact with you, the viewer, himself; he is alone with his thoughts, but allows us to know what they are by the use of symbols and then our engagement in the scene follows. The unhampered imagination and innovative pictorial construction utilised

by Matejko and other artists opens our eyes to a world where free speech was often prohibited and where familiar signs and symbols became the allimportant language to connect the suppressed.

There is certain poetry and comforting sense of unity in the whole exhibition.

Scratch the surface and you’ll find so much more; in a symbolic sense, of course, please don’t literally, as there are alarms and laws.

Painting from Poland Symbolism to Modern Art (1880-1939) National Gallery of Ireland.

17 October - 27 January 2008.

THREE: collection of modern works by Maria Simonds-Gooding, Charles Brady and Callum Innes. Irish Museum of Modern Art, Kilmainham. 10 October 2007 - 17 March 2008 BORO: collection of rural Janpanese prints at the Douglas Hyde Gallery, Trinity College. 19 October-1 December JOURNEY INTO THE SURREAL: painting

by James O’Dowd, The Mill Theatre Gallery, Dundrum. 10 November-12 December

P17ART

A creative investment With art becoming more and more of a lucrative investment opportunity, many students are getting in on the act.

Caroline O’Leary suggests ways you can get involved without breaking the bank.

T

he Irish art market has never been more lucrative or profitable, with images of the penniless bohemian now being replaced by artists such as Louis le Brocquy earning millions for single pieces. Dublin is especially thriving, with more than forty successful art galleries dotted around the city selling paintings, sculptures and other works of hundreds of artists. Art has become a popular investment option for those who want an alternative to the stock market or property. As well as the benefits of owning and displaying beautiful pieces, art is also becoming more and more of a sound investment, with some artists’ works increasing in value by as much as 25% a year. Now, many students are starting to get in on the act.

Art does not usually seem an obvious investment for students. As well as the perceived expense, many students believe they lack the knowledge and understanding of art that would enable them to invest in an artist whose value will increase over time. However, a small investment now could possibly yield a return in as little as a few years. There are a huge number of opportunities available to young first-time buyers that won’t cost a month’s rent. Art students straight out of college or still establishing their name can be very affordable and end of year sales, such as those held by the National College of Art and Design, are an excellent place to pick up art by students just embarking on their careers. Auction houses, such as Adams on Stephen’s Green, regularly include student pieces in their sales, often for as little as €50.

Similarly, some galleries are so confident in the work of their new artists that they will guarantee that the work will appreciate in value. An excellent example of this is the Apollo Gallery,

only a stone’s throw away from Trinity on Dawson Street, which is guaranteeing to buy back any work by artist Tom Byrne in a year’s time at 25% profit.

Though not all work is guaranteed to appreciate to this extent, most is very likely to appreciate in some way.

Other options are available for those who are simply unable to afford to pay a few hundred euros at a time, with galleries such as the Bad Art Gallery offering payment plans that allow a customer a year to pay for a painting, which remains in the gallery’s possession until the last payment. This allows you to secure a piece without the need to pay the whole price upfront, along with the possibility of the piece already increasing in value by the end of the period.

But if you are interested in investing in art, what should you invest in? Many people are wary of investing if they have little knowledge of the art world, but buying art is not nearly as complicated as people believe. Victoria Browne of Adams’ auction house suggests you just keep it simple, “Buy what attracts you, as this is usually a good indication. If you are buying from a reputable seller or from an artist who has been professionally trained or acclaimed, your chances of buying something that wont appreciate are slim”. Denise Donnelly of the Bad Art Gallery on Francis Street agrees that you can’t go too far wrong shopping to personal tastes, “Many people come into the Gallery are only interested in the oldest artists whose work will appreciate quickly when they die. Personally I prefer to follow younger artists who are still developing and whose work will gradually appreciate as they progress”.

Denise’s sister Deborah is one of these success stories, she began selling her paintings eight years ago for €200 and today sells for an average of €4000 or

Above and right: A selection of pieces on display at the Art Ireland Sale at the RDS arena. The event runs for three days from 16-18 November.

Photos: Caroline O’Leary

more. She also suggests investing in artists who will continue to work and sell, a good indication of this being if they show in more than one gallery or in other galleries around the country. “If they are prolific and work consistently, there is a good chance they will become established, especially if they have been well trained or involved with established groups such as the Royal Hibernian Academy.”

Though most people will never be professional art collectors or dealers, buying a few pieces of art is an easy and

relatively secure investment that anyone can participate in. Events such as this month’s Art Ireland sale in the RDS are great opportunities to browse through hundreds of artists work and find out what you like and where your interests lie. For some it may become a passion.

For everyone else it can simply be an opportunity to broaden your horizons and maybe meet the next Louis le Brocquy.

RDS arena 16- 18 November.

Friday 12pm - 9pm, Weekend 11am - 7pm.

EDIBLESP18

Be a man: drink beer Beer, the drink of men...

TN2 brings you the definitive guide to the lagers on offer in our fair city.

Words: Richard Armstrong

S

ome say that the greatest thing man ever did was to step on the moon, or to break the sound barrier or even to create a way of making sliced bread. I beg to differ. Beer is, without doubt, the single greatest thing that humanity has ever come up with. The cool refreshment, the distinct flavour, the fact that if you drink too much you throw up... (hmm, maybe not) .

There is no doubt that as a student, beer is your friend.

You may probably consider yourself experienced with beer, but, as a humble connoisseur myself, let me bring you to the next step in your beer education. You probably drink Budweiser, Heineken, and maybe a Guinness or two while watching the rugby, but I believe there is so much more to experience....

Take the lager which, if you’re reading this in the Pavilion Bar, you’re probably drinking... the mighty Bavaria (despite the fact that it’s brewed in Holland.)

Out of the dirt cheap beers out there (that is, the one euro a can variety available in your local off-license) Bavaria is the best, however, that doesn’t really say an awful lot – the others include Tuborg, which isn’t bad, but, to be honest, isn’t great. Dutch Gold is also available, as is Amsterdam; however, in my humble opinion, these beverages should just be avoided entirely. If you’re drinking a few cheap cans before going out, the best advice I can offer you is to stick to the Pav-favoured Bavaria. However, be aware of the recent development in the drinking-before-going-out camp - the new “mini kegs” produced by Heineken. A great thing to rock up to a party with (the keg party not just for those on J1s...) you can get a great pint out of them, but only with the right technique. If you just pour, you’ll end up with a massive head and you’ll be a

laughing stock among your fellow men. Keep the keg in the freezer for a while and when you pour, hold your glass at an extreme angle to avoid embarrassment. The result is a mighty pint.

For many of us, drinking beer when you’re out in a club can be an awkward experience. You buy the drink on offer, because everything else is far too expensive. They hand you a pint of Fosters in a plastic cup and you turn around to go back to your mates and it spills everywhere. The answer to this terrible problem is simple: go for bottles of beer. You might think that you get less for your money, but in a crowded club, you are less likely to spill your drink, and also it’ll taste a lot better than most of the draft beers, which can be terrible. A beer to avoid when out for a long night is Guinness. There’s no mistaking, in terms of drinks it is an absolutely great option, but it needs to be poured right in order for it to taste the way it should. In a club this isn’t going to happen. Disappointing. Also, there won’t be enough time to let it settle, because if you’ve bought a pint you want to make sure none of it ends up on the floor. Best to try something else. At present, the King of the “trendy” bottled beer is Corona, complete with lime. Offers are often available, which is a plus for those on a budget.

Onto the pub... If you’re buying a draft beer, be wary that sometimes (about one in every thirty or so pints) you get a dud pint of flat beer because the keg is about to run out. Budweiser seems to be the chief culprit in this area. However, Budweiser apparently isn’t even a real beer anyway. What? Well, according to the German beer purity laws – and despite being the official beer of the 2006 World Cup - Bud isn’t allowed to be sold or marketed in Germany as a beer because

of additives within it and the fact that it’s made of rice, which apparently is like putting carrots in wine.

Perhaps one to be avoided... Another beer which falls into this category of the sometimes terrible is Stella Artois. Stella can be worth the risk – it is an amazing pint when it tastes right and out of a bottle it’s great.

Give it a go, but don’t be too disappointed if it isn’t up to scratch. Though a beer purist may say draft beer tastes the best, followed by bottles, followed by cans; to be honest, there’s very little difference between bottles and draft, so it generally goes down to your personal preference.

Moving away from world brand-named beers, there’s an awful lot out there to experience (a trip to the Porterhouse on Nassau Street will show you that!)

A bottle of The Dog’s Bollocks English Ale can be a real treat or a good pint of Kilkenny in a pub can be to die for.

However, the top beer out there that needs to be drunk by you now (in my own humble opinion) is Sam Adams Boston Lager. Despite its name, it’s more of an ale than a lager, the only difference being that you drink it out of the fridge. It’s far more common across the pond, and with good reason. It has an amazing taste, and can be found in the “weird beer” fridge of a well-stocked off-license (usually there in most O’Briens). Another beer worth a try is Peroni, an Italian lager which is great for a few with your mates when you want to try something different.

So, beer drinker, don’t just stick to the name brands and don’t be shy in trying a new beer, you might come out of it with a new favourite drink. There are hundreds of beers out there and there’s one with your name on it. Have fun trying to find it.

P19EDIBLES

Wagamama In a prime location off Grafton Street, Wagamama is a culinary hot spot.

Based on the idea of “positive eating and positive living” it offers delicious Asian-style food combined with an interesting dining experience. With a Wagamama connoisseur as my dining partner, I visited the restaurant during the dinner-rush on a weeknight. It has great atmosphere, with hustle, bustle and chitchat greeting us as we waited for our seats. The tables are set out cafeteria style, so though the restaurant is not for those who relish privacy, it makes the whole experience prime for people-watching and if you find yourself bored of your partner’s conversation, excellent for eavesdropping! I was guided through the confusing menu by top-class waiting staff and noted the many dishes based on various noodles ramen, chilli men, kare, teppan....

Slightly scared, I opted for a safe option, and one of Wagamama’s bestsellers – the “Chicken Katsu Curry”, a chicken fillet deep-fried in breadcrumbs, served with a light curry sauce and Japanese-style rice garnished with a combination of mixed leaves and red pickles for €12.25. My dining partner chose another of Wagamama’s signature dishes, the “Yaki Soba”, which consisted of teppan-fried soba noodles with egg, chicken, shrimps, onions, peppers, beansprouts and spring onions, garnished with mixed sesame seeds, fried shallots and pickled ginger,

Photo: Jessica Pakenham Money

costing €10.45. We also opted for a duck gyoza side dish to share. The food was delicious. The “Chicken Katsu Curry”, however, was much less adventurous than many of the other dishes on offer, which led to tinges of jealousy as I saw various concoctions being delivered to my fellow diners.

Also, the food is served as it is prepared, which led to our meals being served five minutes apart. The portions were huge with my dining partner unable to finish her meal – showing the value for money! We accompanied our food with a glass of plum wine (costing €4.50), a Japanese specialty.

Strong, and aromatic, it was an excellent way to immerse ourselves in the Asian experience, but one glass was definitely enough! We finished by sharing the white chocolate and ginger cheesecake with extra ice-cream (€6.50) which was delicious, washed down with complimentary green tea.

Wagamama is certainly an interesting place to try – the food is delicious, the people watching is ample, and the whole meal came to a reasonable 20 euros each, for a full dinner that left us stuffed. Takeaway option is available and for those who are adventurous, cookery books are also on sale, so you can attempt to recreate the experience at home!

Reviewed by Beth Armstrong South King Street, Dublin 2.

Tel: 478 2152 www.wagamama.com

Mrs Fixit Happy Families I think Dear Mrs Fixit, I have a problem. up. king brea that my parents might be er. My oth h eac They’re always shouting at r do eve t can’ er mother thinks that my fath my ks thin anything right. My father of them mother is out to get him. Neither What . less help likes the in-laws. I feel so rge.

Geo , edly should I do? Yours distress the probDear George. I honestly don’t see yours and py, lem. Nobody’s family is hap ody ryb Eve sounds perfectly normal. ld put shouts at their spouse- who else wou ed unit are ents up with it? At least your par ’s tner par r thei in one thing- they each hate both ite Inv ? this family. Why not work on istsets of grandparents over for the Chr ch wat and k mas holidays, then sit bac your parents erupt. Perhaps their com er clos even mon hatred will make them than before, and you may get a new brother or sister….

Forbidden Love Dear Mrs Fixit, I love someone muc h much older than me. I’m an attract ive 19 year old girl. He’s …well…he’s my fr iend’s father. I think we have something ve ry special. I love his gruff ways- the wa y he asks me if I’m ‘goi ng to go out like th at’.

The way he says ‘w hen I was your ag eI wouldn’t have talk ed to an adult like that’.

I know, in writing, it doesn’t seem ve ry exciting, and may ev en come off as gr umpy, but I know that de ep down inside, he feels the same as I do.

I don’t think I can contain myself any lo nger. I’ve got to te ll him how I feel. Yours, Emily.

Dear Emily, Are you sure it’s no t your friend’s gran dfather that you’re in love with? The man sounds like Oscar the Grouch with P. M.S! Seriously, what do you see in him? A nd what proof do yo u have that he feel s, as you put it, ‘the sa me about you’? E m ily, you’re deluding yo urself. He thinks yo u’re an ignorant, badl y brought-up child . Snap out of it.

s Beauty Matter e something y ‘selective’. Is ther sa Dear Mrs Fixit, to er ef pr I t are seldom e shallow, bu people? Ugly ones e iv My friends call m ct tra at to lk wanting to ta wrong with only Hilda. interesting. Yours, p up the good Dear Hilda, me standards. Kee so ve ha to s ha Of course not. One

work.

xkcd.com

no.333

Have you got problems of your own that need fixing?

Email Mrs Fixit at mrs.fixit@trinitynews.ie

“Kelly Jones asks me whether I iron my bedsheets.” Talking to the Stereophonics. INTERVIEW P3

ENDNOTESP20

H T Provost-Stalking: Seen jaywalking across college green.

Seen coming out of the Health Centre. Where will he be spotted next?

The J.C.R.: Friendly, charming and cheap. Making the trek to Goldsmith Hall worthwhile.

Brendan McWilliams: Sadly deceased, but not forgotten.

Will meteorology ever be as readable again?

New Kylie, New Girls Aloud: Finally, pop has started to put in some effort once more

The Threat of the Junior Dean: Commit any minor offence (Sparklers are a ‘firework’ apparently…) and her name’ll be mentioned in a flash.

Food Poisoning: Stay away from the day-old crayfish salad in Café Sol… Cotton Wellingtons: Don’t tuck your jeans into them.

Don’t wear them with skirts. Don’t wear them full stop.

N T