ed24: Memory

Editor Will Ellis Cover Design Danica Jacobsson Writers Emma Dunmore Jenny Hayward Oliver Giles Rhian Morgan Robbie MacNiven Susan Lechelt Copy Editing Oliver Giles Illustrations Danica Jacobsson Susan Lechelt Photography Jenny Hayward Will Ellis Thank you, thank you Cat McGloin for cookies.

Vicki Madden for an interview.

This magazine is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.

To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by-nc-sa/3.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 444 Castro Street, Suite 900, Mountain View,California, 94041, USA. For supporting documentation, sources, and additional content, please visit http://retrospectjournal.co.uk/ed24/ issue-one

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Front Matter

Contents

Editor’s Welcome Will Ellis

The Team

One Point Oh Jenny Hayward

First Memories

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Big Apple Robbie MacNiven

One WTC

Music & Parkinsons Oliver Giles

First CDs

On the Road

On the Road Rhian Morgan

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Language Loss Danica Jacobsson

Language Loss Rhian Morgan

Cesare Pavese

The Great Trap Robbie MacNiven

Custard Creams

Custard Creams

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Who Was that Guy? Emma Dunmore

My Version of Events Jenny Hayward

One Point One A Rhian Morgan

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Danica by Susan Susan Lechelt

Susan by Danica Danica Jacobsson

Ancients & Posterity Rhian Morgan

Memory Tray

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Poetry Corner

About Retrospect

Follow the Team

W.W.W.W...?

Time Capsules Memory Translated Rhian Morgan & Danica Jacobsson Danica Jacobsson

One Point One B One Point One C&D Will Ellis Danica Jacobsson & Oliver Giles

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My Version of Events Jenny Hayward

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Cultural Revolution Cultural Revolution Jenny Hayward & Jenny Hayward & Vicki Madden Vicki Madden

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Editor’s Welcome Generally the feedback I have had when talking about the idea of creating, writing and editing a magazine in twenty-four hours has been positive(ish). Most people seem intruiged by the idea, but skeptical that it could be realistically achieved. It’s 0905 and we have just broken into the twenty-second hour of our marathon sprint. Our team of eight intrepid creators have performed beyond my expectations. I had expected to finish something and to enjoy the process, but I wasn’t expecting to be so proud of our first ever twentyfour-hour magazine.

Fuelled by fantastic cookies, fish fingers, red wine and custard creams our little bunch have managed to riff on the theme of ‘memory’ for almost twenty-four hour. The pages that follow contain articles concerning the effect of age on memory and language, the potentially restorative effects of music, a piece on remembering the Cultural Revolution in China, articles concerning our memories of momentous events of our lifetimes and experiments concerning memory, stories and faces. I hope that you enjoy reading them as much as I have over the past twenty three hours.

Finally, thank you to everyone involved in making this project a success: Rhian for constancy and supreme knowledge of Ancient attitudes to bums.

Oliver for taking the time to come back early on a Tuesday morning through the rain to check copy.

Jenny for conducting a fantastic interview and writing a novel short story.

Robbie for producing two exquisite pieces in such a brief stay.

Danica for handling any task I threw at you with consummate ease.

Susan for stepping in at the last minute and providing an excuse for our lack of detailed recall.

Emma for bringing a second wind and the wonderful concept of Party Party Party Creams to the world.

Now please read on and enjoy the first ever edition of ed24.

Will

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Will Ellis

Rhian Morgan

Oliver Giles

Jenny Hayward

Emma Dunmore Danica Jacobsson

The ed24 Team

Robbie MacNiven Susan Lechelt

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One Point Oh

Jenny Hayward

Once upon a time there was a man who had a terrible fear of wolves. He would lie awake at night and listen to their howls, ripples of terror running up and beads of sweat running down his back. This was odd, because the man lived in Ipswich, where there had been no wolves for at least a hundred years. The man had been to see several doctors about his strange night time horrors. Over the years he had been prescribed sleeping pills and numerous brands of sedatives, he had been sent for hearing tests and blood tests, he had undergone psychotherapy and hypnotherapy and even a few spectacularly unsuccessful sessions of aromatherapy.

Nothing had worked. Every night when he lay in bed he would hear the wailing, haunting noises echoing round and round his house and he could never tell where the sounds were coming from. Sometimes he would get out of bed and pace up and down the stairs, trying desperately to locate the source of the noise. Once he even left his house and wandered up and down the street outside, straining his ears, at his wits end, but he still found no explanation. The howling stirred in him an ancient and primal fear, a deep bodily yearning to run away.

One day, late in a particularly cold December the man was sitting in the waiting room of the latest medical professional who had promised to relieve him of his problem. The man was engrossed in a magazine, he was reading about recipes for making perfectly presentable macaroons. Suddenly, and faintly, in the back of his mind, he began to hear a tremulous howling. He could feel the hairs on the back of his neck prickling and sweat beginning to seep from his pores. The howling was getting louder and louder. With a slap he closed the magazine and fitfully scanned the room. In a corner by the door was a figure he hadn’t noticed before. The figure stirred and raised its head in the man’s direction. Two yellow eyes blazed out at him, and a look of old recognition flashed across the strange face.

First Memories First memories are overrated. The first thing which imprinted itself deeply into my mind happened the first time it ever occurred to me that I should have a first memory, and that I should even concern myself with trying to imprint things on my mind so that they would never, ever escape. I was standing on a bridge with my mum on a walk in the woods. Underneath there was a stream, wet shiny dark rocks, and trees all round. I suppose I decided to commit it to memory because it was beautiful because sometimes water and trees and nature are so astoundingly beautiful that you feel you should do something with them, but the only thing you can is try to remember.

Emma I was about three years old and was flying to the UK with my parents and newborn twin brother and sister.

We took off from Hong Kong in the early evening and as night fell an airhostess brought out two airline bassinets for my younger brother and sister to sleep in. In my three-year old ignorance I hadn’t considered what the bassinets were for and was shocked when my parents placed my ten-week old siblings into what looked to me like two black briefcases. I had a vision of them being trapped inside and was only reassured when I was held up so that I could see that the bassinets didn’t have the lids that I thought they had!

Oliver The way a child thinks can be quite funny, and my earliest memory is an example of this. I remember sitting in the car we shared with my Aunt Suzanne, I was sitting in my car seat next to my cousin David who we had picked up from his very long house; I was around one and half. Years later I have come to understand that we did not share a car, rather, they did not have one and so my mum and I would pick them up while doing errands, and that the ”long house” was actually a duplex.

Danica Stories and memories often collide. Being the youngest of three children by ten years, I grew up being told eventful tales of “playtime” with my siblings: “Remember when we whispered through the letter box to you that we were goblins from Noddy, Rhian?” Yes. Yes I remember that one.

Thanks ever so much for that one. But the problem is this; do I? Am I merely recounting to myself the vividness (i.e. Noddy-themed-terror) of someone else’s story? Who knows? It’s an odd, and rather powerful one memory. Put it this way, my first of these “memories”, of waddling down the hallway, silently despairing to my mother, my babygrow full of pillows with jaundice yellow cheeks in a combined-creative effort to make me look like “Mr Blobby”, is something I’d be quite happy living without.

Rhian My earliest memory is of getting lost in the Natural History Museum in London. I was walking but couldn’t have been all that old, I was probably about five. Getting lost was a terrifying experience.

The most vivid part of this particular memory was walking, rather than running, so that no-one would think that I was lost or panicking. I was never one to cause a scene. Inside I was terrified, but I refused to accelerate beyond a calm walk as I made my way down the marble staircase towards the anamatronic Tyrannosaurus Rex that guarded the entrance hall.

Will It’s really difficult to distinguish early memories from things I’ve been told about my childhood, which seems bizarre, but I have genuinely been struggling to work out what I actually remember. But I think one of my earliest memories is of being at my friend’s house when I was about three years old and thinking it was amazing because he had the toys that you play with in a big sort of tray of water and put them together to make water wheels and things like that. I don’t remember what his name was. Although I’ve been told that when we were three we agreed to get married, so I should probably find out who he is.

Jenny

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The Day the Big Apple Shook

Robbie MacNiven

I was ten years old when a group of planejackers attempted to set the West aflame. Most of my friends can remember clearly where they were when New York’s twin towers came crashing down – they were in school, in Scotland, hearing about it via worried texts from parents or watching it wide-eyed on some canteen TV screen. I was somewhat less fortunate.

In the September of 2001 I was in the US with the Strathpeffer and District pipe band. I’d always wanted to learn to play the pipes growing up, and my father did nothing to dispel my ambitions – he was the stage host who introduced the band in the village square every Saturday evening. Strathpeffer is a small highland village built on the tourist industry. At the height of summer fully half the village’s population are incomers. And if there’s one thing tourists in Scotland all love, it’s the bagpipes.

One of the thousands of visitors to our village that summer was a Lutherian minister named Jim Shelly. A native of the State of Pennsylvania, Jim spent his spare time helping to organise the State’s annual “Scottish-Irish Festival” at his home near Green Lane Park. Needless to say, he was enraptured by the sight of a “real” Scottish pipe band. That night he invited us over to the festival that September.

That explains what I was doing Stateside on the darkest day in modern US history. The festival itself lasted two days, but we were booked to stay for two weeks, part holiday, part band-promotion tour. We visited Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Gettysburg, and on September 11th were chalked up for a bus trip to New York, New York.

I heard a child’s account of that day’s event some years later which began with “it was a dark day over America,” but as I recall the sun was burning down as we left for the city. I’d like to be able to say there was some grim sense of foreboding, some prophetic gloom which hung over us at the start of that day, but I remember nothing of the sort. There was only excitement at the prospect of visiting America’s greatest city.

News of the attack broke in the most surreal way. We’d stopped off at a sort of roadside diner to eat. I remember chicken nuggets and chips, and dad asking the waitress what the movie was playing on the big TV. We’d all just clearly seen a plane fly into the World Trade Centre. The waitress checked the channel, and it was only then that we realised we were on Fox 24. What we had just seen wasn’t a movie.

In truth I was still much too young to appreciate what was going on. All our American hosts were on their phones, and we were left sitting and wondering what to do. The sense of panic was palpable, in hindsight almost absurd. There was talk of the owners of Green Lane Park having to hurry back to “lock it down” and word had it that the National Guard was turning out. As far as I understood, America hadn’t just been the target of a freak terrorist attack, it was actually under invasion.

The rest of that day played out with the same surreal air. We watched the second plane hit, powerless, disbelieving, and the towers fall. There were tears, a Presidential address, endless discussions about just who was responsible, who would perpetrate such an outrage. And then, eventually, we went back to the park, to the accommodation we’d started the day in, New York now transformed from holiday destination to the stage for a play of fear of sorrow.

The aftermath of 9/11 is just as memorable to me as the day itself. The entire United States, the most powerful country in the world, was overcome by a state of paralysis. Like a man going into a state of shock after narrowly surviving an assault, everything froze and everyday activities seemed to cease. Those everyday activities included air travel. We’d been booked to leave for home on the 13th.

The next time I set foot in Scotland was October 8th. By that time both American and Britain were at war in Afghanistan, and the United States I left behind was very, very different from the one I had arrived in.

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(vincent dejardins)

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Music, Memory & Parkinsons

Music evokes memories in everyone. For most people music will evoke emotional memories: a family holiday, a friend’s wedding or a summer festival.

However, scientists have recently discovered that music is linked to far more than our emotions. Studies suggest that music appears to help neurological pathways reconnect in sufferers of degenerative neurological diseases, which helps sufferers deal with a wide range of the diseases’ effects.

A lot of music therapy research has concentrated on the beneficial effects of music on sufferers of Parkinson’s disease. Parkinson’s disease is a degenerative neurological condition that gradually slows down movement. It often begins with a tremor but by the end of its course can render sufferers bedridden. There is currently no understanding of what causes Parkinson’s and there is no cure. Dr. Wendy Magee, International Fellow in Music Therapy at London’s Institute of Neuropalliative Rehabilitation, describes music as a “mega-vitamin for the brain” , which can help sufferers of Parkinson’s cope with the varied effects of the disease. Spurred on by her research, the British Parkinson’s Disease Society supported the creation of a choir for Parkinson’s sufferers called “Sing For Joy” .

Sufferers of Parkinson’s often develop speech and voice disorders as the disease progresses. A common hope amongst the members of Sing For Joy was that regular singing would help them maintain and strengthen their voices. Amazingly, singing in a choir helped many Parkinson’s sufferers do exactly that. “All neurological conditions affect the throat because it has so many muscles,” explains Sarah Benton, a choir member with multiple sclerosis. “So singing, which makes you lift up your body

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Oliver Giles

and expand your lungs, is perfect for [sufferers of] neurological diseases.”

As well as singing, the very act of listening to music appears to help sufferers of Parkinson’s. Music or a recorded drumbeat appears to help sufferers of Parkinson’s disease both initiate movement and improve the smoothness of their gait. Listening to music seemingly helps the neurological pathways that slow down when someone is suffering from Parkinson’s to reconnect. The physical improvement is not permanent; however, it does outlast the duration of the music played.

Amazingly, studies show that musical memories also seem to be more resilient to neurological conditions such as Alzheimer’s. This means that therapists have been able to prompt memories in patients that might otherwise have been lost. One American World War II veteran returned home with dementia so severe he couldn’t even remember his own name. Using the music of Frank Sinatra therapists helped unlock his memories; the veteran proceeded to lead his wife through the foxtrot with such ease that it was impossible to believe that he had barely been able to acknowledge her before the music began.

Music is clearly wired into our earliest and strongest memories and scientists continue to make exciting discoveries of how music affects everything from the physical act of walking to our emotional memories. As research into music therapy continues it is becoming more and more clear how memories are unlocked by the power of music. As music helps to alleviate the suffering of people with diseases like Parkinson’s it is clear that when we listen to music it is far more than “music to our ears”.

I know that the first CD I purchased was Britney Spears. Her first album “Baby One More Time” came out when I was around seven years old. I am pretty sure that I purchased my first CD around the same time that I bought myself my first beanie baby.

You‘ve gotta love the 90s.

Danica

I cannot actually remember my first CD. I feel about 78% certain it was something wholly uncool and had a title like “nowthat’s-what-I-call-bubblegum-max-poptastic-summer-1997”, containing the legendary likes of Five, Steps and Bewitched. I also feel 99% sure that if it came on in the union I’d dance like a lunatic.

Rhian

I know that the first two albums I ever bought were quite different. One was Yellow Submarine by The Beatles and the other was by the forgotten Irishpop-girl-quintet Bewitched. When I think back on it, though, I can’t actually remember which one I bought first. I want to tell people that the first ever album I bought was The Beatles because it makes my ten year old self come out as an individual of discerning musical tastes, but really, it was probably Bewitched.

Emma

Britney Spears’ ‘(You Drive Me) Crazy’, Christina Aguilera’s ‘Genie in a Bottle’ and Lou Bega’s ‘Mambo No. 5’ were all (embarrassingly) featured on the first CD I ever paid for. The album was called Max 6 and was a compilation album of the biggest hits of 1999.

Oliver Witch Doctor by the Cartoons. Probably the greatest song ever written.

Will

The ed24 Team’s First CDs 09 10

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hedmekania

On the Road - Review Rhian Morgan

A bar reverberates, mahogany brown with a smoky stratosphere. Lights pierce through the reflective air and hit the saxophonist, rhapsodic with fervent creation. And everywhere, people revel. The ambitious adaptation of Jack Kerouac’s masterful odyssey On the Road has been awaited, not to mention feared, by many for some time since its announcement. Directed by the acclaimed Walter Salles, already known for his adept analysis of the journeys of controversial men in controversial times, and filled with an equally enticing cast, the film certainly promised at least some of the verve and experimentation of the novel.

The central focus of this reworking is the various relationships and obsessions the characters develop with one another, mainly directed at the errant Dean Moriarty, played by Garrett Hedlund. Based on Kerouac’s own interactions with Neal Cassady, a close friend of his during the “beat generation” years, we see Sal Paradise, French- Canadian would be writer exploring his memories of being “on the road” with his new found friends. Hedlund successfully depicts the callous yet captivating character of Dean Moriarty, at points becoming incandescent with the feverish hedonism of the beat generation movement we find in the novel; the Mexican brothel scene seems fit to burst with his primal ecstasy.

Alongside him, Sam Riley’s Sal Paradise is pale and more considered, creating a void between them, almost like Sal is studying Dean. His “lust for life” is contrasted well with his treatment of those he is involved with and Kristen Stewart has a subtle power as the sexually-liberated Mary-Lou, his sixteen year old wife. Moments of empathy appear in various scenes as she is moved by the forlorn singing of a fellow traveller; a single, lingering close up shot tracks her reaction. Furthermore, her innocent and awkward appeal to Sal that her most earnest desire is a life away from the “anti-commitment” style of Dean emphasises his hold and the attraction of his flippant attitude, becoming obvious in the well juxtaposed scene in which they all ride naked in the front seat of their Hudson.

Kirsten Dunst reveals the extent to which Moriarty’s attitude affects those around him. Her portrayal of the enraptured-then-disillusioned Camille is most impressive when she realises Dean’s willingness to venture off on another sojourn, leaving her, pregnant, to take care of their daughter, Amy. The peripheral characters certainly make this film, like less caricatured versions of the two main men. Viggo Mortensen and Amy Adams present an affected and strange couple as Old Bull Lee and his wife Jane, exhibiting the effects of a burn out life seeking the best way to live. Adams, Stewart and Moss (Elisabeth, who plays yet another forlorn wife) share a bristling scene advising each other how to keep men happy, a theme which appears throughout, at their expenses. Tom Sturridge is quietly heart breaking as Carlo Marx, a young man desperate for the affection of Dean and for the inspiration of life. The two main men, despite their worthy performances as Dean and Sal, seem too polished to truly mirror the feeling of the desperate, worn, anti-materialistic new men of New York. It’s more on-the-road-down-the-tracks-and-into-Abercrombie-and-Fitch.

The real success of this film is the atmosphere created by the music and the cinematography. Much like the sweeping shots which made Into the Wild so beautiful, Eric Gautier has marbled the surface of the picture with epic get-lost-in-us landscapes. Gustavo Santaolalla’s soundtrack evokes the beat generation spirit of burning “Roman Candles” with a fire and fervency which makes the film. “Not why but how to live” is perhaps too hard a question to ask of a film.

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Language Loss

My grandmother grew up in Norway and moved to the United States when she was in her early twenties. While this was supposed to just be temporary, she met my grandfather, fell in love, and decided to stay.

As time went on, she built a life in the States, had two sons, and ten grandchildren. She still kept up her Norwegian through phone calls and annual summer visits home, but lived her life for the next fifty years in the States speaking English.

However, in her old age she has developed Parkinson’s Disease. As a result she slips into Norwegian accidentally more and more. Sometimes I will be speaking to her, and the next thing I know she says a completely foreign phrase. At this point, I usually pause, trying to decipher the gibberish, before I realize that this is not nonsense mumbling, but actually simply my grandmother slipping back into her first language.

It does not seem to matter that she has spent a greater percentage of her life speaking English, she still often feels more comfortable now speaking Norwegian.

In addition to her complete switches, she also has a tendency to use Norwegian for very basic words such as cheese, couch, and articles of clothing. She will come out of her language switch and revert to English, but she rarely notices the switch unless it is pointed out to her.

However, if I simply tell her, “I do not understand,” then she will repeat the phrase in Norwegian. Similarly, if I simply say, “you are speaking Norwegian,” she will apologise to you in Norwegian, and then repeat herself, still in Norwegian.

Surprisingly, what seems to work without fail, is for me to simply say “Farmor…. jeg snakker ikke norsk,” which is Norwegian for “I do not speak Norwegian Grandma”, for her to smile softly, and switch back to English.

Parkinson’s seems to have changed the way she remembers language in interesting ways.

On some days she can speak clearly and remember perfectly, yet on other days she will use both languages in the same sentence, unsure of which words are right.

Other times, I will ask her what the word is in Norwegian for any random word or item, and she will falter, trying to remember. The disease has disrupted her ability to remember in strange ways.

Danica

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Danica Jacobsson & Rhian Morgan

The last time I spoke to Mamllandybie in English, she was trying to convince me to take home all the prizes which were to be awarded in her nursing home’s raffle. She also threatened to call the police if we didn’t put enough sugar in her tea. Having known her all my life, one could quite confidently say this was not an effect of the dementia which had been taking hold on her faculties for getting on for fifteen years: she’s a generous woman and she’s always been pretty defensive about her tea. That last one’s a family thing.

That was about three years ago, and since leaving home to go to university, I have had fewer and fewer chances to see her. When I do occasionally get the opportunity, hopping on an Arriva train or heading across with my folks in our car, I imagine what sort of things we’ll talk about. Few things it appears, as my grandmother now only speaks Welsh, a language I am rather less than proficient in.

She grew up in a small Welsh village called Llandybie, in the heart of “the Valleys”, a town which even now has a remarkably high percentage of Welsh speakers. However, like most of these speakers, she was bi-lingual practically from the time she learned any language at all.

Welsh was her first, but English wasn’t far behind.

Much like those who cannot remember seeing you five minutes ago but clearly recall the variegation of the holly on next door’s walls fifty years before, she seems to have forgotten English altogether, as though it was some much later learned language. It’s bizarre and interesting to see her memory revert in this way. It is probably down to the contact she now has being almost entirely in Welsh, from my parents and my aunt, to the nurses who see her. And how very Welsh they are! Or she could just be having us all on.

So, Welsh is now her sole medium of communication. She has a set-list of phrases, a bit like a Celtic magic eight ball, which I’m becoming more au fait with as time goes on. In amongst the “s’mae”s and the “diolch”s there is the odd phrase that is too strange even to be Welsh. But then again, she’s probably just complaining about the service.

Rhian

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“We do not remember days, we remember moments.

The richness of life lies in memories we have forgotten.�

C e s a r e P a v e s e

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The Great Trap

Robbie MacNiven

It’s strange the way memory works. The way you have no control over it. What you remember changes, takes on new meaning and sloughs off the shackles of reality. I remember my last year of High School as the happiest time of life, but from what actually remains of that period – video footage, old MSN messages, our class’s yearbook – I didn’t seem to be having all that much fun at the time.

It’s easy to reminisce over large periods of time. I don’t doubt that I’ll probably view my years now at University as the best of my life. But among the bigger, sweeping remains of the past there are the shorter sharper shards, clearer but gone in a second. The agony of a paintball strike. A first kiss. A minute’s speaking in front of the television cameras. The heat of stage lights. The memory of emotions fade, but the actions themselves do not. I can remember what I said and where I stood, but I can’t conjure up an accurate recollection of the feeling of fear twisting in my gut, or adrenaline sending my body shaking. Only when I’m feeling that again can I really, truly recall.

Stimuli like fear are the most powerful tools we have for making our memories accurate.

Our five senses remember, even if we do not. A certain song, smell, taste can all bleed fresh colour into images that are grey if we try to summon them up without help. But what happens when our time runs out and even emotional stimuli fail us?

If what happens to our memories during our lifetime seems strange, then the effect of memory on human consciousness across centuries is even more difficult to pin down and define. How do we remember someone when they’re gone? Only slips and snaps of their stereotype remains. And when they’re two or three lives removed, we’re reduced to guessing games. Memory is confined to dusty history books and black-and-white footage. We play with those memories, ascribing “good” and “bad” and “wise” and “foolish” to people we never met, who even our great grandfathers never met. We define them through our own memories, and in doing so decide how they will be viewed by future generations.

That is the great trap of memory. Taking it as we’re told, and forgetting that memory is perhaps the most fallible faculty we possess. To remember someone is always to remember only a part of them, never the whole. To judge the past based on memory, whether personal or handed down through generations, is to enter a forest with no sense of direction. You can never be certain you’re headed the right way, and the truth is always obscured. The best you can hope for is to acknowledge that yes, memory is fallible, but without it you would be even more lost than you already are.

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Will Ellis

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Who Was that Guy? Sywald Skeid - or something. No one was really sure of his name for nearly a decade. In 1999 Skeid appeared in hospital with a broken nose, without any identification and claiming to have forgotten his own name. Allegedly memory-less, he carved out a life for himself as an upper-class Englishman clueless and adrift in central Canada.

In the Toronto hospital where he appeared he was diagnosed with global amnesia as a result of concussion, meaning he had lost all recollection of his life up until that point. He mentioned a familiar feeling towards the name Philip Staufen, actually the title of a medieval Germanic king, and so he was called hospital staff. Linguistic experts said they detected a slight Yorkshire accent in his voice, and he also spoke French, Italian and apparently enjoyed reading Latin sonnets. Eventually, local news became interested in the twenty-something mystery man and began to run stories on ‘Mr. Nobody’. His case attracted the sympathy of a couple in Ontario and he moved in with them and began to receive welfare payments from the Canadian government, but still questions remained over who he actually was.

During the next few years he was offered free treatment from top amnesia experts, but refused to engage with them. His memory loss was therefore difficult to verify and his actions raise questions about the ability of a person to erase their past self for the sake of reinvention: in a sense, whether or not we have the right to forget.

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Control over one’s own identity though, is of course less about individual memory as about legal identity and status.

In 2001 he began legal action to gain a Canadian birth certificate and passport, ostensibly to travel to learn more about his roots.

His application was rejected by immigration officials. Rumours about his past arose including work as an erotic model; images of a “French” man called ‘Georges Lecuit’ were circulated in a wellknown London gay magazine and seemed very similar to his appearance. In 2004 it emerged that the passport of a frenchman in 1988 named George Lecuit had been stolen, and Skeid was arrested and jailed.

He married the daughter of his lawyer and friend, Manuel Azevedo later in 2001 and accepted the offer from the Canadian immigration office for an eighteen-month work permit. He then changed his name to Keith Ryan, Mike Jones, and eventually to his final choice, Sywald Skeid. The couple moved to Portugal in 2006, and attempted to obtain Portuguese citizenship for Skeid, but inconclusively.

In 2007 GQ magazine confronted Skeid, having located his original birth certificate. His real name is Ciprian Skeid, and he was born in the Romanian village of Timişoara. His father worked in a meat packing factory and his mother in a bread making factory. Skeid had studied violin until he was nineteen. In his interview with GQ he is quoted as saying “I came from Romania, a place I loathe. I’d rather be a fake no-

Emma Dunmore

body than the real me. At first I tried not to be anyone at all. Then I tried to become someone — and then someone better.”

Sywald Skeid’s story brings up lots of questions about memory and identification; the independence achieved by erasure of history. By faking amnesia he attempted to assert an entirely new identity in a new country and gain opportunities he otherwise would never have had acess to. It brings to mind Marx’s words: Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under selfselected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all dead generations weighs like an nightmare on the brains of the living.

Skeid attempted to remake his own history under his own circumstances, but due to the efficiency of 21st century media and bureaucratic officialdom he was unable to escape his own past. In theory sometimes we muse that our post-industrial, post-modernist state had erased all distinctions of identity, and narrative, but in reality the instantaneous accessibility of information has tied us more closely to our own identities and pasts than we ever were before. Memories, being thus externalized in government records, worldwide journalism, and the internet, have become mean impossible to lose. Sywald Skeid could not have tried harder to lose the memory his identity, but eventually the world threw it right back at him.

My Version of Events

For this feature we decided to do a little experiment to see how much of a story people could remember after reading it or hearing it once. We wanted to know how much people would actually remember and what they would forget – in short, how close to the original would they be able to get if they tried to write down the story half an hour after they had encountered it for the first time?

So in the morning I quickly penned a short tale, and then throughout the day roped in other members of the team to help. Two of them read the story for themselves, and then had half an hour of doing other things, working on the magazine, and generally not thinking about the story. Then, after thirty minutes, they went away and tried to write down the story, remembering as much as they possibly could and attempting to write something as close to the original as they could make it.

The other two listened to me telling them the tale, individually, bedtime-story-style. They then had half an hour of getting on with their own magazine work and thinking about other things, and after thirty minutes, tried to write down the story.

The results were quite intriguing! The following is the original story – if you want to try the experiment for yourself then feel free, just read through it, wait for half an hour, and then try to write it down again, and don’t forget to let us know how you get on!

One Point Oh

Jenny Hayward

Once upon a time there was a man who had a terrible fear of wolves. He would lie awake at night and listen to their howls, ripples of terror running up and beads of sweat running down his back.

This was odd, because the man lived in Ipswich, where there had been no wolves for at least a hundred years. The man had been to see several doctors about his strange night time horrors.

Over the years he had been prescribed sleeping pills and numerous brands of sedatives, he had been sent for hearing tests and blood tests, he had undergone psychotherapy and hypnotherapy and even a few spectacularly unsuccessful sessions of aromatherapy. Nothing had worked. Every night when he lay in bed he would hear the wailing, haunting noises echoing round and round his house and he could never tell where the sounds were coming from. Sometimes he would get out of bed and pace up and down the stairs, trying desperately to locate the source of the noise.

Once he even left his house and wandered up and down the street outside, straining his ears, at his wits end, but he still found no explanation. The howling stirred in him an ancient and primal fear, a deep bodily yearning to run away.

One day, late in a particularly cold December the man was sitting in the waiting room of the latest medical professional who had promised to relieve him of his problem. The man was engrossed in a magazine, he was reading about recipes for making perfectly presentable macaroons. Suddenly, and faintly, in the back of his mind, he began to hear a tremulous howling.

He could feel the hairs on the back of his neck prickling and sweat beginning to seep from his pores. The howling was getting louder and louder. With a slap he closed the magazine and fitfully scanned the room. In a corner by the door was a figure he hadn’t noticed before. The figure stirred and raised its head in the man’s direction. Two yellow eyes blazed out at him, and a look of old recognition flashed across the strange face.

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Rhian Morgan

30mins after listening to Jenny readng the original.

One Point One A

Once upon a time there was a man who was afraid of wolves, which was strange because he lived in Ipswich where there hadn’t been wolves for over 100 years. He went to bed at night and had horrible dreams of wolves and often heard their howling. He even left his house to find where it was coming from but to no avail. He saw various doctors and was prescribed sleeping pills and sedatives and had hypnotherapy and even an unsuccessful course of aromatherapy. He was almost at the end of his tether when he found someone who may be able to help him. He sat in the doctor’s waiting room reading an article about perfectly presented macaroons when he began to hear the howling. He snapped the magazine shut and looked around the room. He noticed then a figure in the corner of the room who had previously not been there. The figure raised its head to reveal two yellow eyes, and a look of recognition on its face.

Will Ellis

One Point One B

Once upon a time there was a man who was sorely afraid of wolves. This was very strange, as the man lived in Ipswich. Every night he would be haunted by the howling of the wolves as he lay in his bed, fear running up, and sweat running down his back. The man had tried every sedative, sleeping pill and potion that modern medicine could provide, as well as psychotherapy, hypnotherapy and even a couple of unsuccessful dalliances with aromatherapy. Nothing could be done for the man. Eventually he found himself leaving his bed to walk the street outside his house, as he searched for the howling bastards. No matter where he looked he found himself unable to find the source of the haunting howls.

One day the man was sitting in the waiting room of the latest health professional when he began to feel a familiar unease. In the dark recesses of his mind he began to hear the faint howls of the wolves. Sweat began to trickle down his brow, how could they find him here, in broad daylight? The man scanned the room, until he noticed a figure in the corner that he hadn’t seen before. A strange pate emerged from behind a tattered copy of Horse and Hound. Burning yellow eyes pierced the man’s soul.

30mins after listening to Jenny readng the original.

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Once upon a time there was a man with a deadly fear of wolves. He woke up every night hearing their howls echo around his room, ripples of terror rushing through his body. But this fear was strange, as the man lived in Ipswich, where there hadn’t been any wolves for at least a hundred years. The man would lie awake at night listening to the terrifying howling echoing all around his house. One night he got up and walked up and down the street trying to find where the howling was coming from. The man had tried everything to rid himself of his fear. He had tried hypnotherapy, psychotherapy and even a horrendously unsuccessful course of aromatherapy. He had been prescribed all sorts of medication to help him sleep. However, nothing could get rid of his overwhelming fear.

The man was sitting and reading a magazine in the waiting room of the latest health professional who promised to cure him of his fear when he suddenly heard the beginnings of an ominous howl. The man tried to put the thought out of his mind but the howl got louder and louder, echoing around and around the waiting room. The man fixed his eyes on the page but couldn’t concentrate anymore and smacked the magazine shut in anger. He looked up and frantically began to scan the room, as the howling got louder.

Suddenly he saw two yellow orbs staring at him from the corner of the room. These yellow eyes looked up at the man with a flash of recognition in the strange face.

30 minutes after reading the story to himself

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Danica Jacobsson & Oliver Giles

30 minutes after reading the story to herself

One Point One C & D

Jen told a slightly creepy story about a man and a wolf. This man was plagued with hearing wolf howls every night, yet, mysteriously, there had not been wolves in the area for over 100 years. He tried to solve the problem, and he visited doctors who gave him hearing tests, brain tests, the works. But it did not help. So, he also went on to have psychotherapy, hypnotherapy and even a very unsuccessful session of aromatherapy. When none of this worked, he seemed to be doomed. Then, he heard another long howl, and this time. He could feel his hair pricking, he turned and saw a pair of creepy yellow eyes…

Jenny Hayward

My Version of Events

From a writer’s perspective, I found it fascinating to see what people remembered, which were the details that stuck in their minds.

They all got the general gist of it; no-one completely forgot what the story was about.

They mostly remembered something about Ipswich, the hypnotherapy, psychotherapy and unsuccessful aromatherapy (clearly three really is a magic number), and they all remembered the yellow eyes. So it seems that people will remember details if there is something a little bit odd or entertaining about them, like wolves in Ipswich. But it also seems they will remember a detail if it conjures a visual image, like the yellow eyes of the wolfish stranger, even if that image is a bit of a cliché. Sometimes clichés are only clichés because they work.

Before we started this, I wondered whether Rhian and Will would be able to remember the way I phrased things better because I’ve known them for years and they’re used to the way that I speak and write. But after seeing the results, I’d have to say that Ollie probably remembered the story most accurately, and he had only just met me when the story was unceremoniously thrust at him to read!

As a final note on what proved to be an interesting experiment, for me at least and hopefully also for you, I was amused to see how different people wrote down the same thing in very different ways. It was fascinating to see the little instances where they had put in something that hadn’t been in the original, things they thought they had remembered but that must have come from somewhere else – where exactly, who knows? Maybe they’re not even sure themselves. If someone more knowledgeable than me were to look at this, they might be able to tell us some interesting things about the people who took part in the little experiment. It makes me wonder how much we reveal about ourselves in the way that we remember and forget things, and also in the way we express ourselves. I’ve no idea where Will got ‘Horse & Hound’ from, what that says about him I will let you decide!

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Danica by Susan Ridiculous as it may sound given the quality of these midnight sketches, Danica and I have known each other for over ten years. So why is it that we cannot even recall each other’s most characteristic features? As it turns out, we can blame human memory, which can sometimes prove to be more of a lethargic mess than myself during revision week.

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When processing day-to-day moments, our minds refuse to store exact depictions of our surroundings. Instead, they store rough representations of the images, sounds and all the other facets of sentience that constitute our hectic lives. Even when we transfer information from working to long-term memory, these representations remain incomplete.

Susan by Danica This characteristic of memory can lead us to make many errors, including failing to recognize fairly obvious changes in situations. If you have never tried the “selective attention test,� please look it up on YouTube for your own entertainment. Still, this incompleterepresentation characteristic is highly adaptive; by not storing infinite strings of useless

information, the brain’s increases its datastorage capacity and information-processing efficiency. And, magically, until we try to remember what the back of our hand looks like (or completely fail at drawing the faces of old friends we think we know incredibly well) we are tricked into thinking that our memories are complete and reliable.

Susan

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Rhian Morgan

The Anceints and Posterity

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Herodotus’ claims that the main focus of his Histories is to ensure that the deeds of both the Greeks and the Barbarians do not become “unfamous”, lost in the mists of time. He was not alone in his endeavour, with the archetypal classical works all professing to make their subjects or themselves famous. For nine books, Herodotus explains the causes of the Persian Wars of the fifth century B.C, in an effort to aid us in our later ventures as fellow humans. Remember my words, he indicates, for one day such misfortunes as occurred here will visit you. Careful, my silly fellows, he wants to teach us, through the art of memory. He has seen wars and foolish actions destroy empires, and so tries to impress upon his readers the importance of not forgetting the advice he obliquely sets forth.

In the canon of classical writing, Herodotus was relative “big-fry”.

His predecessor Homer the magnifico, as he’s known in certain circles, also places a strong emphasis in his epics on the heroic idea of being remembered after you’ve had your head split by an axe wielding Trojan. I’m sure this was an overwhelming comfort to many. The truth is that it seems to have been. So powerful to the Homeric heroes was the idea of having your memory preserved through your great deeds that it didn’t necessarily matter if you died, they made no bones about that (ha, get it…?).

Why this is confronts us with a really rather difficult and disturbing question. We understand the lure of nostalgia, getting lost in a ruin, viewing smoky photographs of old, forgotten relatives, but the idea of risking your life for glorified memory is a shade too far. It would seem that their obsession has something to do with social identity.

Even those who criticise the gravity of Homeric epic, like Ovid, admit that it would be quite nice if people didn’t just chuck out their poetry, but kept andtreasured it, even used it for advice. So, as with Herodotus and Homer, we see it used as a method of communication through time, how to live our lives. Don’t do this please, it’s probably already happened and already gone wrong.

In modern times, a revival of Greek theatre shows us the way in which a social identity can beformed through the shared experience of remembering. As a community, ancient or modern, sits and watches a play or listens to a bard tell a story, they gain a collective understanding of their past and may use its maxims and advice to construct their own national feeling. This is why the classics are still so popular, because their points and questions are so similar to those we ask ourselves today. We remember the same things, and believe the same things should be remembered because our lives are so transient. Especially to be seen in Europe, which has seen countless empires, the wheel of fortune rising and falling for each, we appreciate the importance of remembering what could have been lost though time, like Herodotus. Mind you, he thought he saw gold-plated crocodiles in Egypt, so maybe we won’t trust his memory too much.

Memory Tray Three members of the team, Emma, Danica and Will, looked at a tray of 13 objects for 15 seconds and then had to write down as many objects as they could remember.

Emma Remembered: - Moose - Mentos - Flip Flop - Coin - Tiny Comb - Train Ticket - Paracetamol - Watch - Tray

Danica Remembered: - Moose - Key Chain - Lock - Comb - Gum - Nail Polish - Random card of some kind - Pills

Will Remembered: - Yellow Sports Watch - Lighter - Nail Polish - Mentos Gum - Train Ticket Receipt - Moose - 2 Pence - Comb

Forgot: - Candle - Lighter - Bobble - Padlock - Pen - Nail Varnish

Forgot: - Candle - Pen - Bobble - Lighter - 2p Coin - Flip Flop - Watch

Forgot: - Padlock - Bobble - Flip Flop - Paracetamol - Candle

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Remembering Remembering The The Cultural Cultural Revolution Revolution I’m sure I speak for a lot of people in their early twenties when I say that we are at an age when we are just starting to appreciate our parents as people. People with personal histories and fascinating tales to tell.

People who have lived through important events that we have only read about, and perhaps people who have played a part in those important events. Our parents’ histories are part of the history of the world as much as anything we find in textbooks.

This struck me particularly when my friend Vicki told me that her mother is currently writing her memoirs of life during the Cultural Revolution in China. Vicki Madden, a fellow 4th year English Literature student, was kind enough to answer my questions about her mother, and the process of writing down her memories of that period of her life and of China’s history.

Jenny: Can you give us a bit of background about yourself and your own connection with China?

Vicki: When I was six years old, my dad announced that we were moving to China so that he could take up a post as the language trainer for the American Embassy in Beijing. Naturally, that meant sending me to a local Chinese school to brush up on my own language skills. When I was eleven, we were transferred to Taipei, Taiwan, where I finally got to attend an American school and learn how to spell in English. Having spent most of my life in Asia, I then decided to move to Scotland for university when I was 18, because going back to the U.S., a place that no longer felt like “home,” would have felt somewhat wrong.

Jenny: What exactly is it that your mother is writing?

Vicki: My mom’s working on a collection of memories from her childhood – from growing up with her grandmother, who used to chase her around the garden with her small, bound feet, all the way up until she left China with the help of her baby passport from the U.S. Most of her stories are from the countryside while she was receiving re-education, and what happened once she was allowed to return to the city. Some of her stories also concern the experiences of various family members during the Cultural Revolution. The one that really immediately comes to mind is that of her cousin, who was jailed for seventeen years after accidentally knocking over a bust of Chairman Mao. Jenny: How much do you know about your mother’s story?

Vicki: My mom was sixteen years old when the red guards came to her house and took everything: antique rosewood furniture that had been passed on to my grandmother, yards of silk fabric from abroad, fur coats and jewellery. The guards took everything that would remind my grandma that she was once the favourite daughter of a large, affluent family as my mom and her four younger siblings stood by and watched. The only thing the guards left behind was an American passport with the photo of a newborn baby, which was deemed worthless but in fact turned out to be my mom’s ticket out of the country.

A short while later, my mom was forced to discontinue her studies and sent to the countryside for reeducation. This meant leaving her grandfather’s home in Beijing where she grew up, and venturing to a small farming area where she would permanently damage her back learning the “true meaning” of manual labour. During this period, mom spent her nights reading illicit translated paperbacks of Victor Hugo and Tolstoy by candlelight and hiding the books in her bed sheets during the day.

She told me once that her favourite moments during this period were when she was ill, because “sick food” involved noodle soup, which was infinitely tastier than what she was getting on a day-to-day basis.

One time the “mystery meat” she was being fed apparently turned out to be the neighbourhood cat, which had sealed its own fate by eating the birds that the farmers had prepared for dinner that evening.

Jenny: Do you know why has she chosen now to write her memoirs? Why do you think she has decided to record her memories of that period?

Vicki: During my last couple of years of high school, my mom started thinking about what she would do

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Jenny Hayward with Vicki Madden once her only daughter had left for university. She decided she would write her memoirs, so that one day, I could read about what I was too young to understand when I was living at home. She’s recently started writing more though, and I think that’s partly to do with a conversation that she had with some family friends last Christmas about the fact that the “new” generation, the second generation of Chinese-American immigrants that I belong to, has a really difficult time relating to a lot of the experiences of our parents. I think she’s trying to remedy this in a way.

Jenny: Are there certain events or aspects of your mother’s past that have been difficult for her to remember?

Vicki: My mom always talks about how she was relatively lucky compared to a lot of people we know. She says her experiences in the countryside were far less strenuous than what some of our family friends went through. Her philosophy on life has always been to let bygones be bygones. I think that’s mostly because she saw how bitter my grandmother was in her old age, always recalling her glory days, when her dad would trade bars of gold for expensive fur coats for his favourite daughter. Having had a privileged childhood, my grandmother found the Cultural Revolution especially tough, and up until the last days of her life, she was still talking about the rosewood furniture she lost to the red guards. My mom said it was just easier for her to forget about all the luxuries she lost in the ‘60s because that way, she’d have nothing to lament.

Jenny: Have you noticed if the act of recalling events and details from her past has had an effect on her?

Vicki: My mom has always been quite a happy-go-lucky person. Whenever she tells me stories of her past, she always picks the funny ones. She’s never gone into detail about the hardships she’s suffered. Sometimes I wonder why she never talks about the bad bits. She always says there are so many who went through so much more.

Jenny: Has your mother’s doing this made you rethink your relationship with the past in any way?

Vicki: It took me until my final university years to think about this. In fact, it wasn’t until Christmas last year, when my family got together with some close family friends, all of whom had also been sent to the countryside for re-education, that I really started thinking about the past and how it continues to impact the present. My mom and her friends sat at the table swapping what I now refer to as “stories from the dark farm as my friend Brian and I, both second generation Chinese-Americans, struggled to relate to any of it.

We both felt so divorced from the events of our parents’ pasts, divorced from China, and divorced from this cultural heritage. This was especially strange for me, since I spent most of my life in Asia. I wished so badly that I could relate more to my mom’s past, but then it occurred to me how little I really know about her personal history.

Jenny: Has it made you look at your mother in a different way?

Vicki: It’s certainly made me realise how strong my mom is. I know that trauma must be a big part of her past but the fact that she only thinks about the good times, the funny times, and how her experiences have made her “as strong as an ox” makes her such an admirable woman.

Jenny: Why do you think it’s important for your mother to do this?

Vicki: I think my mom and her friends were really onto something when they said that with each subsequent generation, our families will move further and further away from our cultural roots. It’s really hard for me to express why I feel like it’s so important that I understand my mother’s past since I spent most of my teenage years oblivious to the fact that she had one. Maybe it’s because, now that I’m older, I realise that my mother’s life was extraordinary, and without understanding what she’s been through, I will never really understand her.

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April 15th, 2012 Danica: Six months ago today…. Sunday, April the 15th 2012.

While this date is not that long ago, I still find it really difficult to remember where I was. What I do know, is that I would have just returned from a Spring Vacation to visit Edinburgh, and so I would have been back in Sunny Southern California.

However, narrowing it down any more than that is quite difficult. Since it was on a Sunday I most likely was not working, and since it was so close to when I was returning from Edinburgh I am going to wager a guess that I spent the day sleeping and trying unsuccessfully to recover from jetlag. Additionally, due to the fact that was a weekend it is very likely I went to visit a friend of my grandmother to show off pictures from my trip. While I am capable of narrowing it down, it is very hard to recall exactly.

Emma: Uhuuuh ….uhhhh in Edinburgh, possibly in the library, hiding from the rain, or NO! This would have been just before the History in Practice Project was due – I was hovering two feet in the air in front of a computer screen, elevated by my own stress. I was writing frantically about early modern almanacs, the fire of London and whether or not astrology is a valid and valuable form of accessing knowledge! I was falling in love with Kocku von Stuckrad, the writer from Denmark who could express all these ideas much better than I ever could. Busy busy busy. It’s worth noting though, that I can measure my life in assignments.

September 11th 2001 Danica: On 9/11, I was home in California. I was awoken by my little brother, who at the time was about five years old, yelling, “Wake up, wake up, wake up! Roxy had her kitten! We have a kitten, we have a kitten… Oh! And an airplane hit twin towers in New York!”

Needless to say the combination of those events got me out of bed quickly. I ran to my parent’s bedroom where there was a kitten in a box, and my parents watching the television with grave faces. I did not quite understand what was going on, but I watched the film footage of the event with them until they pushed me off to get ready for school.

It was an odd day, half the class was not there, the teachers were tight lipped about the event, and they would not let us have our recess for some reason…

Susan: You know the anxiety that used to hit every child when the teacher announced that someone’s parents came to pick them up from school? On that day, it happened over and over again. After about 7 kids being picked up for what the teacher promised was “doctor’s visits,” my turn came. I cheerily asked my mom where we were going. She tried her best to explain the huge cloud of smoke that I could vaguely make out in the distant Manhattan skyline. The rest of the day was a blur of breaking news, half-packed luggage, and arrangements to visit my uncle in New Jersey.

Emma: First day at a new school in London, England. After spending the first twelve years of my life Rhian: in Oklahoma, I was embarking on the adventure of I believe it was the Easter holidays, meaning I was a new country, only to be reminded of where I came potentially at home in Birmingham, which meant I from in the most surreal and distressing of ways. was probably in our local pasty shop with my folks. People came up to use on the street to speak about Having a pasty. what had happened and for a bit, there was an outMaybe a coffee. pouring of sympathy and understanding towards Maybe it was a crazy day, maybe I had an Oasis Sum- those with American accents on the streets of Lonmer fruits. Either way I’ll bet I had a right good ol’ don. It didn’t last after George W. Bush decided to time. take us all to war, but it was there for a bit. 9/11 took years though, to really sink into my mind as something that had really, actually occurred, all that way over the sea (and not just on tv).

Where Were WE When...?

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Time Capsules History, Classics and Archaeology students the world over have often had the same thought: what on Gaia’s green EARTH is that? So if I had a time capsule, my endeavour would be to confuse the hell out of those looking for remnants of our culture. Maybe I’d let them know a bit about our culture too, if I feel so inclined.

And so, ladies and gents, the five things I would place in a time capsule.

Books: I would choose to place in my time capsule a copy of E.M. Forster’s A Room with a View and a copy of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. In its entirety. I would also put a note into the box saying that one of them was about mythical places and people and an article about sulphur spitting toads (these actually exist) just to throw them off the scent.

A piece of technology: Many is the time an historian has been confronted with a piece of technology he or she is bewildered by. Imagine finding a can-opener in a time-capsule in three thousand years.

Bewildering.

Something really old, even for us: like the “antikythera mechanism”. This ancient piece of equipment was a sort of analogue computer, which was used to calculate astronomical positions, like an ancient Sat-Nav. It is around two thousand one hundred years old, and should be kept as an example of incredible engineering and ingenuity. I’m sure the Athens Archaeological Museum would let us borrow it for a millennia or so.

Money: Numismatics is a passion of mine. Despite never seeming to have much of it, and most of that which I have disappears swiftly in exchange for various beverages of varying alcohol contents, I find it fascinating how nations stamp their identity onto little bits of metal and use them as propaganda. I’d also tell them it’s my mum on them, and that every British tribe has them.

A picture of me: just to be polite, you know, give “future-people” a laugh. I’d photoshop it, expertly, and give myself wings and a nice crown-like hat.

So there we have it. Hopefully generations of people down the line, they’ll find my capsule, and if they don’t discard it in haste whilst building another land-fill, or maybe they’ll believe my falsities and I’ll create years of historical research and hopeless dissertation topics. Here’s hoping.

Rhian Morgan A Fashion Magazine: I would toss in a typical fashion magazine. Not only are these magazines a guilty pleasure of mine, but also, they sure do show a lot about our culture… such as the way that we focus on celebrities and our focus on consumerism, not to mention that of course they will show the way we dressed in 2012!

Cellphone: Now to honest, I could not part from my cellphone. I use it nonstop, and rely on my wonderful iPhone way too much. All the same, if people of the future would like to understand our culture, the time capsule would not be complete without a cellphone. Maybe I could toss in an old broken one. Surely in the future they will have discovered how to fix it. Right?

Harry Potter Book: Okay fine, so maybe 2012 is a little bit late for Harry Potter, but come on, it IS Harry Potter! If the people of the future SOMEHOW do not know that Harry Potter is amazing then I want to make sure that they learn.

Danica Jacobsson

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Poetry Corner

They asked me to write to write a haiku, a what?

And so I Googled.

It is past midnight so here is my poetry for our magazine.

We should not forget all the stories of the past they are who we are.

For when we forget we lose so much more than facts we also lose ourselves

I tried to write a haiku about this project but I forgot

Will Ellis

And so we hold on and tell the tales of our past so others also know.

Our memories fade and time still goes on and on so we study the past.

Danica Jacobsson

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Retrospect is the University of Edinburgh’s student-run History, Classics and Archaeology journal. We produce a beautiful A4 full-colour magazine each semester with academic pieces, feature articles, reviews and society pages.

Each issue reflects on a theme such as Identity, Riot, Unlikely Unions, Empire and Haves and Have Nots. We also like to engage in pub quizzes, 24 hour magazines, fundraising events and other interesting undertakings. If you would like to get involved, then come along to Teviot Lounge on Thursdays at 7pm to meet the team.

Otherwise, just email editor@retrospectjournal.co.uk

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Follow the ed24 Team

@RetrospectHCA @danicajacobsson @willaellis

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2012