It seems that Fletcher-Spears was immersed in the grief and disappointment of having been deprived of the chance to foray into the mad-cap world of celebrity that is a Councillorship of Heslington Ward. After months of intensive PR work and high-profile red-carpet campaigning, hubris finally struck York’s answer to Paris Hilton and she failed to win the election.

The head stylists at Campus Ken’s Haircutting Studio in Langwith, California, were locking the doors for the night last Friday when a cavalcade of bicycles drew up outside. Fletcher-Spears and R-Land dismounted and marched into the salon.

When owner Ken Fairburn refused to shave off the politics star’s hair, Grace took hold of the clippers and removed her locks herself, inevitably snapped by campus paparazzi who have faithfully recorded her journey from naive fresherdom into an increasingly troubled celebrity political career.

While bids mount for the shorn locks on York Small Ads (not to mention for a half-drunk can of organic carrot and coriander soup she sipped while snipping), theories about Grace shaving her head have been foisted on her more quickly than the multi-coloured bobble-hat she has since donned to conceal her bare scalp.

Does losing her hair equal losing her mind? Or is she finally regaining control of her chaotic life?

Throughout York history, a shorn head has been heavy with meaning. The bare-headed Maths or Computer Science students told of their devotion or renunciation of worldly pleasures. In biblical legend, Ken Batten was deprived of his incredible power and forced into an administration post when his hair was cut off in his sleep. In ancient Derwent, shaved heads were a mark of the slave. Among members of the Medieval Recreation Society, a shorn head, along with a plastic battleaxe, is a symbol of aggression.

With time, a shaven head became fashionable, among men at least, and skinheads in Fusion eventually lost their shock value. The image of a woman with no hair, however, can still pack a visceral punch. In other words, baldness is still relatively rare in women, and is generally treated as a sign of crisis or stress – or, if it is known to be self-inflicted, a sign of madness.

“Her relationship with the public is one of the most significant relationships she has had in her life,” psychologist Julian Bassey said. “From her point of view, the public validates or doesn’t validate her. She probably feels interfered with. This is her saying, ‘I need some control of my own.’ I think this is about control, about her trying to get into the driver’s seat—or the cyclist’s saddle.”

The public relations guru Max Clifford, however, rubbishes suggestions that her career is so out of control that she and her PR people cannot even organise a haircut in private. “Obviously they knew exactly what was going on; otherwise, they wouldn’t have allowed it,” he said. “The whole thing was publicly arranged and publicly carried out. She wouldn’t have just turned up and done this. Her PR managers would have known.”

Every day, however, more hairdressers sit and listen to tales of personal crisis than the massed ranks of publicists and psychologists. Ken Fairburn, a man smart enough to refuse to shave Grace’s head for fear she might change her mind and then sue, had little time for elaborate interpretations of what went on on Friday.

“I did say, ‘Is this getting rid of the old and starting afresh?’ and she said, ‘Yes.’ Maybe she just got sick and tired of all the extensions and chemicals in her hair, and maybe she just wants a new beginning,” said Fairburn. “It’s only hair. It grows back.”

In recent sightings, Fletcher-Spears has again been plunged into controversy by appearing in a variety of unethically produced hair pieces. At a recent Roses gala she was sighted sporting a House of Croker wig, produced by the painstaking removal of individual hairs from the heads of intoxicated Lancastrian rugby players. People and Planet have voiced their disgust at “her tasteless and unthoughtful choice of headwear”. Fletcher-Spears has since apologised and donated an undisclosed sum to the Lancaster Carling Emergency Fund in way of contrition.

Brian Cantor, a music fan from Heslington, commented that he had “quite liked Fletcher-Spears’ early albums such as ‘Buy Fair Tradey, One More Time,’” but that her latest works are getting “too political

It put me right off – not abused children, no no! – daytime TV, I mean. I’m starting to think that the Loose Women are more dangerous than they first appear. A recent episode involved members of McFly coming on stage with their trousers ’round their ankles because the Women had been talking about how much they like bottoms. They proceeded to ask the hapless boy band which member had the nicest bum. Now, if you’re in a boy band, having a nice bum is quite important. If one member has a particularly noteworthy one, it’s probably going to be a source of tension. Asking McFly to compare derriere notes is a bit like asking all the members of Girls Aloud, plus Lily Allen, to weigh themselves on live television. Their website describes the Loose Women as ‘candid’; I think perverse would be more accurate.

I blame their programme for warping my perspective, leading directly to the misreading of the Childline slogan. Maybe I should write to Childline and explain my anxiety, although campaigning against Loose Women might be an unacceptable deviation from campaigning to protect abused children. And I’m pretty sure, despite the pain the Loose Women have inflicted upon me, that I no longer qualify as a child, so I’m not really the demographic they’re looking to help out, am I? I’ll call someone else —the Good Samaritans? That Frank drug helpline? Lorraine Kelly?

I only keep track of my housemates through the state of the carpets. We have a policy against vacuuming, which means that you can tell who’s been hanging around by the imprints they leave in close to a year’s worth of accumulated dust. Lately, there have mostly been small, fawn-like tracks – a sure sign that Holly’s been sneakily watching the Jeremy Kyle show again – and a few man-size feet shapes outlined in cigarette ash: Jack’s back. Footsteps on my ceiling mean Sophie is home and hearing the Beatles across the hallway means Rebecca’s in. A full fridge means five housemates co-existing and over the weeks I’ve developed a sense of the nuances of fullness which means that, at any one time, I can tell you how many people are at home, even if I haven’t physically seen them.

The other day, I realised that I don’t have a relationship with my housemates; instead, I spy on them. Actually classing this as a realisation is perhaps a bit rich; it’s more of a reframing on my part and one which is well worth it. Being a spy is much cooler than being antisocial. Although I suppose that only works if the reason you’re being antisocial in the first place is not just because of the fact that you’re a spy. I’m being antisocial because it’s finals time.

The spy in The Lives of Others, a spy film (ish) that I saw recently, is very sad, lonely, bitter and twisted until he stops being a spy. In fact, he never really gets over the whole spy experience. Conclusion: being a spy is only a good idea if it’s just for fun, to take your mind off a duller reality, an alternative to actual socialising when extraneous circumstances rule it out.
I’ve been practising. Some tips: invest in lace curtains which you can see through – they’re like domestic one-way mirrors. Also, flicking them feels distinctly spy-like – a classic move. Thick glasses will make people think you can’t see when you take them off, and encourage them to let their guard down and do telling things while you’re around. Oh, and a trench-coat you can hunch under, maybe in grey.

A good place to start is the relevant letterbox. Post tells you loads. For example, if someone gets Men’s Health delivered, you can make certain assumptions. Depending on how committed they are, Men’s Health readers range from those who get up at 2am to drink protein shakes to those who spend all their time and effort trying to trick girls into having sex with them. Men’s Health reveals the little known fact that, if you’re a boy, you don’t ever actually like girls, you just convince them that you do so that they’ll give you right of way on the slip road to the sex autobahn. Extra surveillance for those types. A step up from noting the type of post your subject receives would be actually reading their mail. I haven’t gone that far yet. I think steaming envelopes is for the career spy only.

The library is a good place to combine recreational spying with more productive behaviour. Library desks can be very informative. The type of books, how many there are, the neatness of note-taking – it’s all wordless communication. The other day I saw one girl who’d brought in her own desk tidy. (I think she might get a first.) She had a paper shredder as well, that she periodically fed notes into. If you see her, steal from her out-tray before she gets around to disposal time, ok? Here’s betting genius is getting torn up by that stubborn little metal box. At the other extreme, unless this person is doing a media studies course, reading Heat is not going to help, even if you are reading it in the library.

If frivolous spying gets you hooked, I suggest you contact MI5. They recently carried out a big operation which involved sneaking into a storage facility and exchanging half a tonne of fertiliser for half a tonne of cat litter. Actually, I wonder if it was still half a tonne – the equivalent volume of cat litter might not be as heavy, or perhaps it’s heavier, as the fertilizer. This is the kind of stuff you’d know if you were a career spy.

I don’t recommend it though; my idea is definitely to get back to socialising – to wash that spy right outta my hair, along with the 1980s, cowboys and philosophy. Spying might be more fun, but health-wise it’s the poor-man’s alternative to conversation. I can’t wait to rejoin the madding crowd.

I’ve also seen some late-night TV. A film where Richard E. Grant cultivates a talking boil on his neck and has to start wearing a wine carton on his head so his facial movements won’t wake it up. He starts off as an advertising executive and if that’s not a clear hint about unsavoury career paths, I don’t know what is.

And Wayne’s World was on. Cathartic and didactic in equal measure. ‘Are you mental?’ Wayne says. ‘Are you mental?’ My response is along the line of hahahaha, oh god, yes, a bit, hahaha, cry cry cry, hahahaha. The film moves on swiftly to Alice Cooper being Zen. And then it’s Party Time, Party Time. Just what we all need.

Occasionally, if you asked him at the wrong time, my Dad would pretend not to know things, but I always knew he was just bluffing because he couldn’t be bothered to listen to what I was asking. I still remember really specific stuff that I learnt from him. Like what ‘in fact’ means. He told me that. I was reading a Mr Men book and it came up. I think it was Mr. Tickle: ‘In fact, Mr. Tickle’s arms were so long, he could reach all the way to town’ etc. Sweet, right?

I had similar faith in some of my primary school teachers. I had one called Miss Swan who I thought was infallible. I don’t think she enjoyed it all too much. I once asked her what ‘orgy’ meant – to her credit she calmly replied, “lots of people having sexual intercourse all at once” – and once I inadvertently called her fat. I think my thought process was something like: ‘She knows everything, I can’t touch her, what difference does it make to the human equivalent of the best computer ever if I think she’s a bit large?’ I was such a little shit, I now realise. I just sort of said “You’re quite fat, aren’t you, Miss?” And then I walked off.

Anyway, the reason I’m nostalgically longing for those childhood days when the answers to everything were just questions away is because at the moment I’m preoccupied with trying to justify my gangsta rap habit. It’s really difficult. I especially love Notorious. All those guys who say Tupac was better are just silly. Tupac was lame and took himself far too seriously. Did he ever let little kids imitate him in his videos? No no no, he was all ‘Look at me, look at meeee!’ Loser. Anyway, Notorious. So, he’s a dude right? Awesome at making things you’d never expect to rhyme go together, like ‘how’ and ‘cow’. For example, ‘birthday’ and ‘thirs-tay’ – who knew!
I’m not dumb, it’s not that I don’t know that he raps really ridiculous things. I’m just over-privileged and so feel distanced enough to laugh instead of cry. It’s terrible really. A symbol of bourgeois limp moral standing. I feel bad. Sort of. I try. But he says it so funky! I’m the worst kind of rich kid ever. I’m so smug that I think bitches and hoes and machine gun funks are ironic.

It’s like when my brother and I met Dizzee Rascal. We were at a festival in Norway and bumped into/stalked him at a bar. We thought we’d bond with the real Dizzee, discuss the self-reflexivity of his work and shit. No no no, it turns out. I said “So, we loved your show” – note the usage of ‘show’ here; show, not reality, I thought. Naïve little rich girl – “how do you like Norway?”

“I like the wimmin innit,” he said. And then he looked down my top. I was so sad.
Now, if I had come across Notorious at age seven – before I’d become disillusioned by seeing Miss Swan parking her car in the disabled space and I’d realised that my Dad makes a lot of things up out of thin air and then pretends to have read them somewhere – I would not be in this sticky situation. I would have just asked either of them: “Guys, is it ok to be misogynistic, glamorise gun violence and drugs, promote materialism and gang culture?” They would both have said, “No. You can’t have that CD and nor may you like it.” I would have said “OK then,” and that would have been that. No guilty pleasure at the sheer joy which ‘Honeys play me close like butter plays toast’ inspires. Back when I believed my elders blindly, I didn’t have to think about this stuff. I hate thinking for myself.

It’s that whole irony-as-an excuse thing. You can’t have a mullet and be all like, “Well, actually I’m quoting Hasselhoff in a sardonic way.” If you’re sporting a mullet, as my friend Paul says, “It is never ironic, only moronic. Irony is a privilege that takes effort, not something to play with willy nilly in a ludicrously short-sided long-backed way.” I’m just going to have to admit that I really like some grime and gangsta rap. The fact that it doesn’t fit in with my super-enlightened literature student image of myself is something I’m going to have to live with, honestly, in a non-ironic way.

I bought the censored version of Notorious’s greatest hits recently. I think that’s a good first step. It’s like starring out letters in swear-words; although they’re not with us, we know that they’re there in spirit.
RIP Blud.

Airing my dirtiest laundry

How weird is too weird? Well, firstly, let me appeal to that great literary thinker James Joyce. He had this to say: “The smallest things give me a great cockstand – a whorish movement of your mouth, a little brown stain on the seat of your white drawers, a sudden dirty word spluttered out by your wet lips, a sudden immodest noise made by your behind and then a bad smell slowly curling up out of your backside.”

You’d be surprised what happens between the sheets of closed books. Now, I don’t want to put Joyce on a pedestal, but he does apply ‘belles-lettres’ to fart-sniffing. Well, perhaps Joyce voices the desires of more people than we’d care to think.

The point is that it becomes uncomfortable when it’s all out in the open, upwind of the general public. A new reason for a ‘Room of One’s Own’ perhaps. Well, who am I to talk? I did spend an evening making up new verses to the diarrhoea song. The pinnacle of our success was:
When you’re starting to feel
moist,
And you’re thinking like James
Joyce
Diarrhoea! Diarrhoea!

Clearly, there is a compulsion to talk about the illicit in public; I am living testament. The smell of that evening still leaves a sour taste between my ‘wet lips’. But that was okay because we distanced ourselves, making a joke of things that we were secretly delighted to voice.
Be true to yourself and your desire to air your dirty laundry. Weird is fine. Just don’t commit it to paper because, as Joyce now knows, it will come back to bite you; sensuously, between the frills.

But perhaps I’m just being presumptuous. They might not have been referring to me at all. Maybe they meant ‘Nan’ like affectionate-term-for-a-grandmother Nan? Maybe the comment leaver just has a particularly embarrassing gran? Maybe it’s rhyming slang?

I don’t know, but I’m trying to get over it, and on a productive note, it has got me thinking about my name. (Please pay attention here to the fact that I did not try to advertise my Shakespeare knowledge and say, “What’s in a name?” – I’m above that shit. Although I might use is as a nice little linking phrase later – indulge me).

My housemate thinks looks are the single most informing influence on how we perceive people. I’m not so sure. I think names are important too. They can tell you something about the family values that form a person’s foundations. They can tell you something about attitudes; for instance if someone goes by their initials or by their surname, uses a nickname or abbreviation – these habits reflect personality.

My name was an accident. My parents were going to call me Poppy, but when junkies started stealing the namesake flowers from their front garden, they decided it was just too loaded a title. Instead, they went for Penelope, my dad because he secretly hoped I’d marry a man who would bring a massive bow and arrow into the family, my mum because she hoped I’d weave tapestries. And be super chaste.

It turned out to be a tough name to put into practice, however, as my mum could never quite pronounce it (Pen-el-OH-pee, she used to say) and because my big brother, only one-and-a-half when I was born, would just respond “Naaaaan” when asked to say his new sister’s name. At this point, my mother luckily ‘remembered’ that on her side of the family, a girl child is named Nancy every second generation. She’s always been a one for inventing heritage to make things go her way. So Nancy it was to be. Unfortunately, they’d already written Penelope on my birth certificate, so I got both.

It takes maturity to appreciate the value of a gimmick like ‘Nancy Penelope Langfeldt-Flory’. You know how long it takes me to sign a check? A really long time. I always hated my full name (and had trouble spelling it) and adopted my brotherly baptism ‘Nan’ all the way through school. I still use it now, mostly. Some people think it’s an odd choice, as it can lead to confusion when people meet me and I’m not 84 and don’t carry a cane. For a while, as an excuse, I told people I was named after Nan Goldin and that my parents used to hang out with Andy Warhol. But I have realised nobody believes me when I say things like that, and being caught in a lie is worse than having a name that means old person.

Using Nan has supplied me with numerous comedy moments, like when I met a friend of a friend. I told him my name, he told me I looked like his grandma. Haha! Then I remember the first time I met my friend Phil’s twin Paul, I said, ‘Hi, Phil’ and Paul said, ‘Oh I’m not Phil, I’m Paul.’ As I didn’t realised Phil had a twin, I just assumed I’d been calling him the wrong name for a whole year and that my stupidity had just now become so annoying that he’d been compelled to clear up my error. The laughs multiply exponentially when this story is repeated by others than myself and people think that it was Phil’s nan, as in his grandmother, who made the mistake of thinking, for 21 years, that her twin grandsons were in fact the same person.c Also, when I was working in Tang Hall Working Men’s Club for New Year 2006, I bonded with the clientele by letting them all call me Nan Bread. That was the best.

So it’s not so bad, but I am a little worried if ‘Nan’’s meanings now include social suicide. What if next time I meet the friend of a friend of a friend and introduce myself, they move seats, worried I might vomit on/grope/bore them? Maybe I should start using my full legal title. It could be like a coming of age thing, and who knows, people might start taking me seriously?

Since Romeo and Juliet both die at the end of the play, it could be argued that, actually, there is quite a lot in a name, since having the wrong one might get you killed. But hey, I could have been stuck with Poppy and turned out to be some kind of ugly sentinel for about a thousand Notting Hill toddlers. Once again, be thankful for the small things.

Even better, have someone give you such a shirt as a present. That way you can be all coy, like, “I got this shirt for my birthday and it’s just such nice material and I don’t want to offend my friends by not wearing it. It’s a shame it doesn’t have any buttons up at the top here, but if you can cope with my chest then I suppose I can too.” Skin without the sin – SEX!

Another thing you can do to this end is wear Lycra and just pretend you’re going to a fancy dress party later. You can tell people that you see dressing up as, say, a big old rock star as a strict ideological commitment. Misrepresentation can be a dangerous thing, and if Axel Rose wore Lycra then, dammit, so must I! If Lycra is not so much a choice as an obligation, people won’t think you’re being cocky, just dutiful. The sexy bit is merely a happy coincidence that didn’t even cross your mind when you were gazing into the looking glass – only to spot anachronisms, of course.

It works because people don’t feel like they’re being drawn in. No one likes sexiness when it’s being forced upon them. They like to feel they’ve independently spotted a beautiful quality that comes from within, not as if they’ve had pheromones sprayed in their faces. So no more excuses please, University of York, let’s bring sexy back.

Entering 2007, two of my friends have gone teetotal, one seems to have stopped leaving the house, all of them have given up smoking (bar one who has vowed to smoke more – she likes to succeed), and most people have promised to do more work, recycle more, write letters to political prisoners etc. Looking over my list, it includes ‘stop lying’, ‘stop stealing people’s food’, and ‘talk about yourself less’. What they add up to is ‘become a different person’. If I stopped lying and talking about myself, I’d have to shut up completely. The stopping part is all very well, but if you have nothing to fill the void you might as well promise to stop existing.

Hell, forget resolutions. In your early twenties the brand new soul quest, for the majority, extends beyond new year’s day. At least once a term during my time at York I’ve had an existential crisis of some kind, and I use the term existential loosely here. It’s a brilliant word for romanticising the very average trials and tribulations of an overly dramatic literature student, especially when combined with a penchant for fairy lights, candles and Erik Satie. Looking back on my melancholy indulgences, they were quite fun really, and always ended with a smug feeling of invigorated self-knowledge.

An episode in the Nan saga kicked off last term when I rejected my original post-graduation plan. Said plan was to move to the city to be a hedonist/typist before falling into a lovely career/lottery success, all in time to buy lots of rich clothes and move on from shabby chic before 30. I won’t go into details but my crisis culminated in a trip to Sweden in the second week of the new year. The purpose was to check out a folk high school I’m considering going to, but turned into a dissection of my reasons for wanting to flee, not just York, but the country, in favour of a very small Swedish village so small that its main mode of representation to the outside world is a ryvita-type flatbread produced there.

This latest installment has had surprising results. You know love-hate relationships? Well I’ve sort of had one of those with York, except without the love. And no, that’s not a convoluted way of saying I hate the place. Let’s just say, if there were a prize for whinging about York, I would bag it, hands down, with perhaps an extra mention for being particularly proficient: ‘there’s nothing to do, Toffs is shit, Ziggy’s makes me cry, York’s too small, York’s in England’. The main factor in all this, I’m beginning to realise, is that it allows the hypothesis, “everything is York’s fault, I will be better in a more exciting place.” Moving will perfect my soul, currently inhibited because within a 10 mile radius, a list of ‘what can you see’ reads, from most to least: 1. Hen parties; 2. Public school boy hair; 5 zillion. Winter-proof outdoor clothing.

The surprising truths that my trip forced me to admit are: a) moving will not make me the best person ever, and b) there are lots of good things about my life in York. When I got back to Stockholm, from aforementioned tiny village, I made a different sort of list, two actually. One of good things and one of bad things. The bad things list was heavily influenced by the reality show on in the background called The Virgin Diaries, involving a number of really gross teenagers broadcasting their desperate attempts to get horizontal. The diarist in question was Craig from Essex. His favourite things were “boys, girls, snogging, clubbing and shopping” and so all five items head my bad list, whilst “I didn’t grow up in Essex” made first place on the plus side.

More constructive things are also found, however; on the good list, things like my bicycle, which I love but probably couldn’t take to Sweden. Also, my organic vegetable box, my record player, my big mirror, living room and kitchen. All things I would have to leave behind. Then a long list of people, the English language, my family and my independence. On the bad list, Swedish porno and the possibility that going to craft college might give my life the unpleasant flavour of Demi Moore in Ghost.

My lists have shown that the things I enjoy are, for the most part, where I am. Choices, ultimately, have to be based on the prospect of an enjoyable lifestyle, rather than the naïve hope that remote countryside-induced introspection might make you into some sort of divine being. So I may have to resign myself to the soul I’ve got, but at least I’m not a 16 year old from Essex trying (and failing) to get laid before my birthday. And nor, I can safely say, will I ever be – be thankful for small things.

A case in point. My mamma, bless her, is a bit foreign. Her English is close to perfect but she makes the occasional slip up. My favourites include an email she sent to my brother and I, the subject line of which read “Hello you gays!!!” This Christmas we were making macaroons until mum realised that she had forgotten to buy the designated coconut. Very sweet really, but how did my sister and I react? We laughed in her face. We cried, “Mamma you’re so silly, it’s desiccated, not designated! Hahaha.”

Then, we reported the mistake to the rest of the family so they could do the same. Six is a lot of people laughing at a second language speaker. If it had been someone I’m not related to, I’d have been far more subtle about correcting them and hardly have laughed at all. My dad was similarly victimised, and we were most disparaging about the effort he’d put in to make Christmas enjoyable. We laughed at his quality survey of mince pies, at his stock phrase “it’s nearly all organic” and the weeks he’d spent feeding the Christmas cake brandy.

Resolving to stop lying? I need to get my priorities in order and start being nice to two people who took it upon themselves to change my nappies. Never mind your parents fucking you up, what about your children?

Brought to my attention by December’s edition of Vogue magazine – apparently it’s being resurrected as a “stylishly invisible alternative to a fence, for those with a garden and a park” – the ha-ha originates in the 18th century, and proves the vindictive streak I’ve always suspected in landscapers. Designed by Charles Bridgeman, it is “an ‘invisible’ ditch, first used to separate Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park.” Its name comes from the possibility of the ditch being disguised, an unsuspecting promenader falling into it – evoking ‘ha-ha’ in the poor thing’s audience. Now isn’t that just Schadenfreude embodied?

Excited by this revelation, I skipped off to tell my friends Jood and Methane all about it. “Guys!” I said, filled with the buzz of superiority which comes from knowing something other people don’t know.

“I’ve found evidence of a native, organic construction of Schadenfreude! It’s this thing called a ha-ha ditch!”

“Wow,” said Methane but Jood cut me short.

“Oh a ha-ha, of course I know what a ha-ha is.” My buzz was silenced as my hopes of winning a round of one-upmanship were quashed. It was as if I’d unknowingly stumbled straight into a metaphorical ha-ha of my own and Jood was staring down at me, laughing away.

The whole episode got me thinking that the last year of university is full of these metaphorical ha-has. Everyone’s lives stand to go in a totally new direction after graduation and we’re secretly all hoping that it will be a good, successful one. A direction that might lead us to having to face Vogue’s dilemma of owning both a garden and a park, rather than one that leads to sleeping on the streets, trying to blag a few pennies with a big sign which reads “My parents got killed by ninjas. Please help.” All this anxiety about the future makes for a student community which enjoys people corpsing during presentations or failing to meet deadlines or not getting employed; in the mind’s ha-ha they go! Perhaps mostly because it make the ranks of the unsuccessful seem a less lonely place to end up.

Oh dear, I don’t mean to support the narrow definition of success it’s all to easy to adopt as a finalist. Of course it’s not all about money and status, but, come July, we will all be released into the fabled real world and be faced with the prospect of making something of ourselves. However we define that something, we all want it and when people around us fail hurdles in their way (or fall in ditches for that matter) there is a part of us which cries out: ha-ha! The ethos being, if they don’t make it, maybe I will and it will be less bad if I screw up because they have too.

Now I really don’t think that all this ha-haing is a very nice way to go through the graduation process. I’m sure things would be far more pleasant if we were all a bit more generous to each other. But there is no denial of the tension, pre-emptive of the end of the education safety net, which is travelling in great waves through the class of 2007 – and how are we to release it if not through mental ha-has? I think the key lies in individuals being less afraid of failure and having more self-belief. My unlikely guru in this is Fergie, the perma-young singer for The Black Eyed Peas. Quote of the month is: “Singing is a gift from God, and when people say I can’t sing, it’s kind of like insulting God.”

It really doesn’t get much more fool-proof than that, does it? Hand over responsibility for your ambitions to someone else – it doesn’t have to be an all knowing deity, it could be your mother, or your pet dog, or perhaps your favourite celebrity. Then, when you balls it up, you can blame them, which takes the pressure off and means you’ll have the charitable magnitude to be nicer to other people and not shove them in your mental ha-ha when things go wrong for them. Whilst laying the blame for not getting into the foreign office’s fast track programme at Noel Edmund’s door won’t bring you any closer to actually becoming a diplomat, it will make the whole experience a little less threatening.

I’ve decided to give Jood the honour of being my life patron. I know this isn’t in the spirit of the thing but I’d quite like to let her take on the burden of all my short-comings. Quote of the month take two: Nan is a gift from Jood, any problems, talk to the latter.

Not having the clout to get an actual journalist, even a student one, to ask me incisive and overly personal questions, I’m just going to answer the ones Rosanna Greenstreet asked Nicole Appleton. Here goes:

What is your most treasured possession?
My face.

Would you rather be clever and ugly, or thick and attractive?
Thick and super hot!

What is the worst thing anyone’s ever said to you?
No way are you too damn popular.

What do you owe your parents?
I owe my dad a birthday present.

Who would you invite to your dream dinner party?
I’d invite Michael Jackson and Jarvis Cocker and try and make them fight.

What song would you like played at your funeral?
‘I have a Ghost, Now What?’ By Jaga Jazzist – good one right?

How would you like to be remembered?
As popular.

What is the most important lesson life has taught you?
Never trust an aspiring journalist.

The first few weeks back at uni after the summer holidays are always full of parties. Everyone who came of age in the break has to celebrate it, then there are housewarming parties for everyone who has moved house, welcome back parties for students returning from foreign exchanges, end of summer parties, beginning of autumn parties, Halloween parties, bonfire night parties and completion of essays/exams parties. On top of all these calendar specific events there is the constant flow of dinner parties, tea parties and trips to the pub that turn into parties.

Of course the other type of party which becomes an inevitable feature of the first few weeks back is the non-attended party. The incredible volume of plastic cups and cheap wine or cordoned-off areas of bars that are up for grabs make it near impossible to maintain a good attendance record. University is the opposite of those primary school days when the only parties available were your classmates’ birthdays.

Say there were 30 kids in your class; probably only about 18 of them will have been socially adept enough to throw a party at all, and possibly only 15 of these had the means to provide a high calibre goody bag that would ensure attendance. Give or take a couple of kids who were particularly socially precocious, that was only about 2 weeks worth of parties a year, and there were no guarantees you would be getting invited to all of them. If only 4% of your year involved parties, you did not fanny about, even if it was awkward and you had to cancel Brownies, you made time to celebrate. A seven-year-old me took Winnie the Pooh-party invitation notelets a whole lot more seriously than a 20-year-old me takes a Facebook event invitation.

Seven-year-old me, licking my wounds at home on a Saturday afternoon (that’s another thing, remember when parties weren’t at night?), because Amy Jones wouldn’t invite me to her eighth birthday – she thought I copied her book report – couldn’t have imagined staying home on a Saturday night out of sheer party exhaustion. Staying up all night drinking and, horror of horrors, smoking, can make the daytime a singularly unpleasant experience, which, in the third year of an extremely debt inducing degree, is not something I’m sure I have time for. Cutting down on parties is hard to do, however. Running around the Willow with a fake moustache, or getting drunk to the point where you start inventing fake love affairs, is more enticing than staying in with a fat book and a good conscience.

I reached the point of no return, however, the day I didn’t get dressed. I woke up on Friday morning, still wearing my dress from the night before, cuddling my laptop on which Spaceballs had been playing on repeat all night long. I had decided to watch it when I got in at 3am in the morning to prove to myself that I was perfectly sober and sensible (surely my choice of film is the first clue in exposing this as complete bollocks), and passed out before the opening shot. It hadn’t disturbed me at all but the poor girl who has the pleasure of using my ceiling as her floor, couldn’t sleep for sci fi. As the day progressed, I just didn’t get changed and that evening, I found myself drinking in the same pub I’d been in the night before, in the same clothes I’d been wearing the night before. The icing on the cake came in the fact that my fake moustache wasn’t drawn on fresh, the one from the night before just needed a little touching up and I was ready to go. Not only a 48 hour outfit, but a 48 hour eyeliner moustache too, have led me to the conclusion that non-attended parties are the new party.

The etiquette of non-attendance is a difficult one to judge. No one complains if you show up hours late, pissed, sporting a tit tattoo and have in fact not been invited at all, but not going to parties might just lose you all your friends. Student values include a clause that states no party, no friends. If you don’t go to parties, especially birthday parties, you are a rude, unsociable kill joy and a bit lame. However if I keep going to parties, might I end up hermetically sealed into a single outfit, with a full beard of eyeliner and my puckered breasts covered in ink?

Maybe the primary school percentage thing wasn’t such a bad idea. 4% seems a bit tight, and since England does have the unhappiest children in Europe I wouldn’t want to emulate their lifestyles, but 40% seems fair – parties would still be in the minority. 40% party, 60% getting dressed and reading fat books. And then it would be clear to everyone that my non-attended parties were part of a strict, scientific regime of life style improvement rather than a lack of personality, and I’d be able to have my cake and eat it too. Oh I am pleased, so pleased, I might just have to have a party.

And it’s not just drunken party antics that can get you down; anything from falling off your bike or being particularly obnoxious in a seminar gets that paranoia buzzing. The combination of youthful naiveté, an overactive imagination and an exaggerated sense of self-importance can make existing at all seem an offence.

One of my least favourite things to do is talk on the phone. I hate it; without fail, it makes me blush. Face to face, people can see your narcissistic nerves, making you speak like a grammatically inept loser, in the tremble of your wrist; over the phone, they just think you’re stupid. The telephone takes away that reassuring feeling that everyone else is equally self-obsessed and won’t notice all your little slip-ups as they’re too busy mentally noting their own.

When I’m old and zen, I hope to call people all the time, sometimes even when I don’t need something – just to chat. I like to think that looking back on my undergraduate years I’ll realise that what I learnt in three years of study was not how to deconstruct constructivists, but how to cope with myself. Even when I ask someone returning from Venice, ‘Oh lovely, don’t you love Austria’, or when I smash things in bars and get a standing ovation, I’ll just sigh and remember that my cats will always love me, so long as I keep feeding them anyway.

Despite the similarity in names, old York has no special place in either the historical or present day heart of the New version: New York has two international airports, York has one train station; New York has five boroughs, York has South and North Bank. I suppose, if the rumours are true, York is home to 365 pubs – an impressive number – but somehow it’s not hard to believe that New York City, with its eight million residents, could have enough bars to beat us there too.

Any connection is even more tenuous when you find out that the ‘York’ part of America’s most iconic East Coast city’s name has little to do with the English city. New York was apparently christened in honour of King James II when he was Duke of York. But James was born in London, not York, and spent a good deal of his life in France, Spain and Belgium escaping religious persecution. It’s pretty certain he didn’t spend a lot of time hanging out within the city walls. The fact that New York’s sister city in the UK is not its eponymous predecessor, but London instead, says it all. Even if New York had earned its name from remarkable parallels between itself and York back in 1664 when it first adopted the moniker, the city that we know today was entirely different. It started out as a modest farming settlement on the tip of Manhattan Island, populated by farmers and milkmaids rather than haute couture-wearing business people and avant-garde artists.

So how does it change your tourist experience when you go to a place with such an international presence? Arriving in New York, you don’t just recognise it from your guidebook, you see a lifetime of movies and TV shows. The city is home to much of the world’s greatest art, it’s where hip hop -arguably the most widespread youth culture in the world today – dropped its first beats. You’ve seen it in fashion magazines, read about it in novels and followed its stock exchange. It’s where the ‘War on Terror’ began, with the tragic events of 11th September 2001 now themselves entering the international public sphere with the release of Oliver Stone’s forthcoming docu-drama, The World Trade Centre. When you go to New York, you go to the origin of modern pop culture, the headquarters of the cultural hegemony. Everyday life for New Yorkers is the stuff of legends for plain old York residents.

When I went to the city during the Easter holiday, I found that the expectations I carried with me made all my experiences much more striking. Usually, when travelling, you just immerse yourself in the place and enjoy the novelties, be they sunshine, historical artefacts, nightlife, or food; in New York, everything is either a confirmation or subversion of pre-conceived ideas, so you’re super-conscious the whole time. The disappointments of New York arise when the outside world’s myth-making gets ahead of itself and idealises the city’s actual reality. It’s easy to forget that New York is a living, breathing place. It still has the quotidian, unlike, for instance, Venice, another renowned city, which nobody really lives in anymore. New York is what Venice might have been in the days of the silk route, when it was a centre of commerce and culture.

Culture is something New York is in no way short of. Novelist Tom Wolfe once said, in a rare, enlightened moment, ‘culture just seems to be in the air, like part of the weather’. Some of Kandinsky’s most stunning work was commissioned to hang in the lobby of an exclusive apartment building. Anywhere else, you’d have Ikea prints, but in the Big Apple, you have genuine art in the true sense of the word. Chagalls hang in the Metropolitan Opera House and one of the most impressive galleries, the Frick, was originally a private home. Its owner, an über successful businessman, spent his money on collecting one of the most extensive private collections of old masters in the world. And somehow it doesn’t seem too strange, the prospect of all those wonderful paintings decorating the walls of his family home. New York is the real thing, not only in a coca cola sense; it’s where every other major city takes its cue.

In the same vein, while I was there, a rainy evening trip to the cinema led to an encounter with none other than Steve Buscemi. The actor/director made an appearance at a screening of Lonesome Jim, a film he directed, which premiered at the Sundance film festival but has only just landed a distribution deal. In true New York style, no one but my companion and I were awed by the fact that a man who appeared in The Big Lebowski and Reservoir Dogs was standing in front of us. They just got on with it, asked him a few questions, didn’t take any photographs with stupidly bright flash guns; they were nothing short of cool. I can’t really see Buscemi casually appearing at the Odeon, or a York audience displaying similar restraint if ever he did.

New York’s universities are similarly incredible to the outside viewer, but calmly accepted by native students. I stayed at Columbia with two friends from York University who are completing an exchange year there. The Columbia library is pretty much solid marble and definitely contains over a zillion books. They are kept in ‘the stacks’, a series of low-ceilinged rooms ‘stacked’ on top of one another, filled with books. The stacks are like huge bookshelves, except instead of individual volumes, they hold whole bookcases. My host explained that one of the must-dos for Columbia students before they graduate is have steamy sex in the stacks. Can you imagine a corner of the J.B.Morrell being remote enough for carnal exploration? I think not. At Columbia, however, there are rooms no one has ever been into; it’s actively conducive to the more racy kind of study break.

Then there’s the local park. New York’s version, Central Park, is actually bigger than Monaco. (Yes, than a country.) I spent several days exploring, visiting the turtle pond, the Jackie Onasiss reservoir, the Swedish puppet theatre and the zoo. Central Park is an oasis of calm in such a frenetic city and is made all the more striking by the fact that, deep in greenery, you’ll suddenly spot the spire of the Empire State building poking up between trees.

As New York is so densely packed with skyscrapers, its parks are the only places where the sun shines comprehensively. Elsewhere, there is always shade on one side of the street and then there are those slightly unsettling times when light, out of nowhere, streams up the avenues and avoids the cross-town streets almost entirely.

Another of the city’s odd features is the incredibly sharp borders between different parts of town. One block makes all the difference between areas. The city is divided by cultures – there’s Chinatown, Little Italy, Spanish Harlem or El Barrio, and Jewish areas. There are also divides between hip and arty places, old money quarters like the Westside 70s or the financial district. New York’s artistic part of town – and by that I mean the ultra hip, leotard wearing quarter that used to be lower East side – has moved. I made the trip, to Williamsburg, Brooklyn. On Manhattan itself there’s broadly downtown and uptown, east and west, all surrounding Central Park. Downtown and east are cooler than uptown and west, although the latter two do have their charms. Then, at the top of the island, there’s Harlem, which is a whole other story.

Spending a day in Harlem is what seriously alerts you to the fact that New York is a real place, not a theme park. Harlem’s main landmark is Strivers Row, a strip of wonderfully preserved brown stones, encompassing the best of New York architecture. The row has its origins in the days of the Harlem renaissance when African Americans established a rich, artistic community in the area. The beautiful houses were reserved (somewhat obviously) for the real strivers, who worked to extreme lengths to achieve successes, usually barred from their community by the institutional racism of the time. Harlem today, despite being only a few streets up from Columbia (one of the most prestigious, and expensive, tertiary institutions in the world) is run down and poor, populated almost exclusively by disadvantaged African and Hispanic communities. It doesn’t give the impression that New York’s ‘melting pot’ (that term was coined about the city) is actually blending particularly well. Although there aren’t exclusively white neighbourhoods so much, it’s obvious that poor New Yorkers are still black New Yorkers.

Tourists are encouraged to take bus tours through Harlem rather than walk the streets. The area is probably a lot more typical of America than the bright lights of Manhattan and it seems wrong that most visitors will avoid it, keeping to the usual landmarks. While places like Times Square and St Mark’s Place work to maintain mythical New York, Harlem can’t afford such a luxury. Despite a brand new shopping complex, featuring H&M rather than New York’s more exclusive labels, and new efforts to pump some money into the neighbourhood, the difference in the standard of living between 116th and 125th streets, (separated by just one subway stop) is clear.

The standard line is that New York presents ‘an embarrassment of riches’. The sheer variety available in the city is ridiculous: every time I ordered food I had a little crisis of confidence and ended up just choosing the first thing on the menu; I went to supermarkets bigger than my hometown. However, the phrase can be read in another way: the ‘embarrassment’ is the uneven distribution of New York’s riches. It is a city of extremes where people sleep on the streets outside apartment buildings decorated with Kandinskys; where the sun shines fiercely on one side of street, leaving the other in darkness. If New York has any similarities with Disney Land, I certainly didn’t see them. There is no techni-colour simplicity to the Big Apple, as much as the rest of the world would love it to be so.

The Five Boroughs of New York City

The Bronx
Hip hop began in this area, which is characterised by poverty and crime.

Brooklyn
Recently it has become a haven for artists.

Manhattan
Famed for its impressive skyline, this island contains the most tourist
attractions.

Queens
Birthplace of director Martin Scorsese and site of the Shea Stadium – home of baseball’s New York Mets.

Staten Island
The forgotten borough’s ferry is popular for its view of the Statue of Liberty.

MySpace.com is, according to the wonderful Wikipedia, the ‘world’s fifth most popular English-language website and the eighth most popular in the world’. Created in July 2003 by a graduate from UCLA and UC Berkeley, called Tom Anderson, and currently run by Chris DeWolfe, the company behind the website employs 250 people (though goodness knows what they do) and has a yearly revenue of approximately 20 million US dollars. Users can register for free and are then able to upload information, pictures, music and text, which can be accessed by other internet surfers and commented on or downloaded by fellow MySpace members.

Once you register, you can start building up a profile, listing your various interests – general, music, film – your personal data – name, age, status, sexuality, smoker or not etc. Users can upload different backgrounds and soundtracks to their profile; there is even a MySpace profile-editing programme which helps you to beautify your online personality. Members become ‘friends’ by sending and accepting friend requests and once two profiles are thus linked you can send each other messages. This interaction happens between complete strangers who find other members with common interests and also between people who are already friends, as an alternative to phone calls or MSN, and as a way to stay in touch over long distances. Some people have taken to giving out their MySpace URL, over their phone number or email, when they meet someone new. It is a slightly less personal, less intense thing to give out to a stranger, and much easier to screen. Members can also write blogs which their cyber friends can read.

Recently, I’ve been forced to create a MySpace profile of my very own. Denying that you actually want to get involved in the revolution that is myspace.com is, of course, all part of the ritual. My excuse was that my budding musician of a brother, using the website to launch his tunes, needed more friends; his single figure sum was getting him down. Being a music maker is pretty much the only noble reason for creating a profile; everyone else (cool) takes an ironic attitude to the cyberspace phenomenon, acknowledging the geek value whilst loving it really. A popular excuse is that you need to be a member to get access to more tunes; an acquaintance defends herself by explaining that constructing her extensive profile kept her entertained in a boring summer job.

So, in the interests of maintaining my disinterested attitude, I set out to limit my involvement in the network to just one friend – my loner brother. Unfortunately, this plan was quickly foiled when I realised that Tom, the American who started the whole thing, automatically becomes your friend when you sign up. Suddenly I had two friends! I quickly deleted Tom and for a couple of days I was feeling nicely aloof about the whole thing, “MySpace? Yeah, I’m down with that, a necessary evil of the 21st century music industry, whatever”. Things started getting complicated when I signed in (only to add a supportive comment to my brother’s profile) to find a little envelope icon on the right of my screen, with the words ‘new friend request’ in cute type beside it. My one-friend manifesto was looking shaky. The slightly plaintive phrasing on MySpace made things difficult: ‘Benjamin wants to be your friend, accept or deny?’ If I had not pressed ‘accept’ the Benjamin in question, unaware of my one-friend plan, would have received a curt little message, ‘Nancy Penelope has denied your friendship request’, and possibly would never have spoken to me again. I was back to two friends, and this time deletion wasn’t an option.

My plan was further ground into the dust when my housemate decided to create a profile for himself. I, in my usual obnoxious manner, had trumpeted my morally superior one-friend policy around the flat, although, in my defence, I did quieten down when the Benjamin issue occurred. My sweetheart housemate asked me if there was any way I could be his friend without him stealing my (by now defunct) one-friend-thunder by being mine. Obviously, I immediately caved, and now I have three friends. This puts me in a wonderful situation where instead of being a cool, reluctant member, I am just a loner with only three friends, much like my brother at the start of the whole malarkey (he is now up to 28 – still very modest since some MySpacers actually have one million, but better than a couple of weeks ago). I think this means I have to go the whole hog and embrace MySpace completely; this in-between phase is reflecting badly on both of us.

As I can’t claim amateur musician status, I’ve decided that, to ensure its validity, my debut as a MySpace friend-wanter, rather than my former cyber manifestation as an arrogant one-friender with a superiority complex, needs careful planning. First on the list is the photo you choose to represent yourself with. Obviously you want to look attractive, but the rules of MySpace cool dictate that you don’t want to look attractive in an obvious way. A good option is the kooky pose, a shot which, even if it is posed, should look ‘random’, demonstrating that you have lots of crazy fun all the time. If you do have an unfortunate face that even a well-angled pout won’t remedy, a tongue-in-cheek cartoon will do the trick. The internet is a great place to leave your less-than-perfect looks behind and lifting a secondary image gives you the chance to make a nice, obscure pop culture reference to peacock your excellent taste.

A good image choice is complemented by your on-screen name. It seems to me that the coolest Spacers avoid proper names and go for quotes or in-jokes (these are another good way of showing off your crazy fun life). All good profiles should include a degree of knowing awareness about the geek factor of the website and the best ones will have a zillion friends as well. This says “I don’t really try very hard at this MySpace game, it just happens to me”. However, this postmodernist approach can go on forever, as people start acknowledging the pretensions equally present in this attitude. The trouble is, my new status as a MySpace billy-no-mates makes me a badly qualified commentator. For all I know, earnest could well be the new cynical. Maybe admitting to your devotion of time, effort and a little love to the MySpace game is the way to go these days.

Whatever the facts of the matter, if MySpace leads my brother into a record contract and piles of cash, I will be a devoted MySpacer from the day he pays off my student loan. I will make cyber-friends with people in other towns or even countries, discover new bands, chat with real-life friends, write blogs, upload pictures, even marry someone as a result of our complementary profiles. As revolutions go, it’s maybe not the most ground shaking but rather MySpace than, like, communism

The word of the moment is currently c***. One need only refer to the March edition of Vogue and its three-page, Deborah Orr feature on it for confirmation. On campus, the Drama Barn production of Electra prominently featured the word and then there is the recent revelation (it was news to me, at least) that innocent little Grape Lane, in all its El Piano, vegetarian glory, used to be called Grope C*** Lane – the red light district apparently. It is a word that everybody needs to tackle at some point or another.

I remember the first time I heard the word ‘c***’ or at least was introduced to its existence. My older sister, 11 years my senior, home from university, was discussing swearing. She was saying how she liked it as it was a refreshing, cathartic thing to do when she was pissed off. An aggressive release, but not towards another person, just harmlessly expressing anger, like punching walls without the pain. But, she said, ‘I don’t much use the c-word, that really means something.’ I had no idea what this c-word was, ran through my stock of rude words to no avail. Can’t be c**p or c**k, the c-word turned into a mystical holy grail of adult meaning. I was waiting to graduate from f*** and s*** and the like on to the big C. Soon, (maybe I watched Trainspotting?) I identified the next three letters. I’m sure I’d probably heard the word before, but without my sister’s signposting the seriousness of the syllable, I’d never taken any notice of it. Now, when it came up in films or books, I felt a certain reverence – they’re REALLY being rude right now. I still didn’t know what it actually meant, however, I just developed an awareness of its status as the rudest word around.

Now, of course, I am aware of c***, not only as a swear word, but also as a word for ladies’ private parts. A prude at heart, personally, I’m not a user. I don’t really say c*** much at all. I sort of wish I did, but it’s a very intimidating word. Using it in any manner is a bold action which immediately draws attention to the speaker – for some, it is a little too hot to handle. I do appreciate the linguistic power ‘c***’ contains, I’m just not confident enough to wield it.

C***’s etymology is complex and contested. It is suggested that the word comes from various words for woman, for example the the Arabic ‘khunt’, the Nostratic ‘kuni’ (‘woman’), and the Irish ‘cuint’. However, an Indo-European word, ‘skeu’, which means ‘to conceal’ may also be related. Then there are similarities with the words for female animals – ku, Frisian for cow – with the Roman for vase, ‘cucuteni’, or the Middle English ‘cunne’, knowledge.

Whatever its origins, today it definitely means vagina (just being on the safe side). Feminists’ issues with their definitively feminine bits being the most powerful insult in the English language are obvious. Yes, men’s privates get taken in vain too – d***, c***, p*** etc – but the issue is that those terms are pretty throw away as insults. C*** is a much bigger deal. It does seem a little unfair; why are c***s so much worse than c**ks?

As an enlightened member of society, I think we have to begin taking a stand. We can’t just throw it around like we do most other derogatory slang. If you do- if you’re a c*** user- you have to be pretty sure of the company you’re in before you launch it into general banter. When ‘c***’ enters an exchange as more than just a signifier, you have to reassess your conversational foundations. It’s like you’re moving into uncharted territory and you have to be sure everyone is willing to go with you before you try and make the move. Otherwise, it can get messy. Even if you are a tongue-in-cheek c*** artist, if the people around you aren’t on the same wavelength (as I have found out to Nouse’s detriment) you can either horrify them with your rudeness, or, perhaps more damagingly, find yourself locked in an ideological battle about whether c*** should ever be used as an insult at all.

Germaine Greer used to campaigned for the reclaiming of ‘c***’ in much the same way as the gay community did with ‘dyke’ and ‘queer’. Greer encouraged women to use the word as the standard term for vagina, but has since changed her tune. She now thinks that c*** should be allowed to maintain its power; having c*** be the strongest word in English writes female authority into the language. In the end, c***s are rather essential to life itself – perhaps this is where the word’s power originally stems from.

Eve Ensler, author of the Vagina Monologues is also an advocate of female ownership of the word c***. Her work, recently performed on campus in honour of International Women’s Day, includes an orgasmic celebration of the sexiness of c***s – both the things themselves and the sound of the word. She wants women to improve their relationships with c***s and use their power rather than be scared of them.

In their own quest to reclaim ‘c***’, some friends went to Argos to try and get necklaces made with c*** pendants – like the ‘Carrie’ one in Sex and the City, but with c*** on it instead. The idea being that by confronting the world with a bold, glitzy love of the word and its literal meaning, its threat to femininity is removed. Argos refused to make them, claiming the service only covered proper names. Disappointing feminist values there, but seemingly a widely held view. There is other merchandise of empowerment on offer, however. A quick search on Amazon.com comes up with the c*** colouring book – apparently you can even make them into puppets.

Another way of tackling the issue is to bring it down to the same level as other rude words. Remove the added kick it has by using it all the time, not saving it up for when you really want to hit out. If c*** becomes only as insulting as d**k or even b**b then the issue is solved. Janet Street-Porter is an advocate of this method, using the word to describe pretty much everything and everyone at some point in time. Taking the secrecy and taboo away from c***, sterilising the whispered ‘c-word’ and making its power a manifestation of pure femininity is a much more constructive use of its linguistic stature. Instead of trying to separate it from its literal meaning, the two should embrace and dispell any negative connotations.

We shall have to find some other really, really insulting word, something totally asexual perhaps, something which doesn’t mean anything at all; a sort of guttural noise that you can’t even spell. C***’s power should be put to good use, not abused by violent football hooligans. Maybe we should introduce some sort of qualification, a test you have to pass before you can use the word.

The National Student Drama Festival, or NSDF, is the most prestigious student theatre showcase in Britain. Held annually in Scarborough and now in its 51st year, the week long festival is an opportunity for students to share their work with their peers and with an illustrious audience of theatre practitioners who, almost more importantly, also lead workshops and discussions with attendees. Getting selected, or even short-listed, to perform in Scarborough this April is a great and rare honour, with 120 productions from various educational institutions across the country vying for a place. This year the University of York made the cut with Will Bowry’s production of Gregory Burke’s play, Gagarin Way – one of just twelve shows set to be performed, which will be playing at the Ocean Room from the 1st until the 7th of April. The venue is purpose built and has a capacity over three times that of the Drama Barn – a chance to experience working in a more professional setting than the University can offer.

Any production which is predominantly a student work can enter the festival, for a fee of £95. If selected, they must also pay all their own expenses, including travel, accommodation and subscription tickets. The money is well spent, however, when you look at what’s on offer during the week. Past festivals have seen the likes of Timothy West, Michael Billington, John Godber and Henry Godman in Scarborough to give talks and guide workshops. The chance to have such prominent industry names see and discuss students’ productions is obviously valuable, as is the networking that takes place within the student drama community. In addition, the Times runs a feature spread on the festival, opening the student productions up to a type of national exposure which would never usually be available. A £99 (concessions) or £135 (adult) subscription ticket enables any member of the public to attend all shows, workshops and speeches; alternatively, you can buy tickets for individual events. Tickets are available now, with details of how to get them provided on the website, www.nsdf.org.uk.

Gagarin Way follows two frustrated factory workers, Eddie and Gary, who turn anarchist and kidnap a visiting company executive, eventually murdering him, in order to make a statement against the capitalist system they are trapped in. Unfortunately for their polemic, the executive they kidnap, Frank, turns out to be as much a servant of capitalism as they are, rather than a representative of oppression. Burke stresses this point with the revelation that Frank comes from the same tiny, left-wing mining town of Lumphinanns, Fife, as his idealist captors. Eddie and Gary’s action becomes impotent and brutalised as we see that bucking against those above you in capitalism’s hierarchy will get you nowhere. Eddie dresses up his actions with French philosophy but ultimately he commits a cold-blooded murder. The play heightens our awareness of how constructed the political world is, and how dangerous it can be to act on behalf of unfiltered principles, rather than on a case by case basis.

Director Will Bowry explained that what originally interested him about Gagarin Way was the fact that, since its debut in August of 2001 at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, the events of September 11th instantly dated the play and transformed its message. Bowry says “any revival of the play, must try to make a reappraisal of the idea of the ‘powerless individual’.”

He explains that the terrorist actions against the US, by changing the political environment from which audiences approach the play, have ‘subvert[ed] [Eddie and Gary’s] actions into terrorism, which I don’t believe was the playwright’s intial intention’. This awareness of the added complexity the progress of history has given Burke’s play, without any changes to the text itself, has not gone unnoted by NSDF judges. Gagarin Way is the only production out of the twelve playing Scarborough which is a revival of an already existing text; the other eleven are all original writing.

The play was performed in the Drama Barn in week 5 of the Autumn Term. Amongst the audience was Laurie Sansom, lately appointed Artistic Director of Northampton’s Royal and Derngate theatres. He assessed the play, (the NSDF provides feedback for all the productions their representatives see, regardless of whether they qualify for the Scarborough event or not) which was then discussed by a panel of judges who deemed it suitable for performance at the festival itself. The four strong male cast is made up of Ed Watson, Tom Hunt, John Hoyle and Nick Payne. Naomi Glass is producing and Katie Kelly is stage managing, with Chris Lewis as technical director.

Note these guy’s names, you never know, one day you might be trying to convince people you knew them before they were famous

In the cold winter months it can be difficult to keep up appearances; grooming just doesn’t get prioritised when skipping the beauty routine allows for another half hour under the covers. We are all sun-starved and disillusioned, half way through the academic year with another odious 14 weeks looming. In week eight, annual charity fashion event Fusion will be returning to Central Hall to reawaken your fashion consciousness and guilt-trip you into making an effort. With clothes from River Island, Mango, Burton, Free Spirit and Selkie on display, as well as designs from three York students, you’re bound to find inspiration for the approaching Spring months.

Despite the achievements of last year’s event, Fusion was originally organised as a one-off evening of glitz and glamour. This meant that Caroline started this term with a working budget of precisely zero pounds. Work towards the ambitious and complex project started during the Summer and kicked off in earnest at the beginning of the Autumn term. As Caroline said, “sponsorship doesn’t just happen.” But it has happened for Fusion, and not in small measures: the Fusion website, www.yorkfusion.org, lists KPMG, Norwich Union, Halifax College, CPP and Rumours Bar as supporters. The team have also organised two campus club nights, sold lollypops and have auctioned models to raise the required funds. Jee plans to raise enough money to give next year’s organisers a budget to start with, and also to establish a bit of an infrastructure for the event- including a ready-made pack, complete with video clips and information, to send out to any potential sponsors.

Fusion was always more than a fashion show for the organisers, who have put in extensive hours organising, booking rooms and financing. This year it is more than a fashion show for the audience too. Fusion now features far more dance and music, and professional choreographers have designed the opening and closing sequences. There will be performances by Pole Dancing soc, Afro-Caribbean soc, Dance soc, and a group doing a belly dancing and Bollywood number. Platinum is providing break and street dancers as well as MCs who will join Fenna Rhodes and The True Ingredients, and singer Grace Ross in providing live music. Two large screens are to be mounted in Central Hall, with YSTV filming a live feed on the night, and Cinematography soc are helping to create some visuals. There will also be a ‘Cordalise’ performance- the circus technique featured in a BBC1 ident and developed by Canadian Cirque De Soleil, whereby dancers descend from ropes attached to the ceiling.

The varied line-up is the result of a great deal of hard work; Caroline is clear that, since at least week two of this term, Fusion has taken precedence over her degree.

She says “It’s my life.” Rehearsals are constant and the bureaucracy of booking rooms, clearing health and safety requirements and fulfilling sponsors’ requirements has been never-ending for her. However, Miriam Ahmed’s current job as an events manager came off the back of her work on the first Fusion and Caroline is confident that, although she plans to focus more on her degree next term, the sacrifices she may be making in her work are compensated by the abundance of transferable skills she is picking up as President of the committee. She is forming important connections through the show, not only with outside parties like the choreographers and charities she has come into contact with, but also with like-minded students, who will go on to form the professional milieu she plans to enter.

This kind of extra-curricular commitment is becoming more and more common in universities across the UK. University education has lost its former guarantees, in that a degree is no longer a passport to success and higher earnings. A recent study, called the ‘Class of ‘99 report’, compared the progress of 1999’s graduates to 1995’s.

Fiona Cooper and Jo Ellis are two more York students who spend a good deal of time doing things other than their degrees. They are, respectively, President of Drama Soc and head of URY, both time consuming, but clearly rewarding roles. Fiona Cooper is a third year English, Writing and Performance student. She acknowledges that being President constitutes a massive time commitment but says she is lucky in that her work in Drama Soc complements her degree; it is moving her towards a career in theatre as much as her university work is. Jo Ellis, studying English and Linguistics, is similarly positive about the benefits of taking on great responsibility within a student society. Aiming to work in the radio in the future, her experience at URY will be invaluable in applying for jobs or further study. However, Ellis does say that her experience is only useful in conjunction with her degree and that, despite URY’s importance, she tries to prioritise her work.

This is all well and good when you’re an English student, as both Cooper and Ellis are, but what happens when you do Biology, the most hours heavy subject on campus? Tom King, Nouse film editor, URY Cinema and Theatre Liaison officer and Drama Barn Manager, says “It all goes wrong”. Retracting this quickly, he says “You can just about cope most of the time, I’ve found up until now that you can just about get by doing work, to the exclusion of all other activities, during the holidays. With Biology, the contact time is a lot but it’s mostly exam assessed so I’ve been able to get by doing hardcore exam revision during the holidays.” King does think he possibly sacrifices his degree for his other commitments but claims this doesn’t really bother him. He says, “I think my degree has given me skills, but I don’t want to become a biologist. It has allowed me to read analytically and made me more numerate than I would otherwise be, but I think I’ll use these skills in my chosen career as a journalist rather than in the lab.”

As King indicates, the subject you study is becoming less relevant. Degrees have never been particularly vocational, but now more than ever subjects are interchangeable. Major graduate employers like Accenture, KPMG and even the Civil Service ask simply for a 2:1, the subject it’s in is incidental. All the specific knowledge needed for the jobs they offer are learned in training- your degree and extra-curricular profile are proof that you can manage your time and think on your feet– skills that you could probably pick up from working somewhere for three years; university just rubber-stamps it. This is all a little uninspiring, but at the same time, it leaves you free to study a subject simply because you love it, without worrying about what it will lead to. It also means that you can involve yourself in everything unrelated to work with a clear conscience, as that’s probably what will single you out for employers.

Sports club captains are another breed of extra-curricular whizzes. Adam Roney is President of the Boat Club. He doesn’t himself row, but has to organise practises, negotiate the difficulties caused by having far more boat club members than boats, and clean the boats themselves- an array of time consuming and occasionally mundane tasks. He explained that his time commitments mean that university work happens in the early morning and late evening, “It changes the way you deal with uni.” Roney is currently applying for Law placements and said his leadership role has been “very valid” in interviews, giving him a source of examples of ‘equitable choices’ and ‘teamwork’. Scarily, Roney said that, as well as a degree, proof of skills within communication and organisation is almost taken for granted now. Employers want you to show great enthusiasm and an aptitude for ‘creative solutions’. Your CV needs something ‘above and beyond’ that of the average applicant.

The University Careers Service offers advice to anyone panicking about life beyond finals. There are several helpful sections to their website, www.york.ac.uk/services/careers. There’s a personal development record to help you review your skills and realise what your strengths and weaknesses are, and there is help with CVs, application writing and interview techniques. They will also help you find a career in the first place, based on the skills you have acquired through extra-curricular activities at university. The internet is full of careers quizes that ask you a series of multiple choice questions and then come up with the best job for you. Although they can be patchy, with ‘crane driver’ and ‘dole recipient’ being two of my more discouraging options, they can be useful to get you thinking about what’s out there. If you have avoided getting involved in anything at all whilst studying, the Careers Service can help you get some work experience to plump up your profile.

It’s pretty obvious that, unless you want to be an academic, an in-depth knowledge of the more obscure corners of the library will be less useful to you in finding a job than spending your days thrust into your extra-curricular activity of choice. This said, you do need to pass your degree too- it can’t be all one way or the other. University is no longer a distinguishing feature; you need to provide evidence that you can cope with the more varied pressures of a working environment. That’s something that Jee, Cooper, Ellis and King will be able to prove to excess but which leaves me a little bit worried. Somehow, I doubt “able to alphabetise CD collection” will match up to “organised the grandest, most glamorous campus event, Fusion”. Post-graduate study for me then!

Traditionally, hip-hop belongs to New York, people who can spell their names with their fingers, poverty, graffiti, tracksuits: pretty much everything York is not famed for. With the Jorvik Centre and Betty’s as cultural landmarks, it’s easy to question if York has anything to offer your discerning b-boy or girl looking for a bass heavy fix. But hip-hop is a strange and multi-faceted animal. Originally, hip-hop was a term used to describe a social movement that sprung up in 1970s New York amongst the African American and Latino communities, based around rapping, DJing, break dancing and graffiti. A community developed, with their own fashions, slang and, of course, their own music.

These origins lead to complications when you start talking about hip-hop scenes. A scene implies hip-hop’s cultural structures, something that York just doesn’t have. It is a rich, middle class town, officially a city because of the Minster rather than its urban edge. York just doesn’t have the infrastructure to support the type of hip-hop community you get in New York, Compton or London, and any attempt to start pretending it does just becomes farcical. What it does have, however, is people who love the musical side of hip-hop culture. Hip-hop music is one of the most widespread genres of popular music. Since its beginnings in 1970s New York with Kool Herc & the Herculoids, it has spread across the world, existing independently from the culture it began with, constantly reinterpreted and reinvented. As any quality practitioner will tell you, when it comes to hip-hop music, it’s the beats that matter, not the bling or the size of your trainers.

If Lady Sov had been willing to delve beneath the surface, she might have discovered that York hides a thriving little musical hip-hop scene, if not a cultural one, as I found out when I spoke to Andy, aka Dave Junior, and Louis, or Bad Dallas. They are the two halves of York hip-hop outfit, The Mad Science Project, who picked up the pieces when Lady Sovereign skipped town, and gave all the grime fans who turned up the hit they were looking for. A high energy band, they proved York capable of putting on a pretty grubby night, even without its big name headliner.

Andy came to York from Burnley to study at York St. John’s ten years ago, while Louis is York, born and bred. The pair cagily admit to respective day jobs within ‘engineering’ and ‘retail’. It is easy to see that it is the project, not the daily grind, which they like to spend the majority of their energy on. The Mad Science Project, active since June last year, is a fluid collective, headed by Dave Junior and Bad Dallas, who describe themselves as the ‘directors of songs’. They are the creative forces, drawing on the talents of musicians in their circle to bring their tunes to life. They cite the likes of George Clinton, the Red Hot Chilli Peppers, De La Soul and Dr. Dre as influences.

Dave Junior explained that, in York, hip-hop fans are less visible precisely because they are music, rather than scene-focused. Emotional, indie kids do have a scene in middle class England. Musical taste is one part of a currently dominant youth culture, which also incorporates other values, fashion for instance, and modes of socialising. The hip-hop scene is less rigid, Dave said ‘people that are into it exist, but are not as obsessive or scene-based’. Bad Dallas thinks York has potential for hip-hop heads and says it’s better than it used to be. Nights have sprung up locally and it’s also a good travel centre, close to Manchester, Leeds and Sheffield; cities that are on the tour map for every major act. York is a refreshingly less intense city to come back to when you need a breather.

Fenna Rhodes, producer and writer, founded the group and has been performing live music for the past four years. Recently based in London, he has a big collective of musicians and vocalists. “London is the centre of hip-hop in the UK; about 80% of artists are based there”. The band that played in city screen were put together in the last few weeks, the entire eight piece band all live and study in York – testament to the fact that they are really dedicated to their art.

Fenna said the scene in York was more intimate than the one in London, and that there is a great deal of interest in the music amongst students, with Platinum Society organizing some of the most accessible campus events. Another impressive act that night was female MC Angel S. With a distinctive, fast paced style, she stood out amongst some mediocre, rapping-over-a-beat performers. York is only now beginning to develop some more innovative acts. That’s right, despite hip-hop’s increasingly vigorous presence in York, it has some way to go before it can compete seriously with scenes in other UK cities.

Some of the rhymes employed that evening were rather suspect. It made you realise that there really is no logic to words that rhyme in the English language. Just because two words rhyme, it doesn’t necessarily follow that they should be squashed into the same sentence. Proof comes in the evening’s odd coupling of ‘pasty’ and ‘nasty’ (an inside joke, I hope) and in the fact that cool words like purple, with all its battle potential in its connotations of sexual frustration, doesn’t rhyme with anything at all.

In the same vein, the line “I coming straight from York City/ Up north it’s all gritty” rang false. Can “gritty” be used to rhyme with “city” when that city status comes purely as a result of the Minster, hardly a gritty building: it’s not too hardcore is it? The point is that the English language is full of words that rhyme out of pure coincidence, which can trick rappers into being a little lame: you can distinguish the good from the average when they choose their words a little more wisely. However, these debates are proof, more than anything, of the health of hip-hop in York. At least, there’s enough going on that some sort of hierarchy of talent is emerging.

Mad Dallas and Dave Junior, like Fenna Rhodes, were broadly positive about York hip-hop, but explained that local musicians sometimes limited themselves by containing themselves within the city. The Mad Science Project aims, like hip-hop itself, to expand beyond its origins and avoid becoming ‘Yorkcentric’.

Dave Junior explained about his experience of musicians who, successful in York, found it hard to move onto a bigger stage because they were used to dominating a smaller one, but stressed that the move is possible.

Bad Dallas and Dave Junior point out that there is an independent internet radio station broadcasting out of York; freakin.org. Admittedly not purely a hip-hop affair, the station promotes local DJs and artists, providing a platform for local acts. It’s a place to get some early exposure for the EP Mad Science Project are planning to record with their collaborators, including technician, engineer and DJ, Redeye, and vocalist, Stacy Pips.

As well as the vinyl frontier, there are plenty of other events and venues in and around York that the Mad Science Project rate. There is an upcoming night on February 10th at Certificate 18, where you can catch Bad Dallas and Dave Junior if you haven’t already. There is Fibbers, which, despite being marketed as more of a rock and indie venue, has a steady trickle of hip hop gigs in its program. Dave and Dallas spoke in glowing terms about the summer time Moors Festival in Ilkley, run by York locals.

The basement bar also hosts Superfi, run by another York resident, Duke Dylanger. The pair also said they enjoy playing on campus, although, interestingly, they likened it to playing in Leeds rather than playing in town. They premiered in Vanbrugh bar at the end of the summer term, last year, at an event that was unfortunately (but not unusually) cut short by a fire alarm, and hope to play on campus again. Dallas and Dave also revealed that they are hoping for Lady Sovereign when she returns to play an as yet unscheduled make-up set in Fibbers.

So, she’s coming crawling back, presumably unaware of the less than savoury freestyle performed at her expense when she abandoned the stage back in November. She’s doubtless unaware that York, as unlikely as it may seem, plays host to a range of hip-hop talent, from grime to funkier, jazz inspired sounds. In a genre where the ethos is all about “keeping it real”, perhaps the unlikely location is a demonstration of York’s commitment to the music over its trappings. If a town can convincingly entertain hip-hop fans even when it’s crippled by knitwear and a rowing team, then it must have its priorities in the right order. Anyway, if you can go out and be met with dudes the likes of Hadiru on stage, you really have nothing to complain about, even if you are the lady herself

The 1st of December was World AIDS Day – an opportunity to regenerate awareness of a condition which is a potential threat to us all. Here in York, Martha Paren, Chair of the University branch of the Student Stop AIDS Society, organised a week of events aimed at putting the issue of AIDS back into the spotlight. In recent years the issue has taken a back seat to seemly more pressing concerns.

This week’s activities included an interactive mural to which people could add their thoughts and feelings about the AIDS crisis, collection tins (one of which was carried by a large bear for novelty’s sake), sponsored abseiling off Central Hall and, to bring the week to a close, Full Stop, in collaboration with the Afro-Caribbean Society and James College. Full Stop took place in Vanbrugh College and featured live samba music. The money raised on the night, along with the proceeds of the other activities, is going to The AIDS Support Organisation in Uganda, Student Partnership Worldwide and, closer to home, North Yorkshire AIDS Action.

This local focus is an important addition to the list. If you go by the statistics, the UK population has developed a dangerous tendency to see HIV and AIDS as illnesses which only affect other people. In the same way that people go to Live 8 and then think they’ve done their bit for world poverty, people in Britain (where good medical practice and the wide availability of condoms mean that nearly everyone should avoid infection) are becoming complacent. The initial uproar that arrived with AIDS in the late 1980s has died down and the Britsh no longer see themselves as being particularly at risk. HIV is seen as a foreign problem.

The significant increase in HIV infection in the Third World, particularly in Africa, is terrifying. The escalation is due to several factors: poverty means there is more chance of transmission in medical procedures; there a weaker educational infrastructure to inform the population about prevention; and contraception is less widely available. The fact that infection rates in the UK have also been constantly on the rise since 1999, however, demonstrates a worryingly blasé attitude. The fear in the late eighties and early nineties, when the epidemic began, has been forgotten. Educational campaigns, although helping to break down prejudice against victims, have failed to keep people vigilant against infection. The statistics speak for themselves: in 2004 there were 7,275 new diagnoses of HIV compared to 3,851 in 2000. From 1992 until 1994, the number of new infections decreased, but since 1994 the number of infections has been on the rise. There are now an estimated 74,977 people with HIV or AIDS in the UK.

In the arts, there has been a similar drop in interest in the crisis. Thematic preoccupation with the AIDS epidemic was common in many circles in the eighties and early nineties. This was particularly prevalent in contemporary gay American theatre, where performances were used to raise money and awareness for the cause and/or to remember victims. The homosexual community in the US was the first to really feel the brunt of the epidemic and their creative output was the first to study the impact of infection. Several short, experimental works were developed, and in 1984 a group of theatre practitioners in San Francisco set up a company called A.I.D.S. (Artists Involved with Death and Survival). These early creative attempts to face the AIDS crisis paved the way for addressing AIDS on the mainstream stage. This happened in 1985 with Larry Kramer’s The Normal Heart and William Hoffman’s As Is, both of which played in New York. The plays were met with an enthusiastic response, with As Is winning the Drama Desk Award for outstanding new play and being nominated for three Tony Awards. They did, however, attract a lot of critical attention due to the novelty of their subject matter, since they were very clearly categorised as ‘AIDS plays’.

Then, in the early 1990s, Tony Kushner’s work, Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes, arrived on the scene. As the title suggests, this is not a play which allows the AIDS epidemic to be seen as purely the concern of a minority of victims and their communities, and out of which uninvolved audiences can get a cathartic kick. The play studies mainstream American culture and shows how AIDS is an established part of the new national equation, as prevalent as religion, politics, drug addiction and love. In one of the play’s key lines, Louis, a gay character, rejects the idea that tolerance of the homosexual community is acceptable. Toleration is passive hatred, he argues; a fact which becomes clear when you find yourself in trouble, as being tolerated doesn’t mean anyone is going to help you out. This is what Kushner fights against in his play; he wants an assimilation of AIDS so that it becomes everyone’s problem.

Kushner’s piece is made up of two plays, Millennium Approaches and Perestroika. Put together, they form an epic production that can take up to seven hours to perform. Sam Hanna, a second year English student, decided to take on the challenge and revived the play this term as a part of Martha Paren’s week of action, and thereby bring back theatrical engagement with the condition and its effects. After weeks of preparation, it was performed in the Drama Barn on Friday, Saturday and Sunday of week eight. In spite of the high ambition of the project and the many hurdles encountered along the way, Hanna and his eleven member cast pulled off the biggest and most unusual show of the term, moving away from the trend for terse three or four handers and taking the chance to really experiment with the Barn’s possibilities.

I spoke to Hanna and some of his cast in the days before the show’s opening night about the process of putting on such a large-scale show in the barn (which, as even its most ardent supporters must admit, is at best a humble venue). The barn has no backstage area, but rather a sort of side stage which also serves as one of its fire exits, hence stringent health and safety rules about how much scenery can be stored there. There is only one entrance to the stage, unless the actors go outside after the audience has arrived and come through the front entrance. Apart from its simple lighting rig, there is no technology to speak of, not even a curtain. Nevertheless, York is purportedly home to the most prolific Drama Society in the country, staging more productions a year than any other University.

Hanna took advantage of the opportunity this presents to theatre-interested students when deciding to stage Angels in America. His reasons for choosing to put on this play in particular were convincing. Firstly, he said, he loved the play for its eloquent and beautiful writing, secondly he enjoyed the challenge it presented and wanted to test the limits of student theatre. He also cited the lack of gay theatre at the University and the small number of plays with large casts as motivators (Hanna created space for two additional parts to increase the number of people involved). The collaboration with Student Stop Aids was a ‘happy accident’.

The process began with auditions where sixty-five people vied for 11 parts. A varied company was created, including five first year students and an exchange student from America. The cast testified that, in rehearsal, Hanna took a laid back and collaborative attitude. Far from being a dictatorial director, scenes were workshopped by small groups of actors and were followed by feedback from the rest of the cast. Katy Kelly, who played the Angel (amongst other small roles) explained how this style of working led to interesting and enlarging debate amongst the cast and crew. A long period of intense rehearsal with a close-knit group of people meant that no one was uncomfortable in the open and frank discussions which arose. The diversity of the people involved came in handy with the two Americans, Havilah Gianette, playing Belize and Mr. Lies, and Diedre Yee, the make-up artist, training the cast to perform with American accents.

Ben Anderson, a Drama Barn veteran, played Joe. He said that this was the first production he’d been involved with where he wanted to read around the play and find out about its theatrical context. He said ‘It’s not been just about acting, about being on stage, it’s also been about learning about a great play and all the issues it brings up. So much of what’s on in the Drama Barn is ‘done’; this is difficult, different’. Difficult seems to be an appropriate adjective; the show encountered some trouble in getting health and safety clearance: it had to abandon some of its more radical set plans and was asked to cut Joe’s nude scene (although why seeing Ben Anderson in the buff poses a health risk to anyone was beyond us all). Surely abseiling off Central Hall has more potential for fatalities, unless Anderson is secretly a Gorgon beneath those very trendy clothes of his?

For those involved, the experience clearly spread beyond simply learning lines and blocking scenes, and this will be extended to a wider audience in week ten when a representative from North Yorkshire AIDS Action will be coming in to give a talk to students. Sam Hanna will also be there to share his experiences of directing the play, as will Martha Paren.

Paren spent her gap year working in Uganda and can provide illumination on the other side of the AIDS issue: the extremely high infection rate in Africa. In the West, anti retro-viral drugs mean that HIV and AIDS patients can potentially live with a good quality of life for many years. In Africa however, profit-hungry drugs companies prevent access to life saving drugs. Given that over 40 million people are living with AIDS or HIV, the connection between AIDS and art is as important as ever, ensuring that it remains within the cultural arena. If we can encourage discourse, then work to reverse the growing trend of infection will hopefully begin to take effect. The Stop AIDS Society slogan is ‘The world is watching’, in reference to their vow to hold world leaders to the G8 pledge to work towards universal AIDS reatment by 2010. In a world with an increasingly short attention span, perhaps the best way to ensure the validity of that slogan is to give us something to watch, something to make sure we don’t lose our focus.

HIV and AIDS information and support agencies in York:

To find out more about HIV and AIDS in York: www.northyorkshireaidsaction.org

To get a confidential and free HIV test, contact Monkgate Health Centre GUM Dept, 31 Monkgate, YO31 7WA, on (01904) 725417 to make an appointment

If you are concerned that you may have been exposed to the virus, or are worried about your sexual health, contact:

Young Person’s Sexual Health Advisor (01904) 725444 (ask for Ginni)

Yorkshire MESMAC, (for homosexual males) The Workshop, Marygate Lane, YO30 7BJ, (01904) 620400