Returning: A Brief Explanation and Consideration of Why.

Hello,

I find myself painfully aware that over the last three to eight months I have attempted more ‘returns’ than Eminem has since 2005, the nasal refrain of ‘Guess who’s back?’ trying and failing to distract from the fact that, actually, he hadn’t ever really left properly. As it is, though, the intermittent posts since mid-August have been a means of trying to keep this from perishing and dissolving into the depths where all the other unloved, untended, silent blogs lie, whilst considering a) what I’d want to do with this blog when I did start writing properly, and b) whether it was worth salvaging at all. After all, my Freshers year has long since passed, and I don’t manage to cover football in enough depth to make a football-only blog regular or insightful enough, especially given the plenitude of blogs on the same subject available for one to peruse. I have also recently lacked those two things that a writer simply cannot do without: time and inspiration. To quote one of my Historian friends in a middle of an intellectual and emotional crisis, I have, over the past six months or so, felt that ‘I have literally nothing interesting to say.’

The dearth of time has alleviated somewhat over the past few weeks, and some tentative, toe-in-the-water attempts at composing poetry again have suggested that I may not have totally squandered my ability to write something of a vaguely passable standard, and these happenings, combined with an impending final term of Second Year, make this seem an apposite time to make a last attempt at returning to jacknmoran (to be rebranded ASAP, incidentally). Some blog controversy which I shan’t go into here was another reason for my silence; in the wake of a transient but nonetheless tumultuous storm, I felt that a period of reflection was necessary, and that some focus on work would be welcome.  In the interim, however, I’d toyed with doing various things: this blog began by covering Euro 2012, and I’ve long been tempted to do the same with the 2014 World Cup. Book reviews, when time permits, are an enjoyable undertaking, and that was another consideration. Of course, the chief temptation was to continue the Oxford narrative that ended abruptly in the middle of last Trinity, trying to combine mirror-gazing self-absorption with rather more of actual use to those who want to know anything about Oxford. 

The final reason for my ponderous caprice over the last few months has been an expectation that this was a blog devoid of readers, one whose slow, inevitable (though flailing) death would be greeted by the silence that it had taken on in the time it took to do so. After all, a blog without a readership is as a song without listeners: a triviality; a thing of no consequence; a ‘paltry thing; a tattered coat upon a stick’. However, I have had it alluded to on occasion by other people over the past months, and a conversation at our second end-of-season dinner in which the desire to read more was expressed served to be enough to convince me that, small though my readership might be, resurrection would still be a worthwhile endeavour.

There are, of course, personal reasons for returning to this blog. I shall start with the perhaps less creditable ones. In the event that Finals do not go as expected, a career in academia will begin to seem all the less likely – as one would expect. As a result, I would probably turn to the other cliched careers of an English student – journalism, or teaching (while, of course, trying to write while doing so). This requires, often, some evidence of consistently high-quality writing throughout one’s university career (and, sometimes, beforehand). The problem is that student journalism has never much appealed to me. The main reason for this is the restriction involved: when writing on sport, I dislike the concept of being limited to four hundred words. This is true whether writing a match report (in which the brief recapitulation of events is invariably neither insightful nor comprehensive), or a debate (in which four hundred words rarely allows any writer to do more than cite the most perfunctory, expected points, and often in a rather jumbled manner). Perhaps this betrays an individual inability to embrace concision rather than an inherent flaw in the medium; however, I do not feel that this changes matters. Even if my reluctance to write concisely were indicative of a flaw in my writing and cognitive processes rather than a flaw in the medium of student sports writing, it would still indicate that it is not a place that my writing would be suited for. I can only imagine the exasperation that an editor would feel in telling me, invariably, to cut three hundred words from each piece before it was suitable for publication.

Equally, the restriction involved in writing for a Sports department is a problem for me. Football is a topic of interest for me, but it is not one that I want to be constrained to write about weekly. Equally, writing weekly is a problem; even when writing frequently, I do not write regularly, and I am just as likely to be taken by the impulse to write at one o’clock on a Wednesday morning as I am to write three times in four days, each at different times. I intend to write about a number of things here, some of which may be of interest to numerous people; I fully expect that some might be of interest only to me. In any case, I am still at an undisciplined stage of writing, one in which I may decide to switch abruptly from a recapitulation of my week in Oxford, to a mini-essay on Paradise Lost, to a piece of poetry. This caprice ill-becomes a sports writer, especially one writing for a newspaper.

So the desire to build up a portfolio is a pragmatic reason for writing, but pragmatism is still secondary to my other reasons. The last of these is the hackneyed but nonetheless true observation that writing is, above all things, cathartic. Having had a long time to reflect upon my writing habits during my absence from writing, I believe that writing helped organise my thoughts and convey them in a manner that was conducive to the relative clarity of thought I enjoyed during my first year. I believe, additionally, that chronicling and creating narrative helped maintain a sense of purpose that has been fading recently, as I have become worryingly more desultory. Of course, any interest or benefit anybody gains from any posts I write, whether they be about training for races, Oxford life or even just writing is also an excellent reason to write. These things considered, I greatly regret that I went so long without updating. As it is, I am aiming to place that in the past, and will now briefly outline what will be coming up over the next months and year. As in most endeavours, thinking in the long term is conducive to good success.

So I’m going to try and cover a variety of things as before, and generally this will be unchanged. There will be a few additions and features, however:

1. I’ll be continuing the Oxford narrative, starting in 0th Week of Trinity, which is the 20th April onwards. It’s a year without exams, so readers may hear things about punting, Christ Church Meadows, and Balls, rather than just comments on the incessant pressure of work. This will act as the precursor to a fully detailed narrative of Finals year. Of course this will be enjoyable and cathartic for me to do, but I’m hoping it will serve a useful purpose as well. To be more specific: prior to applying, I, as I imagine is the case for numerous applicants, are taught to seek a lot about what to do prior to applying, what to do at interview and during the application, and, once in, a lot about Oxford (or university) life in the general. I think that having a week-by-week, detailed description of what Oxford is like when the real pressure of Finals and the impending entry into ‘Real Life’ has arrived would be something I would have been rather grateful for, even if just for the reassurance that there is a way to manage everything. Of course, if I collapse next year, I hope that it will be of equal utility as an example and cautionary tale of what not to do. In general, I think that anything that deals with the specifics of an experience – exactly how much work, exactly what papers, exactly when do things need to be done, exactly how do people cope – will be more useful than generalities about ‘high workloads’ and ‘pressure’. Obviously, then, the Trinity portion of the narrative will be short, but it’s going to serve as the precursor for a very detailed Finals Year one.

2. Football. I probably won’t do much coverage of football between now and the end of the year, as I’m extremely behind on work and want to get ahead (the quixotry, an old reader will note, has not quite dissipated) before the start of the World Cup. This is because I want to follow up my Euro 2012 blog with a day-by-day, almost match-by-match feature on the 2014 World Cup. At the very least I will cover a game or issue per day; if work is going well then I will try and do two games. I’ll also be writing a panegyric on the death of Barcelona and tiki-taka soon. There will be tears and immense sentimentality, of that I can assure you.

3. Running. I’ll be trying to go over and above just the sporadic references to my own runs, writing race reviews, thoughts on training, and anything else to do with the sport that occurs or appeals to me.

4. Writing. This is more contingent than the other topics, because it depends on me actually writing something of merit (always a contingency!), but I’m hoping to write at least two or three pieces of poetry in Trinity, and over the summer I may even start trying to write a novel on here, updating chapter by chapter. Perhaps.

5. Literature. I think I wrote three book reviews in the first year of this blog (Middlemarch, Lolita, The Rachel Papers), and I’d like to continue this. I have Money lined up, and at some point I shall go over Julian Barnes’ Levels of Life. If the fancy takes me, I may compose the odd essay for here as well, especially over the Summer Vacation, when I’ll want to keep my essay-writing abilities sharp before Finals. If I do, it will probably appeal to a more coterie readership, as it will probably be on things between 1350 and 1760. 

6. Scrabble. Over the last six months I’ve taken more of an interest in Scrabble, signing up for a first tournament in Ayelsbury and sporadically attending a club. This, I imagine, will appeal to an even smaller coterie than mini-essays on fifteenth-century morality plays, but I’m going to write the odd piece nonetheless in the hope of conveying to others the interest that the game can hold as a literary, teaching, and amusement tool, as well as a good way to improve retentive abilities. It’s also a lot of fun, as well, so I’ll be endeavouring to convey that.

7. Miscellany. Because sometimes none of these will take my fancy, and I do like to believe I can exhibit variety.

So that’s a (not-so) brief outline of the attempted rejuvenation of the undead. I don’t have any time to write until Sunday, but from Sunday my intentions are as follows:

Sunday: A report on one of the two games being played.
Monday: The Oxford Vacation: What it is, and how to use it – I think it’s rather different from other Vacations.
Tuesday: Some thoughts on Second Year as a Humanities student.
Wednesday: An introductory Scrabble post.
Thursday: Review of Martin Amis’s Money.
Friday: Review of Julian Barnes’ Levels of Life.
Saturday: A brief resurrection of the ‘Oxford Narrative’.

I hope at least some of that will prove of interest. I also find myself rather rusty when writing, phrases and sentence fluency seeming rather difficult to come by currently. Hopefully that will improve after writing seven pieces in seven days.

‘Success is falling nine times and getting up ten.’ Or so I hope this proves.

Regards,

Jack

Hilary: 8th Week: Chiasmus

Hello,

I was more than a little pessimistic last time I posted, as a result of a rather melancholy, stagnant mid-Hilary; a three-week period that passed in a manner redolent of not so much wading through treacle as sprinting through it; a rather exhausting, frustrating feeling born of trying to get a colossal number of things done in an increasingly decreasing window of time. When combined with the concomitant feelings of exhaustion, frustration and being generally modcearig, it is perhaps unsurprising that I was disinclined to note anything especially positive about my Hilary term. Thankfully, a very productive, pleasing Eighth Week helped to remedy that overwhelming sense of fatigue and listlessness somewhat. A number of things happened that turned a mediocre term into one that I am able to look back upon, if not fondly, with enough positive memories to keep me rather in love with the Oxford Experience.

I’ll structure this entry chronologically, which I’m sure makes a pleasant change from the Miscellany of memories that have constituted most of my posts this term; it is a pleasant change for me, at any rate. In fact, I shall cheat a little and start with Saturday of 7th Week, in which I was playing yet another game of football for the Hall. For the first time in what felt like weeks, even if it was not, British Spring had deigned to make an appearance, so I was able to play in the sun; a lovely change. The game was away at Hertford College for the 3rd XI, again a little short of players. It has appeared to me over the past few years that my form mimics that of Chelsea’s Premier League form; once March appears and the moving forward of the clocks becomes imminent, I suddenly begin to play better. Perhaps this merely shows that I lack the stoicism to play well in wind, rain and conditions of below ten degrees. In any case, I added four to my season’s tally in a 5-3 win, and even when the opposition are poor to mediocre, scoring threes and fours (and sevens) is always good for the confidence of a center-forward. Perhaps if Chelsea were to loan Torres to Morecambe or Barnet, he would regain his form and confidence – though I fear that his decline is as inexorable as the addition of ‘LOL’ and ‘chillax’ to the Scrabble dictionary.

After this extremely enjoyable hour and a half, I returned to work on Samuel Beckett’s plays, tucked away in a corner of the Teddy Hall Library. I have been trying to familiarise myself with the annexe known as the Vestry recently; the Vestry is the one part of the library that remains open after the 1 A.M. closing time, which means that anybody who is mad enough to work past one o’clock or anybody who is in the throes of an essay crisis remains there into the night. To fail to do so leads to the unfortunate situation that one of the Teddy Hall Aesthetes experienced; that is, he was locked into the library (if I remember correctly, in the tower) into the night, with only the sound of the rats that inhabit the Crypt for company. In any case, I foresee myself spending a considerable amount of time in the Vestry next term, so that is where I spent most of Saturday after the game. For the Eighth Week essay, I chose to compare Waiting for Godot with Endgame in the light of Arthur Schopenhauer’s aesthetic theories and hermeneutic.

In the end, the essay became slightly rushed due to the combination of too much sport and too much other work, but thankfully my tutor seemed pleased enough. Eighth Week was odd, insofar as Tutorial Partner was doing her essay on Irish poetry that week (returning to her heritage, she said), meaning I had my tutorial with two second-years, both of whom were doing Beckett as part of an English and French course. Far from being daunting, it was an interesting departure from the normal tutorial system. Though my tutor had strong objections to Schopenhauer, for reasons that I am currently attempting to research, she seemed to receive my essay well. This was no small relief; it is always worrying when one chooses to focus upon an idea or critic that one’s tutor does not like, because it means that one feels incredibly vulnerable. There are few things more unnerving than sitting in a tutorial and hearing one’s tutor say, ‘I’m not quite sure that I like that…’ Even more worrying was the word ‘Yuck!’ in the margin of one of my marked pages. To my immense relief, it referred to the theory of Schopenhauer’s I was paraphrasing (I hope).

Next up was Teddy Hall Relays, on Wednesday of Eighth Week. For those who are unfamiliar, Teddy Hall Relays is a running event held every year in Eighth Week. I’m sure most people reading this, if not all, are well acquainted with the relay format; Teddy Hall Relays, as opposed to being 4 x 100m or 4 x 400m, is four ‘laps’ of six kilometers. Now, lacking sagacity (where has that been heard before?), I resolved to do all four legs alone. This was partially due to my inability to find a team to do the event with, partially due to my masochism, and partially due to my wanting to use it as a measure of my form going into the Richmond Half Marathon. I was not expecting much, even taking into account my 18:08 in 6th Week. In the event, however, the result exceeded my expectations; I came through the event unscathed, went through 21K (the half-marathon distance) in 1 hour 27 minutes, and completed the course in 1:36:47. Given I was attempting to go through in under 1:45:00, I was obviously delighted – all the more so when it transpired that i had won a prize for the fastest person running individually. How many people were mad enough to do all four legs alone, I do not know, but the bottle of Oxford’s finest beer will remain in my fridge as a memento until my father finally drinks it.

On Thursday, I even managed to go some way towards rectifying my inexcusable misanthropy this term. The Kelly/Emden contingent and I (Emden is the name of another, slightly more aesthetically pleasing building at Teddy Hall) went for a very agreeable meal at Byron; surprisingly, everybody was able to attend, which is something of a rarity in Oxford (or, perhaps, I only believe so because I so rarely left Kelly Building this term). After two hours there, I went to the end-of-season Football Awards Dinner, which will stand out as one of the highlights of Hilary. The event was held on the upper floor of a rather quaint pub off of Magdalen Roundabout, the Cape of Good Hope. (Symbolic? Perhaps.) It was lively and jovial without ever becoming disagreeably raucous, and it was perhaps the only occasion where the entire regular 1st XI were together that term (again, I cannot attest to this with any great certainty; my attendance at Football Drinks has been as sporadic as my attendance at Park End this term). The awards themselves were some of the most interesting moments of the evening, partially due to their iconoclastic lack of political correctness (‘The Jimmy Saville Award for Touch’; ‘The Adolf Hilter Award for Inspirational Speeches’, and the like. Quite frankly I associate Hitler with other attributes, but there we go.). I was incredibly surprised by the number of ‘awards’ – in inverted commas because the prize for winning one was drinking half a pint – I managed to win; ‘The Lance Armstrong Award for Potential Doping’; ‘The Oscar Pistorius Award for Hasty Shooting’; ‘The Anders Breivik Award for Accurate Shooting’, and ‘The Alf-Inge Haaland Award for Most Likely to Bottle A Tackle’. Aside from these more humorous awards, I was absolutely delighted to win the Golden Boot – which readers know was my goal from the start of Michaelmas; runner-up for Goal of the Season, and, most pleasing of all, Young Player of the Season. By far the biggest compliment was being made Vice-Captain for next season. It was something I never expected, and something I’m hugely looking forward to taking on next year – after all, we English students must find something to fill all of that free time other students spend working… To conclude briefly, football has been one of the definite high points of Hilary term; playing in an environment so much more positive than my school team has been a welcome change, and though it has taken up a colossal amount of time on occasion – namely Sixth Week and Seventh Week – it was worth it; twenty-six goals and sixteen assists in twenty-four games was a return infinitely beyond my expectations and the end of Michaelmas, and I look forward to attempting to emulate the rugby team and win Cuppers next year.

To finish the term, only one noteworthy event remained; Principal’s Collections, which is a brief meeting with the Principal of college along with one’s tutors to discuss the progress that has been made over the term. As I mentioned in my previous post, I had large reservations regarding my performance in Hilary; I thought that it was at best inconsistent and at worst a considerable deterioration from my Michaelmas performance. In the event, it was far more positive than I’d imagined it; there are still considerable problems with my essay style that need to be rectified if I am to achieve my targeted Distinction in Prelims, but both of my tutors were mostly positive, and both estimated my term’s work at a borderline-First level. In fact, reading that I’d managed to produce First Class work on more than one occasion in Hilary was probably the highlight of Eighth Week, because it was perhaps the most reassuring thing I’d read or heard over those eight weeks. I had one very important, very helpful meeting with my Personal Tutor afterwards to discuss the essay issue in more detail, and whilst I cannot underestimate the problems it may cause me, I left the meeting feeling better than I’d felt about – well, everything – since the last week of Michaelmas. The term afforded one last highlight on the day of departure – a title-deciding game for the MCR against Kellogg College. Teddy Hall needed to win and better Jesus’s goal difference to win the league and seal promotion; in the end, we won 9-0 and thus a league title was added to the promotion gained with the JCR team.

This resulted in my leaving college rather later than everyone but the Law students, who were unfortunate enough to have Prelims at the end of Hilary. One of the eeriest things about life at Oxford is how quickly everyone is gone and how quickly you yourself are gone once term reaches its conclusion. It was utterly disorientating to return to a virtually empty college after the game, and a sense of ennui returned in a rather large degree. There is something very lonely about college before the start and after the end of term, and the overwhelming thought in my mind as I wandered around college and Oxford waiting for my father was Quomodo sedet sola civitas.

So, where does chiasmus come into this entry? Well, the more pertinent term would most likely be ‘chiastic structure’, but I felt that it did not read as neatly as ‘Chiasmus’. Chiastic structure, for those who are unaware, is an application of the literary device ‘chiasmus’ to a narrative, and I feel like this provides an apt analogy for my time at Oxford thus far. The first ‘A’ of the A-B-B-A structure would be the period in early Michaelmas, which is in itself analogous to Charles Ryder’s first months in his Oxford and Brideshead idyll; a time where he found ‘that low door in the wall, which others, I knew, had found before me, which opened onto an enclosed and enchanted garden, which was somewhere, not overlooked by any windows, in the heart of that grey city’, a period where ‘the ditches were creamy with meadowsweet and the air heavy with all the scents of summer’. Like Charles’s idyll, though, the Christmas Vacation served as the first ‘B’ of the structure, where Brideshead is deserted; Sebastian’s alcoholism and depression causes a disjunction of a beautiful union, and Oxford loses its lustre: ‘The autumnal mood possessed us both as though the riotous exuberance of June had died with the gillyflowers’. The ‘Brideshead’ analogy unfortunately breaks down, as Charles finds brief solace in Julia; the start of Hilary brought no such equivalent to ‘the forerunner’. The start of Hilary continued the desolation and sola civitas; the days were imbued with not so much an autumnal mood as a wintry chill: ‘The avalanche was down, the hillside swept bare beside it; the last echoes died on the white slopes; the new mound glittered and lay still in the silent valley.’ And the end of Hilary acts as the second ‘A’ – albeit an etiolated, poor equivalent to the initial period of ‘idyll’ – a ‘monochrome, monotone sequel‘, perhaps. In fact, here the Brideshead metaphor does work to an extent; after all, there is the brief period in the epilogue where Charles finds solace in memory – ‘It could not have been lit but for the builders and the tragedians. And there I found it that morning, burning anew among the old stones.’ 

Thus, that concludes my Eighth Week entry, but, in lieu of a postscript, I shall briefly note some of the things that have happened since I came back down. Just to reinforce the notion that my Oxford narrative currently exists in chiastic form, two things occurred that seemed to be something of a regression to the early-Oxford weeks. Firstly, my plantar fascitis has returned, and in vicious form; I completed the Reading Half Marathon in a rather dreadful 1:34:24, but the pains in my shins, calves and plantar fasciae were notable from the third kilometer, and the last three miles were – if my readers will forgive me the hyperbole – nothing short of agony. Thankfully, it seems to have been in rather speedy remission since Sunday, and I may be able to run on Saturday if I take a painkiller or two. Secondly, a few hours after coming down – oh, how contrived this seemed – I heard from ex-Girlfriend for the first time in over three months – a brief text, merely to see how I was doing. The truth would have no doubt opened a rather large can of worms, and, though she was good enough to give me the option of not replying, I felt weary of resentment (‘Oh, let me be mawkish for the nonce! I am so, so tired of being cynical!’) so replied. The action of a blundering fool? Well, perhaps. But, quixotically or not, I do not feel on the verge of a second entrapment, and I feel strong (or self-preserving: which?) enough to preclude such an eventuality happening again.

Finally, I met an old friend of mine from my quondam school last week, and could not resist dropping in to the English Department after doing so. It was delightful to catch up with the teachers who were such a help to me, especially during my second application. It resulted in them asking me to come in and give a lecture/class of Tess of the D’Urbervilles and Brideshead Revisited on Friday; yes, it has added to my workload, but I was rather flattered to be asked. How useful my insights will prove to be is another matter entirely; I have re-read Brideshead, because it is one of my very favourite books (no Lolita or Sense of an Ending, but wonderfully written and so, so pertinent currently (See: A Twitch Upon the Thread) – but have not read Tess fully since I did the A2 myself – thus, I shall have to trust to my memory. Disaster may ensue.

On that note, I should probably conclude. Revision is currently a categorical disaster, and I would hate for the chiastic structure to repeat itself, and end Trinity in the same manner I begun Hilary.

Regards,

Jack

Hilary Term: 4th Week – 7th Week: Teleology and Temperament

Hello,

After the turbulent, straitened nature of the past few weeks, a brief moment of calm has finally arisen in my week, and it seemed like an opportune moment to try and update all of my readers – if any still exist – on how I have spent a considerable portion of my Hilary term. Naturally, this entry will focus on breadth rather than depth in its recollection of events, as, typically, a lot of pertinent things have occurred, and to give all of them the weight they deserve would lead to an entry that read as more of a novella than a blog post. Another problem is that I find my memory eluding me somewhat when I try and recall events in, say, 4th Week. Faithful readers of this blog will recall that I likened life at Oxford to a phantasmagoric blur, and this often makes it very difficult to distinguish clear details such as the time and place of fragmentary moments in the swirling eddy of one’s consciousness.

Regardless, the historian must attempt to make some sense of these fragments, otherwise it would be impossible for anything to be recorded at all, and so I shall simply have to proceed, conscious of the flaws in my recollections. This provides a convenient segue into my most interesting essay topic of the past few weeks: 5th Week, in which we did the dystopian novel. I had been eagerly anticipating this week for some time, due to the wonderful texts available for analysis and exegesis: The Handmaid’s Tale, Nineteen Eighty-Four, A Clockwork Orange and Never Let Me Go, to name but a few. Due to time constraints, I only managed to write my essay on Nineteen Eighty-Four and The Handmaid’s Tale, but it was still a wonderfully rewarding week. I decided to analyse the novels through the prism of Julian Barnes’s quotation on the flaws of history: ‘History is that certainty produced when the imperfections of memory meet the inadequacies of documentation.’ Of course, the partial, unreliable nature of history is hugely pertinent to both novels and it was a hugely interesting essay to write. A difficult planning stage was alleviated when a friend of mine, as of yet unnamed in this blog – let us call him Humbert Humbert, not because he has any questionable sexual predilections, or because he is a “shining example of moral leprosy” (well, not that I am aware of), but because he is the quintessential example of the European intellectual – gave me a fascinating book called The Paradox of History, by Nicola Chiaromonte. Time constraints meant that I only managed to get through the first two chapters, but those two chapters were enough to give my hitherto amorphous essay shape and direction. For Chiaromonte, the paradox of history is the paradox of politics; that both processes are predicated on meliorist, teleological assumptions that are constantly undermined by the fact that “things never turn out as they should”. This doctrine – the undermining of a telos in both literature and history – is key to the dystopian novel, and it was this realisation that was key to forming my essay. In the event, I spent most of 5th Week ill with a particularly bad case of flu, and was bed-bound for all of Monday, but my tutor still seemed very pleased with my essay, which, given the circumstances under which it was composed, is satisfactory if not pleasing.

It has been a very strange term for me academically. I find it hard to believe that I am doing badly; my tutors have said predominantly positive things about the work that I have produced, and I have not struggled to get work done, even when ill. Nor have I found understanding any topic particularly difficult, Yet, I cannot state with any conviction that I have made any progress at all. I have had no quantitative means of assessing my progress, so my notion that my work has been at a mid-to-high 2:1 level is merely an unsupported guess. Yet, I am equally certain that nothing of a 1st Class standard has been produced. As such, I am currently undergoing grave doubts that a first-class mark in Prelims is possible. I feel like I have made too little progress this term to feel with any confidence that my writing and interpretation has reached the necessary standards consistently, if at all. Again, this is only a surmise, but it is one that I feel is probably correct. Therefore, the challenging of the notion of a telos has not simply occurred in the novels I have read; I feel like this term, in every aspect of my life, my belief of a telos has come under question.

The same questioning can be applied to my running. I spent most of the first five weeks either injured or ill, so made absolutely no headway after my pleasing 18:24 just prior to coming up. Since then, I have attended sessions fairly regularly, but have not competed. In addition, multiple football matches between the middle of Sixth Week and the middle of Seventh have made doing any sessions at all nigh on impossible. Strangely, I even have to challenge my sense that a teleology in my running has been undermined this term. For in 5th Week, in the throes of my illness, I got utterly fed up with sitting inside and went down to the Iffley Road track, to run a 5K alone. I managed a time of 18:06, which is my best since last July, in the middle of summer, when Oxford was still a hazy abstraction and untrammelled hope for everything – running, life, academia, love – still seemed possible. This extremely pleasing performance is a mere twelve seconds off my best of 17:54, achieved in the midst of those heat-hazed idyllic months, and has me believing that, with a singular focus on running from the end of this week, my goal of 17:30 will be possible in Track Cuppers. In the interim, I need to spend the next three weeks training in earnest for the Richmond Half Marathon. (Apropos of nothing: I am reminded of an amusing comment that Humbert Humbert made upon seeing my old race numbers pinned to my wall: he asked whether the numbers represented a teleology. I responded ‘Not as much as I’d like.’ I hope that is proved wrong over the next few months.)

Since I’m focusing on sport, now seems an apposite time to turn the focus to football. This will have to be sped over, because since my last post I have played twelve matches, including five in four days between last Thursday and last Sunday, and seven in eight days. I shall speed over the highlights: we lost Cuppers to Lincoln on penalties. It was a highly disappointing performance. We did not do ourselves justice at all and allowed ourselves to fall into the trap of playing the archaic, basic, anarchic football that Lincoln wanted us to play. I played poorly in the match but scored my penalty. Given our two Blues players and superb German central midfielder leave at the end of this year, our best chance of winning Cuppers is probably gone: once again, my belief in a telos has been undermined. Other highlights: scoring the only goal in a 1-0 win over promotion challengers Balliol College; scoring two goals in a 3-2 win over rivals Queens, including the winning goal after a goal that I am hugely proud of – a run which took me past four players, before applying the finish; and scoring seven goals for the 3rd XI against Magdalen College in an 11-4 victory. That game was an utterly joyous affair, in which everything seemed to go right. Yes, it was only a 3rd XI game, and yes, Magdalen’s performance was pathetic, but seven goals is a personal record and – I am currently waiting for this to be ratified – may well be an OUAFC record for most goals in a single college game. My statistics for this season, thanks to a prolific recent period, reads thus: twenty-two games played, twenty-one goals scored, fifteen assists made. Nine of those goals have been for the 1st XI, in fourteen games. It could have been a little better, but I am still hugely satisfied with how this season has gone. Twenty-one goals puts me easily clear of the next Aularian top goalscorer, who has scored ten (and all for the 2nd XI). The next highest scorer in the 1st XI has five.

Before I leave the topic of football, I want to look at the other preponderant topic in this post: temperament. I have, with no small amount of disquiet, observed myself falling victim to the weaknesses in temperament that have not existed since I was fourteen or fifteen. On the pitch, I have found myself becoming increasingly ruffled and agitated by small things. For example, playing for the MCR, I became increasingly irked by defenders holding my shirt. Upon one shirt-pull too much, I, in the most ludicrously infantile manner, gave the defender a little elbow in the stomach to force him to let go. A minor, inconsequential incident, one might suggest? Well, no. For so long, I have managed to play football in a completely disinterested manner, attempting to rise above the juvenile fracas and friction that underlie most games I partake in. Little has been able to rile me on the pitch over the past three or four years; as a result, these otherwise negligible lapses in temperament are a little disconcerting. I wonder whether it is the manifestation of extraneous (to football, that is) frustrations exhibiting themselves in an environment conducive to these puerile displays of anger and irritability. Regardless, I am extremely disappointed that I have begun to let myself fall victim to these momentary compulsions, and restraining my occasionally capricious temperament is undoubtedly a goal for the next few months.

I do not desire to give readers the impression that all I do at Oxford is work, run and play football. I have done a number of other things in addition to these predominant activities. In 6th Week I attended a lecture entitled ‘A Cure for Ageing?’, held at the Sheldonian theatre. As a title it is reasonably self-explanatory; in the event, it proved to be just as much a discussion on semantics as it was biology. The two keynote speakers both believed in the efficacy of attempting to cure ‘ageing’; where they differed was in the approach to doing so. For they wanted to draw an important semantic distinction between ‘ageing’ and ‘age-related disease’. The former approach, propounded by Aubrey de Grey, endeavoured to cure ageing – that is, extend the human lifespan through improving of the mechanisms that, upon deteriorating, cause old age and death. The latter approach, expounded upon by a scientist whose name eludes me, aimed to cure age-related diseases – the typical diseases that are concomitant with ageing – and thus extend lifespan this way. Their opposing viewpoints were stimulating and interesting, but unfortunately the debate descended into juvenile ad hominems which acted to the detriment of the discussion. I also wanted to go to another Scientific Society debate, focusing on the causes of obesity, but work commitments precluded my doing so. Similarly, I greatly desired to attend a production of Tennessee Williams’ Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (a play I studied and admired at AS-Level), but again found myself without the time to do so.

Finally, there was one more hugely interesting event – to me, at least – that occurred over the past four weeks. I took part in Teddy Hall’s Writers and Artists’ Day, and was asked by my tutor to perform two pieces of work. The first, Fleur-de-Lys, will be familiar to anyone who has read this blog over the past eight or nine months. The second was the rap I wrote for Teddy Hall’s Got Talent, back in the halcyon days of November. In the end, it was a wonderful day; rapping in the Wolfson Hall to a group of Teddy Hall alumni and academics (including Stewart Lee, who I had the fortune of meeting in person in the college bar) was an experience I did not predict when applying to Oxford. Conversely, the experience of reciting an extremely personal poem in the Old Dining Hall – a gloomy, typically Oxford-esque room, adorned with portraits of past Principals and academics – was an unforgettable experience, and hearing the work of writers infinitely more gifted than I was a reminder of what can be achieved here, irrespective of the Teddy Hall inferiority complex that is somewhat endemic here.

I shall update again by the weekend. Today is a day of renewal for me; after five consecutive nights in which I have been up until between 03:00 and 03:30 working, I have resolved to manage my time so as never to have to do it again. I am looking forward to studying Modern Drama this week, including Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot. I am using tonight to recuperate; drinking tea, planning my Easter revision and reading Pablo Neruda’s sonnets, which a friend of mine in Emden Building was kind enough to provide me with. I refuse to give up on my goal of a Distinction in Prelims, but if I am going to rescue a term that has meandered, lethargic and laconic, the rescue attempt must begin immediately. If nothing else, it proves that, as Dawkins so rightfully notes, the propensity of humanity for teleology is unavoidable – no matter what might happen to challenge those beliefs.

Regards,

Jack

The Countdown to Hilary: Eight Days To Go – Symbolism and Cynicism

Hello,

There is, finally, a pinprick of light at the end of this humid, misty tunnel. In just over one week’s time, I shall be able to compile these entries from the top of Kelly Tower once more. Oh, yes, I do not foresee my return to Oxford being without issue – no, to believe so would be myopic and foolish in the extreme. Even effacing every execrable thought and presentiment from my mind, I would still be facing the daunting prospect of my first Oxford exam on the tenth of January, for Collections have occurred, are occurring – and, no doubt, will occur – regardless of preoccupations. The last week of my holiday shall, I have no doubt, be spent frantically re-reading through all of my essays and trying to force as much of the contents of The Cambridge Companion to The Victorian Novel into my mind – how I yearn for an eidetic memory. I do not lament my workload, though. There are few things that can be relied upon to distract my wistfully wandering thoughts from returning, routinely, to that same heat-soaked, cloudy, tempestuous place, but work is indeed one of them. Over the past couple of days the thought of the number of books that I have to either read or re-read has ceased to be merely an unnerving, but manageable one and has irreversibly morphed into indubitable fear. At the heart of this is an utter lack of ability to decide where to start: would it be better to spurn my Hilary reading to focus on trying to prepare myself for the writing of an excellent – oh, that ’twere possible! – Collections essay, or to appreciate the implausible nature of doing so, and try to rescue my Hilary term performance? Instead of settling upon a single irrevocable decision, I have meandered between T.S. Eliot and George Eliot, between Portrait of a Lady and The Lady of Shalott, and the presaged result of this is mediocrity in both my Collection and my work in Hilary. Nonetheless, it is no doubt telling that a work-induced sightless panic is preferable to any other plausible emotional state currently.

It has not been all catastrophic. Since my tepid tenure at the Royal Mail concluded, I have been rather more productive. One of my two Old English translations is complete, and if things reach an absolute low I shall leave my second one until I am impelled to do it for my Old English tutorials. I read Lord of the Flies in under a day, which certainly beats the four days it took me to complete Lady Chatterley’s Lover, and thankfully my memory has not deserted me, meaning that the learning and recollection of my Michaelmas essays has been blessedly straightforward. Immersed in this whirlpool of work, I have felt some of my analytic faculties returning – I was pleased with my understanding and thoughts on Lord of the Flies – and hopefully that process continues. I almost feel ready to write a review on said book, but time continues to shackle me. I shan’t have time to rewrite my Week Seven essay on Science and Religion, but if I can learn my three or four strongest Michaelmas essays and read five or six more texts by the time Hilary starts, I shall be satisfied if not pleased. I’ve been trying to tell myself that if I don’t read certain texts I am not doomed: I had not read any of Hopkins’s work prior to coming up and that transpired to be my strongest effort. How I need single sparkling sunrays like that amidst this dreary grey skyline, however transient they might be!

Running? One might be tempted to my running since Christmas as a fairly obvious, simplistic case of symbolism. Since my dreadful performance at Crane upon my return to London, nothing disastrous has occurred, and I’ve managed one or two fairly satisfying times in the very worst conditions – that is, I have continued to function despite being enmeshed in tumultuous rain and buffeting winds. On the other hand, if I were to define my performances over Christmas, I would either call them ‘stagnant’ – generously – or ‘regressive’ – probably more honestly. Enough of that. I finished in second at Crane this morning, but in a time of 18:58. Perhaps there is still time to break 18:30 before my return to Oxford, but I wouldn’t envisage it happening. More disappointingly, it implies that my performance at the National Championships in Sunderland will be little to no better than my performances in Varsity. I am tempted to write of the entirety of Hilary and focus on the track season in Trinity, and, in doing so, forget about taking Nationals as anything more than a loose barometer of my current status.

Christopher Booker speaks of the Rule of Three with regards to stories, and I see no reason why his hypothesis – admittedly one that is tainted with observer bias – cannot be applied to real lives. As such, here is a third instance of symbolism over the past three days.

I find sleep a commodity that is at a premium currently, but I tentatively liken my desire for sleep currently to that of a drug addict’s desire for a drug that invokes hallucinations. I know the drug is necessary – in this instance I deliver my analogy through the eyes of the irrational addict –  and I desire it greatly. Yet, when taken, its effect is transitory, and invokes hallucinations that terrify and disorientate, until the sufferer wakes with a fervent desire not to relapse again, whilst knowing that not to relapse is impossible. For here is my dream – ‘dream’ in the singular; my brain currently provides me with only one:

I am in either one of two places: the Teddy Hall Front Quad or outside the Radcliffe Camera, waiting for the Cross-Country Club to arrive so we can commence our run. For those of you who are not familiar with either place, it will be important to add that the Teddy Hall Front Quad is rectangular and the Radcliffe Camera is a circle. They do not come. From a dark, dusk-drenched corner, a figure appears: lean, with hair that I, in my distracted state, can only describe as dirty-blonde, scattered spikes of dusky facial hair. Black eyes. I am distracted in the dream, perhaps stretching, turning on my Garmin or gazing vacantly into space. There is no logical reason – if only dreams were logical in their creation – why I should note the appearance of this figure, yet when I remember this dream properly, I recall that suddenly – for it was surely, undoubtedly, certainly not so moments before? – the Quad or the space around the Bodleian Library and Radcliffe Camera is completely, eerily deserted, and night has suddenly fallen.

I avail myself of the need to point out that yes, this does all seem awfully contrived, yet I assure my readers that this is a faithful recollection of my night’s awful narrative, and no, I am not fabricating any detail. When I am unsure of what I recall – for dreams rarely appear to us – or at the very least, me – as unbroken totalities; rather, they exist as fragmented blotches of colour on an otherwise blank canvas – I either omit or admit my uncertainty.

I realise that I am in a most awkward position; that I am in trouble; that something cataclysmic has occurred. In the first frame of night, I see the moon – yes, there is always a moon, how dreadfully hackneyed my mind’s images are when it is left to its own devices! – reflected of an object that is glinting. This object metamorphoses between a knife and a gun – or, most recently (I have had these dreams for four consecutive nights), a samurai sword. Inexplicable, but that is quite beside the point. Both of us are aware of what is happening and what the inevitable, inexorable result is going to be. Yet, naturally, I begin running.

There is a problem, however. My route does not take me down the canals of Oxford, towards Port Meadow or over Headington. It takes me in circles. It takes me around the Teddy Hall Front Quad; I pass the Porters Lodge and I pass the Porters Lodge and I pass the Porters Lodge. Alternatively, it takes me around the Radcliffe Camera, time after time after time, the Kings Arms appearing and disappearing and reappearing and appearing. He is following, but inevitably I keep running. There is no urgency in his manner. He knows that I am utterly powerless to prevent his gunshot or stab. Yet I am still yards enough away from him that he cannot jab; I am around a corner, so he cannot shoot.

I am infuriated, utterly claustrophobic. For I know that I am so, so much faster than he is. It is something that I know with certainty; my brain repeats it, like a liturgical response, constantly. But my legs do not move like they should. The power that they should be imbued with flickers, vanishes, like a broken car revving up, but unable to start the engine properly. Thus, I turn a corner and feel that I am clear; I look over my shoulder and he is gone – but no, he is not, he continues to stalk me interminably, dreadfully. And I am so much faster than he is! And he cannot quite catch me! And I cannot quite escape his clutches!

And this is the worst part of the dream I have just recollected. Booker, in The Seven Basic Plots: Why We Tell Stories speaks of a paradigm shift in literature beginning approximately two hundred years ago. He suggests that, in literature before this time, the ‘Self’ – that is, the deeper centre of the human psyche which contains our true, selfless selves – would prove triumphant in a narrative over the forces of the id/ego – that is, our basal, primeval self. After this time, however, the id/ego begins to take hold, and the Self is unable to reach the light. He focuses upon a number of reasons why and ways in which this happens, but the pertinent one in this context, I believe, is that my deranged mind does not know who the manifestation of the ego is and who the manifestation of the Self is – is it I? Or is it him? Thus, this ridiculous yet utterly terrifying charade continues ad infinitum until I am finally woken; I run – or wade, or jog – and he saunters after me, in utter control yet for some reason reluctant to take the final shot.

Thus, sleep is no sanctuary – for four consecutive nights this dream has occurred, intermittently interrupted when I wake at the most ludicrous hours and see nothing but a single face through the ‘spaces of the dark’. 

I yearn to return to Oxford,

Regards,

Jack

The University Countdown: Ten Days To Go (Part One)

Hello once again – I apologise for my extended absence from this blog. I can make the unequivocal assurance that it won’t happen again, bar unforeseen circumstances beyond my control, such as being stuck up a mountain with no internet access. Over the past week I’ve been in Oxford/Exeter, and when I wasn’t there I’ve been trying to delve further into the literary abyss that is the Oxford English Language and Literature reading list.

I’ll start with Oxford, given that that’s where I was first; I headed up to the City of Dreaming Spires on Saturday to finally see my room (and, of course, the city and college once again. First my family and I continued our peripatetic Parkrun saga, in which I took part in the Oxford Parkrun for the first time. It’s a lovely park, as city parks go, and the Parkrun was equally pleasant. It goes all around the outer edges of the park in a two-lap course, encompassing a bit of woodland, a bit of path and a bit of field. There is, however, a hill that needs to be negotiated twice, which of course shaves a considerable amount off one’s time. I managed to get round in 18:34, coming second out of a field of one-hundred-and-ten. I was pretty pleased, given the conditions and the fact I’d run forty kilometres that week already. I will very much enjoy doing it every week and hopefully I’ll be able to notch up a win or two – even if it’ll be hugely affected by rain and ice over the winter months.

After that, we had a quick shower and change at David Lloyd Oxford, then headed over to St. Edmund Hall. I’d forgotten how gorgeous it was and how much I’m looking forward to it all, even if that excitement is mixed with no small amount of trepidation and anxiety as to whether I’m of the requisite standard, whether I’ll make friends, and all the other worries that are (I assume) inextricably linked with starting university. Aside from that, I saw my room, which I love even if it is on the top floor of college  – my route to and from my room encompasses ninety-one steps and four floors, which will make moving in a pleasurable experience. Carrying my crate of books from ground floor to apex may require a couple of rest stops along the way, methinks. I was also pleased to find that I actually know someone on my floor as well as another person in my college – having a familiar face two doors down from me will, I hope, aid the acclimatisation process even if the person in question is more an acquaintance than a friend at the moment.

My family were pleased to see the college for the first time – my dad only dropped me outside the Hall for my interview – and hopefully it’ll motivate my two brothers to work hard enough to apply for Oxford (of course, under no circumstances would I allow them to apply for the Other Place) even if it may be slightly too late for my sister. They liked the college and were impressed by St. Edmund Hall’s not inconsequential collection of sporting accolades. They all bought Oxford University hoodies, leaving  all three of my siblings (though, ironically, not myself) with a memento of Oxford. I didn’t leave empty-handed, however; I picked up my gown, mortarboard and bowtie for a very reasonable twenty-five pounds. It was amusing trying to explain to my sister that I wasn’t buying a Commoner’s Gown because I was common, but rather because I hadn’t obtained a scholarship or exhibition from the university (which, I suppose, does make me common in this instance). I left feeling very odd – seeing my room and getting the subfusc was really the penultimate part of my preparation prior to coming up (apart from packing), and last Saturday really reinforced the reality of the situation: yes, I am really going to Oxford; nothing has (thus far) gone amiss and it’s now only ten days away. It’s been eighteen months since I left school (not including returning for exams and results), and so the entire idea still feels completely surreal.

I had little time to indulge in such thoughts, though, as after heading down the M40 back to London I had to depart for Exeter after a mere hour at home. This was in aid of spending some time with my girlfriend prior to my departure; unfortunately I’ll be unable to come and visit her during the Oxford term due to the envisaged time constraints, so we agreed that I’d see her at the start and finish of her term (that is to say, just before I come up and just after I go down again) and she’d aim to come up to Oxford in the middle of her term. How well this arrangement will work out remains to be seen, but it’s rather the best we can do given the distance between us and the monetary constraints. A trip from Exeter to Oxford is around four to five hours travelling and sixty-five pounds both ways. It will undoubtedly be difficult, but hopefully the shared affection will help to ease the problem of a long-distance relationship.

Regards,

Jack