Hilary Term can be – and often is – a real stinker. In the week before term starts there’s a more-than-usually horrific scheduling nightmare – a Mexican standoff, via email, between three tutors who all want to schedule a class at the exact same time and are all waiting for confirmation from one another. Emails pile up and you’re suddenly scheduling so many classes you’re left thinking Did I miss a directive? Are there now forty hours in a day? – it’s the uncomfortable intersection of new modules still happening, and revision tutorials starting up. There’s always a well-intentioned attempt at motivation. You buy new fineliners and ‘brain food’ you’ve seen people blog about, like mixed nuts and turmeric. You’ll likely make a revision timetable or a self-care list – bonus points if you’ve started or even considered a bullet journal – and try to revise with friends. Which, obviously, never works. When my lawyer friend came downstairs to revise in the kitchen with us a few days ago, she was probably envisioning a nice quiet hour with a bag of Minstrels and a communal Spotify playlist called something like “FOCUSSS” or “WERK WERK WERK”. What she probably didn’t bank on – or want – was fielding questions every five minutes along the lines of “So could you defend me in court if I stole a car? What if I killed someone? How successfully could you sue somebody?”
So how do you deal with the stress of Hilary Term? You ignore it!! With this in mind, last night I went to see The Comedy About a Bank Robbery three doors down at the Oxford Playhouse (hello, perks of city living!) and it was everything you might want from a feel-good, well-choreographed farce: misunderstandings, implausible disguises, and some rather impressive gymnastics. A charade scene midway through the first act that had the audience howling, and a one-man punch-up between three characters were certainly the comedy highlights – but it was more than just the Fork-Handles-esque farce it could have ended up being; plot twists and some truly sophisticated perspective trickery in the second act, using a set at 90* to the stage to give a bird’s-eye-view of an office, buoyed it up hugely. It was a play very aware of its own nature as a play, with charmingly hodge-podge props and not much in the way of attempts to conceal scene changes. All in all the perfect way to temporarily forget everything I know about anomalous monism and the Enlightenment and anything at all to do with the subjunctive. In a similar procrastinatory vein I’m giving Victor’s a go next week – it’s a restaurant with an aesthetic just begging for an Instagram feature. Stay tuned!
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The official website of Yorkshire-made, Oxford-based writer Isabel Parkinson. Want fewer words and more pics? Follow me on Instagram!
(Header Photo: Radcliffe Camera, Oxford - Isabel Parkinson 2016)
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