The Hanging Tree

Horse breaks silence on years of depression

2012-02-28T15:45:00.007Z

A horse who has frequented pubs and clubs for almost twenty years refusing to make small talk has finally opened up about his debilitating low mood.

The horse - known only as Clip Clop - has been sensationally outed as a corporate stooge for the rich and famous, after the Metropolitan Police left top secret documents in the hands of James Murdoch on the same day The Sun on Sunday needed a front page story.

The controversial papers detailed the practice of loaning adorable animals to figures in the public eye who are experiencing a media backlash. The process - often referred to as 'chumming up' - is a damage limitation exercise used to boost publicity, and can see those involved paying thousands of pounds a time for the privilege.

Now Clip Clop has revealed the darker side of this relatively unknown world, and the often devastating consequences:

You go where you're needed, and it's fun at first. They stroke you a bit, tell you all their troubles, that sort of thing. You feel good. But then it just starts to get on your nerves when it's all day and all night. And they take out super-injunctions so you can't repeat any of it. I'd go into a bar, and every night it would be 'Why the long face?'I wanted to say, 'You'd have a fucking long face too if you'd worked with Jeremy Clarkson for seven years and gone through three divorces with Phil Collins!' But I couldn't tell anyone so I'd just keep drinking. It was a downward spiral.

This is not the first time News International has used chumming up to stem the flow of negative publicity - in 2003, Robbie Williams was pictured riding a hippo in his local Tesco, while in 1995 Stephen Fry had a mental breakdown and stayed with kittens wearing mittens for six weeks in the south of France.

When asked to comment on today's fresh revelations and his time with former Sun editor Rebekah Brooks, Clip Clop replied: Fucking hell. She said she was Mick Hucknall.

Heather Mills revealed as new England manager

2012-02-09T15:56:00.011Z

Heather Mills has been appointed as the new England manager just hours before her relentless media exposure was due to come to an end.

According to reports, the former supermodel and motorcycle enthusiast is 'very excited' to demonstrate why footballers no longer care about their jobs and will begin preparations for England's upcoming defeat in the European Championship as early as next week.

FA chairman David Bernstein announced the decision, citing Mills' complete lack of footballing knowledge as a key factor:

Heather is absolutely the best man for the job. She loves money, she's addicted to publicity and best of all she has no loyalty to the sport or the fans whatsoever. Obviously we're disappointed she isn't foreign, but you can't have everything.

Friends say the new role couldn't have come at a better time for Mills, who has been surviving on just £10,000 per day after mugging Paul McCartney in broad daylight several years ago. She commented:

England have been completely shit at football since 1966, which is round about the same time I got the idea to fleece a fucking Beatle. It's obviously meant to be!

Mills' appointment is also the first to comply with new pitch regulations, bringing the total number of legs in the technical area at any one time down to 19.

Meanwhile Fabio Capello has shed light on his decision to quit the post, stating he got the idea last month after turning on the news to see an Italian man abandoning a sinking ship.

The twenty (actual) saddest songs of all time

2012-02-03T11:00:00.011Z

Earlier this week, The Telegraph published the results of it's poll about the twenty saddest songs of all time. I was appalled by the list for several reasons.

Firstly because the top song, Everybody Hurts, is not sad in the least - it is an uplifting tune about the strength of the human spirit, about, as the songs says, taking comfort in your friends and not being alone, even when you feel like you are. What is remotely sad about that?

Secondly, you CANNOT have a list of the saddest songs ever and feature the fucking Beatles and Celine Dion. The guys who wrote I Feel Fine and I Want To Hold Your Hand clearly no nothing about the extent of true misery - Yesterday, which appears on the list, was originally a song about scrambled eggs. Likewise with Mrs. Dion..the only thing sad about My Heart Will Go On is that it didn't go down with the rest of the ship. And, like the R.E.M. song before it, the message it carries is actually one of enduring hope.

Put simply, for the most part these are not sad songs and with that in mind, I present my alternative selection of the twenty saddest songs of all time:

20. With Or Without You - U2

19. Save Me - Queen

18. Fire And Rain - James Taylor

17. A Woman Left Lonely - Janis Joplin

16. What Will You Say - Jeff Buckley

15. Sinead O'Connor - Last Day Of Our Acquaintance

14. You Never Wanted Me - Jackson Frank

13. Someone Saved My Life Tonight - Elton John

12. The Brilliant Dance - Dashboard Confessional

11. Don't Think Twice, It's Alright - Bob Dylan

10. Disintegration - The Cure

9. Unsatisfied - The Replacements

8. These Days - Jackson Browne

7. Empty - Ray Lamontagne

6. One Step Up - Bruce Springsteen

5. I See A Darkness - Johnny Cash (original by Will Oldham)

4. Friends - Ryan Adams

3. Crossing Muddy Waters - John Hiatt

2. River - Joni Mitchell

1. Asleep - The Smiths

If all this gloom has you weeping into your Nutrigrain wrapper please check out the blog of my friend Kate, who has reversed the polarity of my particular disposition to come up with the twenty happiest songs of all time

Tasteful tabloid delights thousands with diversity scheme

2012-01-26T12:46:00.010Z

Britain's most impartial and balanced newspaper has today spearheaded a national campaign to promote tolerance and equality by letting a severely disabled man pen one of it's lead articles.

Rod Liddle - whose brains are tragically missing - was allowed to write whatever he wanted, as long as it did not contain anything which could be mistaken for factual accuracy and any figures mentioned were plucked out of thin air. The paper's editor explained how the piece came about:

Rod has been a friend of ours for years. After David Cameron came and personally closed down the local community centre he goes to, he had nothing to do and lacked stimulation. Then one day I was chatting to him and he mentioned he's always loved inciting hatred and looking at pictures of tits, which is when I got the idea to let him write something for us. With our help, he constructed the article by cutting his favourite words out of various magazines. He then gave the words to a chimp, who later that afternoon picked them at random from a top hat. We did the rest.

Mr Liddle suffers from T.W.A.T., a progressive disorder which causes the front, back, and sidal lobes of the brain to collapse under the weight of their own ignorance. The skull is then hollowed out using a ladle, and packed with bubble wrap.

You can read the finished article here

Brave Face For Cameron As Morals Clash With Job

2012-01-07T22:02:00.010Z

David Cameron is set to undergo a gruelling schedule of shaking hands and saying things in a fresh attempt to make it look like he cares about something other than rich people.

The Prime Minister has promised to use the media to rail against his former school chums salaries until the next big budget natural disaster or celebrity sex feast makes everyone forget about it.

The bonuses - usually doled out in crisp, used fifties and given for things including correctly writing 'boobs' on a calculator and sitting quietly in the office until home time - were introduced as standard practice long before the Tories failed to win the last election and are generally seen as 'perfectly reasonable' by politicians who benefit from them financially.

Speaking outside Downing Street, where he was re-heating a pot noodle for Vince Cable, Mr Cameron explained:

The days ahead are going to be difficult for Britain as I really, really like bonuses and giving rich people money they don't need - especially close personal friends. But, if I go on Andrew Marr and phone up The Telegraph and say things like 'It needs sorting out' over and over, I'm pretty sure I can have you lot convinced by the time X Factor starts accepting applicants again.

Cameron, a reformed Moomin, is the first television actor to occupy the highest seat in Government since Meryl Streep fled the 1980's over 20 years ago. She has since been spotted in various films, including an Abba promo for assisted suicide and that Nazi one with all the crying.

Clegg 'moving to Bebo' in 2012

2011-12-28T11:37:00.013Z

Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg has revealed he is tearfully close to shutting down his Facebook account in the new year and setting up a page on Bebo instead.

In his emotional Christmas message, the ashen faced millionaire defended the move as a reaction to the new Facebook Timeline and a dramatic drop in friend requests since 2010. Speaking from inside a disused steel mill in his recently abandoned constituency of Sheffield Hallam, he explained:

When I recorded this message last year I had so many Facebook friends I was reaching the limit, and getting new requests every day - even some from students I was openly planning to betray. Now when I scroll down the list there's just Thatcher and Paddy Ashdowns cat. It's time to move forward.

Mr Cleggs wife, who is Spanish and hotter than yours, then stepped in to describe how Bebo has a younger demographic than other social networking sites and therefore using it would make it 'much easier' for her husband to figure out how to really shaft the next generation.

After changing ties several times on camera and referring to the cataclysmic national hatred he now experiences - which has its own Myspace - the MP concluded:

I don't know why so many of you unfriended me. It's probably because I formed a massively unstable coalition with a completely unsuitable political party, created a moral vacuum, totally fucked up the country and greatly increased the chances of an actual apocalypse next year.

He then added: Is it that? Christ, you people are sensitive. I'm only trying to make more money.

Rich Cat To Sort Out Europe

2011-12-11T15:36:00.003Z

An Italian moggy will use his newfound windfall to secure a place in the EU and railroad the fucking lot of them, it has emerged.

Tommasino, a third generation Mafia kingpin who inherited nearly £10 million after his owner got animals and humans mixed up, has insisted the time has finally come for suspiciously wealthy domestic pets to be given a voice in the political arena.

Speaking last night at the opening of a new tin of cat food, the former stray told reporters: ‘I’ve always wanted to go to a summit in Brussels and organise the whole thing properly, but it’s been either full up or I’ve not had the capital. Now I can just buy my way in’.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy welcomed the news, admitting that although they were trying really really hard, the member states had ‘literally no idea’ how to run a complex crime syndicate like The European Union effectively. It is hoped that the influence of Tommasino will help strengthen stability in key areas such as money laundering, extortion, and beating up countries you don’t like the look of.

The over ambitious feline has denied allegations of bribery, amid reports that he threatened to shit all over the new carpets in the lobby unless at least half of the members sign a treaty declaring Tony The Tiger the new God.

Meanwhile, David Cameron dramatically took Britain out of the EU on Thursday night after a five year old from Pontefract pointed out how he could destroy the country much faster by doing exactly the opposite of what is best for it.

Homeless lemur revealed as Reality TV reject

2011-12-10T18:48:00.023Z

A lemur who was discovered sleeping rough on Tooting Common earlier this week has been outed as a former hopeful on Britain’s leading cultural extinction initiative.

Julien King - who was found at 3am on Tuesday morning by a local resident engaging in completely legal activities - was at first thought to be evening wear accidentally discarded by the wife of Prime Minister David Cameron. It was later confirmed by paramedics that the delusional primate had been living on the streets for some time after failing to secure a spot on the X Factor live final.

Mark Bossley, head of the Immigration Department at Blue Cross animal hospital, said ‘When they first brought him in I thought it was just another typical midweek customer, you know. A fox who’d overdone it on a stag do, or maybe a badger on crack pissing around with glitter and spray paint. We get a lot of that at Christmas. It wasn’t ‘til I saw him practising vocal scales on a Fisher Price miniature keyboard that I recognised him from the boot camp bit on telly and realised who we were dealing with’.

Louis Walsh, who is one of the X Factors main judges and the highest paid Leprechaun on television, issued the following statement on behalf of the show:   

We’re deeply saddened to hear about Julien and remember him with great affection. As soon as he came into the audition process there was something different about him, he was original, there was that spark of real talent there. So obviously he had to immediately leave the competition. We kept his voting line open for a few weeks afterwards though, which paid for my new car.

Mr King is now recovering at Do You Know What It Is Yet, the rehab clinic founded by Rolf Harris which caters exclusively for animals most people have never heard of. He is reportedly considering a career advertising insurance. Meanwhile, tabloid articles claiming he can regularly be found cruising Wimbledon Common for oral sex with a Womble have been dismissed as ‘pure speculation‘ by a solicitor.

The X Factor final will be broadcast live this weekend from the London Horrordome, and is expected to be barely tolerated by over half a billion people.

Something Fine - rambling thoughts on the riots

2011-08-09T17:17:00.004+01:00

When presented with an inescapably relevent situation, certain people are hardwired to ignore our more pragmatic response mechanisms and instead look immediately to the purest reflection on the human condition - art - as a way to examine current circumstance. Nietzsche once said ‘We have art, so as not to die from the truth’ but I think the opposite might be true.

When you endure or witness anything, whether intensely personal or impacting on the wider world that shifts your internal consciousness somehow, the linking of that experience to something in the creative realm - a passage from a book, a character in a film, a scene from a painting - is a way of searching for truth rather than masking it. If life is just a mirror we hold up to our origin, then every artistic endeavour we undertake is another shard of glass we hope will finally complete the reflection.

So it followed that when I read about the continued rioting this morning, I thought of a line in a song. There are plenty of obvious lines from obvious songs to pick from - I Predict A Riot, Guns Of Brixton, Whats Going On, etc - but I didn’t think of those. The song that came to mind for me was by Jackson Browne. It’s called Something Fine, and can be found on his eponymous debut album from 1972. From a distance it might seem an odd choice to relate this quiet folk song to the tumultuous social unrest of the past few days, but as I watched the scenes of looters coming together to inflict violence and stamp their misguided presence on the world, I instantly heard the following line in my head: California shaking like an angry child will, who has asked for love and is unanswered still. To me, that single statement strikes at the heart of the issue of this trouble - the rioters, rather than the riots - more directly than any hastily assembsled political soundbite could ever hope to.

Were the police acting unlawfully when they shot Mark Duggan? Maybe they were, maybe they weren’t. Only those who were actually there will ever know. But those who caused destruction these past few days weren’t doing so out of a sense of moral outrage. Perhaps, in the beginning, those who saw the spark of an uprising may have attached their very real fear of and disappointment in this government to it. The ongoing chain of events does however point to a bigger problem as encapsulated in the words of Jackson - the young kids commiting these acts are essentially angry children, who have asked for love and remain unanswered, bending any sense of genuine injustice into an excuse to violently vent their rage.

Tolerence, compassion, openness, kindness, humilty, humour, - these are the things that we would see more of in the world were they not already so lacking. Call me a hippy, but I don’t think a five year old child taught well in these principals would be throwing a brick through a shop window to nab a new TV twenty years later.

U2 at Glastonbury 2011 - the show that could have been

2011-07-01T12:59:00.006+01:00

In the week that has passed since U2 headlined Glastonbury, I've watched the performance several times over. I am a massive fan of this band and was really looking forward to their set. However, I'm also convinced they dropped the ball last friday and missed a massive opportunity to silence their (many) detractors.

They had a chance to pull off something unique, to genuinely evoke the original spirit of a pre-corporate Glastonbury and come out fighting as a bare bones, back to basics punk band - a brand new outfit who somehow ended up with a Pyramid Stage headline slot and 34 years of hits behind them.

There were flashes of that spirit at times which is what made the show good, but not enough to make it great. What prevailed for me was a sense of a band who had no idea how to play to a festival crowd, and who've become used to playing for audiences who are perhaps too ready to idolise and indulge them.

There was so much more that could've been made of their 90 minutes on stage. Without the gigantatron staging of the ever rolling 360 tour, there was the nervous energy of a band once again quite literally forced to stand together and play, but ultimately it was the songs lack of suitability for the occasion which left U2 the most confused I've ever seen them. With that in mind, I present:

U2 at Glastonbury 2011 - the alternate setlist (with no encore)

1. Vertigo
2. Beautiful Day
3. Gloria
4. I Will Follow
5. Desire
6. Elevation
7. New Years Day
8. All Because Of You
9. Out Of Control
10. Bad
11. One
12. All I Want Is You
13. Ultra Violet
14. In A Little While
15. Red Hill Mining Town
16. Where The Streets Have No Name
17. Pride (In The Name Of Love)
18. Magnificent
19. Discotheque
20. With Or Without You
21. 40

False Promise

2011-06-30T13:38:00.002+01:00

I woke today by the window light
Saw a town filled with strangers on every side
Scared and tired they were ready for a fight
Well they looked just like me and you

When I went down to the streets for a closer look
There was much that I recognised
I heard desperate hearts beating to urgent songs
I knew the fire in their eyes burned true

I saw beggar with preacher
Pupil with teacher
And babes in the arms of the old
Every soul there met a change in the air
The anger of the false promise they were sold

Don't let them fuck us
Support the damn strike
Tell this coalition
To get on thier bike

God

2011-06-30T13:17:00.001+01:00

I don't believe in God, but I can understand why some people find it nessecary to do so. This planet is, at it's core, a completely fucked up and badly run establishment. It's relatively small, it's overcrowded, and we as a race (humans, that is) are ultimately destroying it faster than we can reproduce people to continue the trend. Who wouldn't want a God to believe in, given such circumstances? It makes sense. It is the ultimate way to not only deflect responsibility for our own actions and lives away from ourselves, but also to feel justified - and, crucially, safe - in that deflection. The scapegoat and the pacifier rolled into one.I should make it clear at this point that when I say I don't believe in God, I'm talking about the default Christian image, the one and only almighty who reportedly created the entire universe in a week, 'sent' us his only son and then subjected him to a thankless life and violent death, and has since presided over us all from somewhere in the sky.

So what does this particular idea of God prove without question? The power of spinning a good yarn. The Bible is a great work of fiction. I haven't even read it (yet) and I can say that with complete confidence. The themes, the ideas, the tales contained within it (Arks, Cruxifiction, Resurrection, Giants, Sacrifice, Parting Waves, Walking Through Deserts For 40 Years, Plagues etc)....it probably is the greatest story ever told. But that's the key - it's a story, not fact and there is no way that I could go ever along with seeing it as such. I'm sure there are elements of fact because yes they did crucify burglars and whatnot back whenever the hell it was written and yes there were street merchants who would have performed tricks for money (think Derren Brown in sandals) and yes there was a man named Jesus living in Jerusalem at the time but he was, I'd bet, one of several hundred and most definitely NOT the son of God . But what the very clever people who wrote the Bible did was to amalgamate all these different concepts and elements of their daily life into these great fantastical stories, add in the idea of divinity as a way of scaremongering and, hey presto, you have a way of controlling people indefinitely (or at the very least, the next several thousand years). I don't know if that was the authors' original intention but thats pretty much how it ended up.

I mean look at churches in the old days - 'even though you're all poor and your health is wretched, give us all your money. You can't use contraception because it is an insult to the will of God (ok I don't think contraception existed in the very very old days but if it did they'd have said that) and therefore you must keep having lots of children that you can't afford to bring up who'll most likely die very early seen as you live in unimaginable squalor....do it or you'll go to Hell and burn eternally. Oh by the way, there's one sure fire way to make sure that doesn't happen, give us all your money every week and we'll pass it on to the big G in the sky and your place in eternal paradise will be assured'. I mean surely that would've set off alarm bells? God can't be that holy and righteous if you can just buy your way out of purgatory in to his Eternal Kingdom, no matter how heinous your sins.

NB: I wrote this several years before discovering the great George Carlin and his now infamous (at least among my friends) routine in which he basically says the same thing

Saturday Nights And Sunday Mornings

2008-04-08T13:21:00.007+01:00

So I thought I would finally write about this record. I've had it a good number of weeks now ever since my friend Sean gave me an advance copy (I leaked it to no one and later bought it twice, such is my devotion to this band). Sean's review can be found here: http://www.thefugitivemotel.org.uk/?p=370

There's been a lot of talk press coverage that I've seen for this album about it being a 'return to form' . I've concluded that this is a consensus I can't agree with, not because of the album itself but because I believe it is terminology that simply can't be applied to the band or their output - Counting Crows never had a form to return to. They're just a really really good band that puts out really really interesting and diverse records and that's how they're still around after 15 years and why they've just added another completely brilliant record to their cannon.

Make no mistake - Saturday Nights and Sunday Mornings is not an easy record to listen to. It is, more often than not, the exact opposite. But what makes it difficult is also what makes it so good, and why after multiple listens you'll still be finding something new it in that had previously lain undiscovered. Like all good concept albums (are there really that many?) considering the context behind the concept is not essential, but will hopefully increase appreciation for the piece as a whole and help take the listener further into those far hidden depths.

This is certainly the case here, and the definite duality of the album is so important that it's clearly defined not just in the music but also in the album artwork, so that there can be no misunderstanding . Described by Adam Duritz as '....Disintegration, ruining your life, then crawling from the wreckage. How you put your life back together after you've ruined it, basically. Not necessarily sin followed by redemption.....its kinda more like the binge and then the hangover' the album charts a deeply personal journey across 14 songs (excluding various bonus tracks depending on what country you live in and how you bought the record) and leaves you knowing only one thing for sure: you have to listen to it again.

Saturday Nights kicks off with 1492, the hardest, fastest and darkest song Counting Crows have ever recorded. It's a raw, bold and arresting opener that sets the tone in no uncertain terms for the first half of the record. The imagery of seedy underground clubs and transvestite prostitutes combined with searing guitar work creates a song that is no less than exhausting, and the perfect way to get your attention. Hanging Tree is the perfect follow up - a cautionary tale about how the choices you make and the way you live your life can make you lose yourself, and ultimately become your own worst enemy in the process. More biting guitars here, as well as a damn catchy chorus, make it one of the early highlights.

Los Angeles- co-written by Duritz, Gigolo Aunts' Dave Gibbs, and Ryan Adams - is the sound of the band having fun, a sloppy blues-rock anthem hailing rock star debauchery, drinking, women, and friendship. Sundays follows, and with its almost disco groove and catchy closing refrain it manages to be one of the most funky and distinctive songs the band have ever done, whilst still retaining a genuine emotive quality. Insignificant is another brilliantly dark moment, the anger and desperation in Duritz's vocal serving as a stark reminder of the brutal and frightening personal reality from which these songs have come.

This is further cemented with Cowboys , the point at which all hell breaks loose. The song is a poignant reflection of when, a few years ago, Duritz was seriously beginning to unravel, struggling to juggle the demands of his lifestyle and simultaneously battle with Dissociative Identity Disorder. Conceived as 'the worst possible extension' of his mentality at the time, Duritz has cited the song as a turning point for both himself and the band in terms of feeling able to write and record complex arrangements once more. It certainly shows, and as David Immergluck's blistering guitar outro sends the universe into meltdown you realize that this is not just a centrepiece for the entire album, but the perfect way to end Saturday Nights.

Sunday Mornings begins with Washington Square, a beautiful acoustic number with sparse arrangement and a wistful melancholy that provides the absolute antithesis to all that has gone before and highlights the stark contrast, musically and lyrically, in the two sides of this record. On Almost Any Sunday Morning takes the dark, detached paranoia of Cowboys and transports it into a hopelessly sad and disconnected cycle of meaningless yet seemingly compulsory bedroom encounters. The numbness of this situation is conveyed through spacious, dark music and stream of consciousness style lyrics - a fresh approach in many ways for Counting Crows and one that is used again to surprising effect later on, in the stunning and equally haunting Le Ballet D'or.

When I Dream Of Michaelangelo is probably the song on the album that had the longest journey from conception to completion, with Duritz stating recently that he 'started it 20 years ago but had no idea how to write it'. To that end, hardcore fans and long time followers of the band will recognise parts of the lyric used in Angels Of The Silences from 1997's Recovering The Satellites. The song deals with faith, love and the eternal longing to find that one connection - whether it be in the divine or the ordinary - that will make life meaningful. Again the music is folksy, jangling and mellow.

Anyone But You has a somewhat beatle-esque quality, tinged with jarring electric guitars and the downbeat sadness of someone who is unable (or perhaps unwilling) to fully connect with someone in a relationship. The ending of this song is unique and colourful, as a Brian Wilson style vocal motif evokes the clear image - at least in my mind - of a flock of crows sitting on a wall, cawing to each other in some busy, chaotic retelling of an important tale.

You Can't Count On Me, the first official single from the album, shares the same themes as Anyone But You but examines the breakdown of a relationship from the perspective of both people involved. The gutsy guitar work is also the closest we get to anything on Saturday Nights here, providing a little more contrast in the middle of the quieter side. On A Tuesday In Amsterdam Long Ago takes things back down a notch, with a simple yet striking vocals/piano combination that effectively paints what might just be the saddest picture on the album - a deep and genuinely haunting lament for a lost loved one.

Fittingly, the album ends on an optimistic note. After all Counting Crows have been through in the years since 2002's Hard Candy (constant touring, a best of compilation, an Oscar nomination, the replacement of their drummer and bassist, a live album, their lead singer's struggle with mental illness, and the near break up of the band) the fact that they are back with a new album and playing better than they ever have before is without doubt a cause for celebration. It is precisely this ethos that is the basis for final track Come Around. Saturday Nights and Sunday Mornings is as good if not better than anything else Counting Crows have done, either musically, lyrically or conceptually and with Gil Norton and Brian Deck on production duties they've come up with their most ambitious and unique album yet.

I'm hoping to get to see them at either Hyde Park or Liverpool this year and if not I have my fingers crossed that they'll be back in the UK soon!

University Essays - Modern Gothic, The Body, Contemporary American Writing,The Beat Vision, Dissertation

2007-11-19T21:13:00.000Z

I really enjoyed reading my diaries from Ouch! again so I've decided to post my essays from my final year of university here as well.....hell, they deserve to be somewhere. It's a retro feast! In order, we have: Modern Gothic, The Body, Contemporary American Writing, The Beat Vision, and my Dissertation. The Body is probably my favourite. The Dissertation was a real labour - the whole thing was done in one 12 hour sitting. The commentary for it is particularly hilarious, I was definitely seeing things at that point. Not that it matters.....I still passed the fucking thing.

Transgression and Transformation: Modern Gothic 1/3/06
Assignment Three

‘We live in Gothic times’. Examine three texts in the light of this proposition

Angela Carter’s suggestion that we live in Gothic times is without doubt an interesting one. In his introduction to the genre, Fred Botting makes the following observation :

“Gothic atmospheres - gloomy and mysterious - have repeatedly signalled the disturbing return of pasts upon presents and evoked emotions of terror and laughter. In the twentieth century, in diverse and ambiguous ways, Gothic figures have continued to shadow the progress of modernity with counter-narratives displaying the underside of enlightenment and humanist values…If not a purely negative term, Gothic writing remains fascinated by objects and practices that are constructed as negative, irrational, immoral and fantastic”#.

In this essay I intend to use Botting’s model of the genre to examine three fairly recent texts that could be considered as Gothic - Daphne Du Maurier’s ‘Rebecca’, Jean Rhys’s ‘Wide Sargasso Sea’ and Arundhati Roy’s ‘The God of Small Things’ There are several reasons I have chosen these particular texts as, as well as being quite different from one another, they also exhibit several key themes which link them together in terms of displaying supposed Gothic sensibilities. Beginning with Rebecca, I intend to examine each text in terms of it’s relation to Gothic in the following areas; gender, feminist perspective and the uncanny. All of the texts are Gothic in how Botting describes the genre as being concerned with atmosphere, and this is immediately obvious with ‘Rebecca‘:

“ ‘I think it’s a pity you came back to Manderley so soon’, said Beatrice, ‘it would have been far better to potter about in Italy for three or for months, and then come back in the middle of the summer. Done Maxim a power of good too, besides being easier from your point of view. I can’t help feeling it’s going to be rather a strain here for you at first’. ‘Oh, I don’t think so‘, I said. ‘I know I shall come to love Manderley’. She did not answer, and we strolled backwards and forwards across the lawns.”#

In many ways, this passage encompasses the atmospheric and Gothic difficulties encountered in Du Maurier’s text. The hostility that the new Mrs De Winter finds herself on the other end of is not physical, but rather indicative of a more psychological barrier left by the still tangible memory of her husband’s ex-wife. This is non more so obvious as when the couple return from their honeymoon in Italy. Mrs De Winter does not know how to react to her new surrounding - the daunting task of being the leading lady in a such a sizeable estate as Manderley is not a responsibility she is comfortable with. Her interactions with the servants and butlers at Manderley compound this - particularly the vindictive Mrs Danvers, who will not tolerate anything done differently or even slightly out of step with the way Rebecca did things. The clarity and level of Danvers’ distaste for Maxim’s new wife is highlighted on the night of the traditional and eagerly anticipated costume ball - her ensuring that she wears the same dress as Rebecca on the night is proof enough of this, and Du Maurier sets the event in the darkest, most Gothic context possible:

“I felt very much the same as I did the morning I was married. The same stifled feeling that I had gone too far now to turn back. The evening had got to be endured…I came forward to the head of the stairs and stood there, smiling, my hat in my hand, like the girl in the picture. I waited for the clapping and laughter that would follow as I walked slowly down the stairs. Nobody clapped, Nobody moved…Something was wrong, they had not understood…Then Maxim moved forward to the stairs, his eyes never leaving my face. ‘What the hell do you think you are doing?’ he asked. His eyes blazed in anger, his face was still ashen white…I brushed past him, stumbling, not looking where I went. Then I saw that the door to the west wing was open, and that someone was standing there. It was Mrs Danvers. I shall never forget the expression on her face, loathsome, triumphant. The face of an exulting devil.”#

Here we are introduced to the idea of the uncanny in Du Maurier’s text, and Gothic ‘doubles’ - Caroline serves in many ways as a double for Rebecca, and it is only as the story progresses that the difference between the two women is really observed. The themes and ideas in ‘Rebecca’ as a Gothic text are somewhat mirrored in Jean Rhys’ ’Wide Sargasso Sea’. Interestingly, the book as a whole can almost be seen as a doppelganger in itself - the foundations of it as a work of literature are borrowed extensively and entirely from ‘Jane Eyre’. It’s themes of race, politics and history permeate throughout the novel but - much like Arundhati Roy does with God of Small Things - the author pervades a sense of isolation, forbidden love and quiet madness throughout her work, which stems from a desperate need to belong. By attempting to create an entirely new story based around the life of Bronte’s character from ‘Jane Eyre’ Bertha Mason - known in Rhys’s work as Antoinette Cosway - Rhys is deliberately and in a very Gothic manner, offering a different perspective and level of understanding to an already recognised literary character. By crafting a possible explanation as to why Bertha eventually went mad, she is subverting and challenged Bronte’s depiction of Bertha as uncomplicatedly insane and unbearable to the extreme:

“In this room I wake early and lie shivering, for it is very cold…the coal smoulders and glowers. In the end the flames shoot up and they are beautiful. I get out of bed to go close and watch them and to wonder why I have been brought here. For what reason? There must be a reason. What is it that I must do? When I first came here I thought it would be for a day, two days, a week perhaps. I thought that when I saw him and spoke to him I would be wise as serpents, harmless as doves…But he never came…What am I doing in this place and who am I?”#
In keeping with Fred Botting’s views on the nature of Gothic, and indeed Angela Carter’s statement, Bertha is also tellingly described in the novel as ‘the girl who lives in her own darkness’. In ‘Gothic and Gender: An Introduction’, author Donna Heiland comments extensively on the issue of female ‘madness’ throughout history and in relation to Gothic. Here, she explains in detail the colonial and historical aspects that may impact on Gothic from a feminist perspective, and her suggestions can be applied to not only Rhys and Roy, but also Du Maurier, given each novel’s historical context, and the books as texts that can be viewed in conjunction with one another:

“The notion that female solidarity is necessary for women to escape the literal and figurative constraints on their lives pervades…madness, which finally emerges as a way of escaping the confines of bodily existence. She describes her initial loss of sanity in this way: “The deep melancholy which had seized upon my brain soon tinctured my whole mass of blood - my intellects strangely blackened and confused…madness is simply a reflection of what exists outside herself” A substantive existence…is either trapped or driven out by appearances, with the result that the world is peopled by shadows, illusions, and ghosts, and can only be described as gothic”.#

Heiland’s suggestions are interesting when it comes to examining Arundhati Roy’s ‘The God of Small Things’. Arguably, the sense of increasing tension and the non sequential narratives in Roy’s novel are the most important aspects within it in terms of creating a Gothic atmosphere. There is again also a penetrating sense of madness however as both Ammu and Baby Kochamma go mad - in the style suggested by Heiland - as they are victims, both physically, mentally and spiritually, to the passage of time and the subject of circumstance. Without a doubt, however, the most Gothic aspect to The God of Small Things is the one event around which all others hinge: the death of Sophie Mol:

“The family stood huddled together…Though Ammu, Estha and Rachel were allowed to attend the funeral, they were made to stand separately, not with the rest of the family. Nobody would look at them. It was hot in church, and the white edges of the arum lilies crisped and curled. A bee died in a coffin flower. Ammu’s hands shook and her hymnbook with it…Inside the earth Sophie Mol screamed, and shredded satin with her teeth. But you can’t hear screams through earth and stone. Sophie Mol died because she couldn’t breathe. Her funeral killed her”.#

In conclusion, it is easy to see how all three of these texts can be related to the Gothic genre and the assertion that we live in Gothic times. Perhaps it would be appropriate, given the texts and how they relate and rely heavily on representations of the human body to express their Gothic tendencies, to end with a quote from Kelly Hurley, who asserts in her book ‘The Gothic Body’ that the human form is perhaps the most significant embodiment of the term Gothic, particularly in relation to the fin-de-siecle phenomenon:
“…the ruination of the human subject…of traditional constructs of human identity that accompanied the modelling of new ones at the turn of the century. In place of a human body stable and integral (at least, liable no worse than the ravages of time and disease) the fin-de-siecle Gothic offers the spectacle of a body metamorphic and undifferentiated; in place of the possibility of human transcendence, the prospect of an existence circumscribed within the realities of gross corporeality; in place of a unitary and securely bounded human subjectivity, one that is both fragmented and permeable.”#

Bibliography:

Botting, Fred. Gothic: The New Critical Idiom Routledge,1996

Du Maurier, Daphne. Rebecca Virago Press, 2003

Heiland, Donna. Gothic and Gender: An Introduction Blackwell Publishing, 2004

Hurley, Kelly. The Gothic Body: Sexuality, Materialism, and Degeneration at the Fin-
De-Siecle Cambridge University Press, 1996

Rhys, Jean. Wide Sargasso Sea Penguin Books, 1997

Roy, Arundhati. The God of Small Things Harper Perennial, 2004

The Body: Assignment One

How far is the human body and it’s various forms used as a vehicle for expression and as a central character in itself in Benjamin Lebert’s ‘Crazy‘?

In Benjamin Lebert’s debut novel, ‘Crazy‘, the author explores issues of the body pertaining to pain, pleasure, the body and the soul and the theoretical and practical difference between the two. What makes Lebert’s novel unique is something multifaceted - not only was he just sixteen years of age when the book was published, but it is astonishing to learn that the names, places, people and events depicted in ‘Crazy’ are by and large factually accurate, with the true to life experiences of author - particularly his relationship with his own body and the bodies of those around him - resting at the centre of the story. However, to fully understand ‘Crazy’ and successfully explicate the concepts and ideas examined within it, it is first essential to set ‘the body’ as a whole into some kind of separate and isolated context - only then will it be safe to bring the human body as it is depicted in “Crazy” to life, and consequently to analysis. In reality, bodies and texts have long been intertwined. Indeed, one could argue that ever since the recounting of the crucifixion of Christ in the Bible, poets, philosophers and writers alike have been presented with the fundamental problem of how to overcome the issue of Incarnation when incorporating aspects of the human body into their work. Principally of course, the major issue surrounding Incarnation in literature is not so much one of religion as it is one of practicality. In ‘Discipline And Punish: The Birth Of The Prison’ renowned theorist Michel Foucault argues that the body and the soul must be looked at from a dualistic perspective, in order that both may be fully understood:

“It would be wrong to say that the soul is an illusion, or an ideological effect. On the contrary, it exists, it has a reality, it is produced permanently around, on, within the body…This is the historical reality of this soul. It is not that a real man…has been substituted for the soul…A ‘soul’ inhabits him and brings him to existence, which is itself a factor in the mastery that power exercises over the body.”#

Shortly after this rumination, Foucault goes on to suggest that perhaps the soul is ‘the prison of the body‘. Here, there lies one of the most interesting aspects of Foucault’s theory in relation to the representation of a body in text. It is perhaps much easier to visualise the other way around; that the body might be a prison for the soul. However, choosing to meet Foucault’s argument with visions of a trapped and stifled soul, desperately attempting to escape the confines of a cruel and restrictive body that offers it nothing except despair, would be foolish. Instead, Foucault is offering the possibility that the soul is its own self-contained prison within the body, operating around, and certainly at times in conjunction with, the body itself. This ideal is one which is certainly more aligned with the themes, ideas, and narrative exploration that is navigated within ‘Crazy’, and serves as a good platform from which we can begin examining the book. One of the most startling aspects of ‘Crazy’ is undoubtedly the clarity of expression and at the same time depth of perception offered by the author. At such a young age, it is quite remarkable that Lebert immediately engages with issues of physicality, sex, death, philosophy and friendship in a brutally honest and yet naively endearing fashion. What is all the more fascinating is the totally autobiographical nature of the story, which serves to enhance rather than undermine the ease with which the reader can engage with the narrative voice offered by Lebert. The book charts Lebert’s time at Castle Neuseelen Boarding School, and begins with a simple and accessible statement of his surroundings and current situation:

“So this is where I’m supposed to stay. Until I graduate, if possible. That’s the plan. I stand in the parking lot of Castle Neuseelen Boarding School and look around. My parents are standing beside me. They brought me here. I’ve got four schools behind me now. This is to be my fifth. And the fifth is finally supposed to raise my damn math score from a 6 to a 5. I can’t wait”#

Immediately, Lebert sets the tone here with which he is to address the reader throughout the novel. It could be argued that even within this short and introductory paragraph, an inherent sense of the awareness of physicality, surroundings and people is already beginning to build.
A little later however, we are introduced much more specifically to Lebert and his disability -notably by a third-party - and the idea of the novel as a meditation on the human form really begins to take off:

“How many times have I pushed this envelope into a teacher’s hand? A dozen a least. Now I get to do it again. Jorg Richter reaches hastily for the envelope. His eyes glint with curiosity. He opens the letter. To my horror he reads it out loud. His voice is clear and full of understanding…My son Benjamin has had a partial paralysis of the left side of the body since birth…he either cannot perform or has difficulty performing such fine motor tasks as tying his shoes, using a knife and fork…any movement that involves a sense of balance…as the last word is read out, I shut my eyes.”#

From this point on, the pace of the novel picks up incredibly quickly, and the importance of the representations of various bodies in the text intensifies. One of the main ways in which the author brings this change about is through the introduction of other characters. Just as the reader was introduced candidly and informally to Lebert and his disability, so the same thing happens for each of the core characters in the story. Crucially, each one of these essential accomplices to Lebert’s story has some trait which marks them out as physically different. Equally important to this is each character’s own measure of self awareness, which continually feeds into the representations of the body in the text, and later on, into the philosophical aspects of the story. In ‘The Body In Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World‘, Elaine Scarry suggests that one of the factors that help give a body a successful voice is the expression and experience of pain. Expanding upon this, she suggests there might well be something in the idea of self imposed torture as a kind of vehicle to demonstrate the unity of shared experience - a theory which very much resonates throughout the whole of ‘Crazy’. Scarry writes:

“This dissolution of the boundary between inside and outside gives rise to a fourth aspect of the felt experience of physical pain, an almost obscene conflation of private and public. It brings with it all the solitude of absolute privacy with none of its safety, all the self-exposure of the utterly public with…its possibility for camaraderie or shared experience. Artistic objectifications of pain often concentrate on this combination of isolation and exposure”#

If then we take Scarry’s theory on artistic objectifications and Foucault’s propositions on the relationship between body and soul, we now have some solid foundations on which to really begin examining ‘Crazy’ as a text chiefly concerned with the human body. Arguably, the major turning point in the book occurs when the boys set off on an after hours trip across the boarding school to get to the girl’s dormitories. Again, it is not merely the action itself which contains the interest, but rather the way in which the crusade is portrayed by the author, and the events which precede and follow the incident - our narrator’s first experience of sex sparks a major philosophical revolution that permeates right through to the novel’s close. Before all of this, however, Lebert and his cohorts must explore within themselves and each other that juxtaposition of isolation and exposure that Scarry maintains is essential when expressing physicality:

“So things start to roll. Another pointless event. The same six of us. Janosch says these pointless events will single us out. As I look around, I see he’s right. Here we all are - the pointless eventers. Florian a.k.a. Girl, in a rust coloured pyjama top and white undershorts. His bare feet patter on the linoleum floor…Next to him Fat Felix. Apparently he doesn’t often go along on trips to the girls corridor…Which is why the others always make sure Felix has a lot to drink…Behind him are Skinny Felix and Troy. The two big question marks. Nobody knows much about them.” #

It is clear from the above passage that the body exists in the framework of Lebert’s narrative almost as an entirely separate entity, linking each character together. As the actions and situations of ‘Crazy’ move into more spiritual territory - mainly through the dialogue between Lebert and his friends - it is important to note that the body in no way takes a back seat. If anything, the body and soul become more intertwined as the novel goes on, and there are arguably two major and pivotal events within it that facilitate this movement. The first is Lebert’s experience of losing his virginity, and the second is the decision made by all six friends to abscond from Castle Neuseelen and head out on a pilgrimage to Munich. These episodes happen consecutively, and it is arguable that one leads directly to the other - that the liberation experienced by the author in terms of such a physical release results in an awakening of a much broader context. Writing again in ‘The Body In Pain‘, Scarry observes that:

“The invented god and its human inventor...are differentiated by the immunity of the one and the woundability of the other; and if the creature is...handicapped or physically marred in some way, then that individual is asserted to exist at an even greater moral distance from God than does the “normal” person”.#

This concept is a particularly interesting one when examining ‘Crazy’ - not least because the central argument which underlines it is at once validated and contradicted in Lebert’s text. The subject of life as a ‘handicapped or physically marred’ individual - to borrow Scarry’s blatant language - is discussed at length as the book progresses, as is the philosophical nature of life itself and, invariably, the question of how (indeed if at all) any kind of God has any kind of responsibility toward those who experience an altered lifestyle due to their physicality. As Lebert himself remarks in the book:

‘The good Lord should cut me some slack. We can behave as if nothing happened. The whole thing is beginning to get too complicated for me....what moron ever came up with this idea?’#

Theoretically, the ‘idea’ Lebert is referring to could be seen as life itself, and this fits in with the evolving ethos of the novel as it draws to an end. The trip to Munich signifies a greater turn toward the characters interacting and philosophising about their position - the role of themselves as individuals versus the impact that any sort of God could have on them in their lives. Where the body fits into this is interesting - the device Lebert uses to bring forward this transition is the introduction of another character whom they meet on their travels, an old man who forces them to examine their own mortality:

“You will certainly get old, my boy. Thats life. All parts of you will get old: your soul, your heart, your opinions. Whether you grow old or not is a matter of chance. And whether you sing the song of life or not is up to God. It’s that simple”#

This meeting brings the question of mortality and the body to the novel and, as the book draws to a close, this is something which Lebert chooses to deal with in more detail. Lebert uses several devices to illustrate this and whilst the old man is the central one, there are other far more subtle ways in which the author deals with this dichotomy. Lebert becomes deliberately self-referential and intertextual, using an encounter with not only the old man himself, but also with the Ernest Hemingway novel ‘The Old Man and The Sea’, as a way to examine the body in relation to age, time and the inevitable spectacle of death:

“I give myself over to my text and read it loudly and clearly, only making occasional mistakes…Soon Janosch isn’t the only one listening; the others have pricked up their ears as well and they’re gaping at me wide eyed…I don’t know how long I read, but it’s a damn long time…The old man loses the battle with the sea…The guys faces are all red…Glob and Skinny Felix are so upset they reach for each others hands, and there are tears in their eyes.”#

This passage is an interesting and significant one. Using the technique of positioning a novel within a novel as a character in it’s own right, Lebert highlights the vital relationship between the body and language itself - the reactions the latter can impose on the former. This relationship is, in a way, the crux of the novel. As it draws to a close, ‘Crazy’ accelerates it’s exploration of the body even more, as the final major act on the character’s pilgrimage to Munich involves a visit to a strip club. This experience again brings the issue of physicality in the novel back full circle:

“He runs his hand through my hair and smiles. I’ve never seen Janosch smile like that before, and I’ll never see him smile like that again. Troy has joy nailed all over his face with big fat pushpins. Even Fat Felix is laughing…He can’t wait for Angelique…She’s wearing high heels. Black suede. She insinuates her leg around one of the iron poles.”#

Overall, then, it is easy enough to see ‘Crazy’ as a text in which the most prominent and significant character is the human body itself. However, what becomes even clearer as the text is explored is the way in which the author uses the human body as a vehicle for expressing the intricacies of the mind, the desires of the soul and the purity of the heart. When considering this, perhaps it would be appropriate to cite Armand Marie Leroi, who, in his book ‘Mutants’ makes the following simple and encompassing observation:

“The genetic grammars of all creatures are quite similar. But just as, over time, the vocabulary and grammatical rules of human languages diverge from one another in ways large and small, so too do the languages of…the human body…We must approach the human body more circumspectly. We must find mutants.”#

Bibliography:

Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Penguin Social Sciences,
1977

Lebert, Benjamin. Crazy. Hamish Hamilton Ltd, 2000

Leroi, Armand Marie. Mutants: On the form, varieties and errors of the human body.
HarperCollins Publishers, 2003

Scarry, Elaine. The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World. Oxford
University Press, 1985

Contemporary American Writing - Assingment One 12/03/06

The postmodern strategy of de-composition exists to disintegrate, to atomise and fragment rather than to create a community. How do two texts employ postmodern strategies to express anxieties about social breakdown?

Arguably, decomposition and social breakdown are the two most recognisable facets of any postmodern text. Two texts that deal, in great detail, with the issues surrounding the anxieties, fears and ultimate disintegration of community in a postmodern setting are Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner and John Sayles’ Lone Star. Whilst the two films might appear to have very little in common at first glance, beneath the trappings and superficialities of routine filmic conventions there exists a deep bond between the two directors in their depiction and exploration of the social fabric involved in postmodernism. In his book ‘The illusions of postmodernism’, Terry Eagleton suggests that the key to understanding postmodernism as a concept is to first of all grasp the importance of history in relation to universal identity:

“Only when we have the institutional means of determining our own histories will we cease to be constrained by History. In this sense, the humanist notion of the self-determining agent, and the postmodern conception of the multiple subject, are not finally at odds. But they are at odds for us now - since to bring about those conditions would involve instrumental action, determinate purposes, ideas of truth, precise forms of knowledge, [and] collective subjectivities…”#

If, then, we take Eagleton’s theory as a platform from which to examine Lone Star against Blade Runner as contemporary texts dealing with a postmodern ‘strategy of decomposition’ we can subsequently start to dissect both films in relation to how they deal with social breakdown and the issue of community and identity. Lone Star and Blade Runner deal with these things in ways that are at once both polarised and extremely similar. Beginning with Lone Star I will examine how these similarities and differences are presented in the films. Sayles film is, ultimately, a search for truth within the complex maze of history. Each character - from Buddy Deeds to Pilar Cruz to Charley Wade - must deal with not only their own history but the histories of those around them. Crucially, Sayles presents history as a multifaceted, three dimensional and interconnected structure, and this informs much of the film’s postmodern feel. On the subject of the film being, denotatively and principally, about the burdens of history, commentator Tomas Sandoval notes:

“The film arrives at conclusions…..worth consideration, for in many ways, they speak to our own condition today. By more than simply echoing the mantra of self-empowerment and human agency, Lone Star offers insight into the ways in which human beings can exist outside of history by choosing to exist within the present. But the question remains to be answered: Is John Sayles right? If blood (and history) only mean what we let it, then why have humans always felt so compelled to act as they are told from the past rather than from the present?”#
This concept of history as a burden is certainly an interesting one. As Sam Deeds struggles to uncover the truth about Wade’s murder in a town still intoxicated with the memory of his recently passed father, he must simultaneously consider and battle with his own feelings towards his past and how he regards his revered namesake. There are several main reasons for this inner struggle and, although by the film’s close Sam’s dichotomy has almost completely turned around, the events which triggered it in the first place illustrate pointedly how the film deals with postmodernism and communal social breakdown. The first reason Sam struggles is own view of his father pitted against the views of the rest of the town. Already living in the shadow of Buddy Deeds - who was loved and respected unconditionally by the Frontera townsfolk because of the towns past and the fact that Buddy replaced the tyranny of Charley Wade as sheriff - Sam is facing not only the burden of being his father‘s son and taking over his fathers job, but also the fact that his father is his main suspect in the case of Wade’s murder. Apart from wrestling with the guilt of not holding the same view of Buddy as everyone else - and, crucially, the guilt of not really knowing or understanding within himself, at least in the beginning of the film, what view he actually does hold of his dead father - Sam also holds much resent toward Buddy for Buddy’s (perceived, by Sam) role in the destruction of his relationship with Pilar Cruz. Of course, much like in Blade Runner, as the film progresses, the stipulations and notions of identity, truth and personal reality are challenged and undergo metamorphosis to the point of being unrecognisable quite quickly. In Lone Star, these changes take place in two main areas. As it is chiefly a border text, Sayles weaves into the film a background narrative concerning the geography of the town of Frontera. The politics of the imminent prominence of the Mexican population in the town becomes an issue that threatens to change the past, present and future of the town perpetually. The other area in which Sayles explores breakdown, change, and interpersonal revelations is of course to further expand on the relationship triangle that exists between Pilar Cruz, and Buddy and Sam Deeds. This is done slowly over the course of the film’s constantly changing, chameleon like narrative as Sam realises that several key factors - in both his past and present, which are sure to affect his future - are definitely not as he had previously perceived them to be. Perhaps the less significant of these revelations (and only marginally less significant) is Sam finally discovering the identity of Charley Wade’s killer. Here Sayles has set up a complex, almost leap-frog style system of character roles that plays with and examines the model of postmodernism offered by Eagleton: Sam discovers that his father, the ex-sheriff, was not the murderer of Wade (for the sake of ease and the simplicity of the theory, the ex-ex-sheriff) but rather that the culprit was Hollis Pogue, the current mayor of the town. Cleverly, this allows Sam (the current sheriff) to in at least some capacity, cast off the underlying weight of his past, or to paraphrase Eagleton, to free himself of the constraints of his own history, and also to change and reconcile within his own mind his feelings about Buddy Deeds, and being Buddy Deed’s son. This freeing of constraints continues with a subsequent revelation; although any viewers of the film will surely agree that for every weight that is lifted in this case, another must be added. Regarding Sam’s resentment of his father’s role in the demise of his relationship with Pilar Cruz - when it transpires that his teenage sweetheart is, in actuality, his half sister, and that Buddy and Pilar’s mother were engaged in a passionate and almost forbidden love affair due to their cultural differences, this finally allows Sam to fully understand himself, his history, his future and his relationship with both his father and his lover. It is clear then how Lone Star uses the concepts of history, identity, truth and geographical space to explore community and its breakdown through the vehicle of postmodernism. But how can this be related to Blade Runner, and how do the two films tie together in their examination of a strategy of de-composition? In ‘New York fictions: Modernity, Postmodernism, The New Modern’ critic Peter Brooker suggests that it is in fact the metaphorical dialogue presented within an urban environment that is one of the most important aspects of our modern social fabric:

“…One level of common experience in the postmodern city [is] the boundaries of the kind of knowledge derived from direct personal acquaintance with people and places. On one side of our minimal coexistence in city crowds and public places there is the full but circumscribed familiarity of immediate relationships in households and demarcated neighbourhoods. Beyond that…on the other side of stark coexistence there is estrangement: the look of the unknown, and the risk and threat this brings.”#

Arguably, Brooker’s theory is a good base from which to begin analysing Blade Runner against Lone Star as an equally postmodern text. Whilst it might seem odd at first to connect Brooker’s more ’urban identity’ related model to the histories and personal truths explored in Lone Star, in actuality the two separate ideologies fuse together nicely with Scott’s film to create perhaps a more cohesive picture of the so-called ‘strategy of decomposition’. Moreover, Brooker’s idea serves as a more than appropriate analogy for the existence and significance of the ‘replicants’ in Blade Runner. The film is set in an environment that looks in parts equally like the landscapes of Los Angeles and New York City, despite the audience being told on screen at the beginning of the film that the location is indeed Los Angeles in the year 2019. As one writer suggests, this apparent fusing of urban landscapes may account for at least some of the film’s engagements in postmodern concerns:

“The film's postmodernist tendencies have also been detailed extensively by such writers as Giulliana Bruno and David Harvey. Most obvious is the film's use of postmodern pastiche: the film's production design emphasises the coexistence of multiple historical influences and styles, particularly of architecture. The urban decay and retrofitting shows the acceleration of industrial processes and recycling (which Bruno characterises as the process of becoming reliant upon one's own waste) under late capitalism. Harvey is quick to note that the production of replicants individual parts has been outsourced to street vendors, which extends the process of industrial devolution and flexible flows of capital found in post-Fordist economies. The replicants' four year life spans (offset, claims Tyrell, by the intensity of their lives) are suggestive of the accelerated experience of life under postmodernism#”

As is the case with Lone Star, the issues of truth, history and personal identity are major factors when dealing with postmodernism in Blade Runner. The replicants are hugely symbolic in this sense. The notion of what is real and what is merely perceived as real - particularly in terms of history, on a personal level - is another comparison that can be made between Lone Star and Blade Runner. Whereas Sayles presents his characters as fully formed but with opinions and misconceptions about their past that send them on a personal journey to find the missing link and subsequently themselves, the replicants that Scott presents us with are much more threatening - from the start, nobody - not even the very characters themselves - can be sure of whether they are ‘real’ or not. This is dealt with in both films in a similar way, as for both Sam Deeds and Rachel, personal history (and crucially, ones own memory of that personal history) are revealing enough to be of major consequence, particularly when considering the films in a postmodern light. Interestingly, both films are also concerned with history outside of a personal sphere and in a broader sense and context. The idea of progression being the enemy of truth is considered. In Lone Star, the town’s constant and blinkered affection for Buddy, and the golden monument they erect in his honour, are arguably symbolic of history being challenged and redefined by technological advancement. The equivalent signifier in Blade Runner is that of the photograph - it‘s importance as a physical and tangible reminder of what has gone before, and how that effects what will be in the future, cannot be underestimated. It is clear then how we can build up a fairly clear picture of how these two texts deal with postmodernism as a concept. By exposing a strategy of decomposition, Sayles and Scott both identify the ways in which identity, past, present, future and above all truth, are explored and ultimately dismantled through the medium of social breakdown in a postmodern era.

Bibliography:

Brooker, Peter. New York Fictions: Modernity, Postmodernism, The New Modern.
Longman Group Limited, 1996

Eagleton, Terry. The Illusions of Postmodernism. Blackwell Publishing, 1996

Webography:

http://home.pacific.net.au/~satadaca/bladrunn.htm (2006)
http://bad.eserver.org/issues/1996/28/sandoval.html (2006)

Beat Vision - assignment one 1/3/06

The Beat Vision - Take 5

In this essay I will attempt to familiarise the reader with the mechanics and overall philosophy of the ethical and spiritual phenomenon known as ‘the Beat vision’. Generally, this practise can be described as a way of life that teaches and promotes the importance of the art of being, and, more specifically, the art of being as the art of existing in the moment. The origins of ‘the Beat vision’ as a term are invariably complex and tied to both cultural and historical context, however principally it is related to the concept of the beatific vision, i.e. a vision that brings to the human mind the attainment and joy of the immediate knowledge of the spirit of God. Between the 1950’s and 1970’s the musical, poetic and basic creative climate became one of philosophical expressionism and artistic freedom. To further explore the significance, impact and influence of this incredibly important period, I will present and explicate five quotations from different artistic quarters of the time, in the hope that I can further define and make understood the premise of the Beat vision. Unarguably, one of the forefathers of ‘Beat’ as an act of expression was the poet Allen Ginsberg. In his poem, ‘Song’ he wrote:

The weight of the world
is love.
Under the burden
of solitude,
Under the burden
Of dissatisfaction
The weight,
The weight we carry
Is love. #

This particular quote from Ginsberg is very representative of the Beat philosophy and the almost sacred importance of that which was beatific. It is generally agreed that Ginsberg’s influences - Walt Whitman and William Blake in particular - were chiefly concerned with the liberation of humanity. Given the historical climate that greeted Ginsberg as a poet, living in the aftermath of a post war society still attempting to celebrate it’s affluence, it is no surprise that here he talks with no uncertainty of his hopes for a spiritual future for the human race. After all, what else could be the purpose of unburdening the world of love, other than to finally and truly experience it? Linguistically Ginsberg touches upon the two opposing spectrums of eastern philosophy - love and dissatisfaction. Between the two, both metaphorically and in the poem’s structure, sits solitude as a representation of a possible instruction on how to get from one to the other. With the weight of the world, the subject of history - i.e. time, is also a factor. Ginsberg struggled with his own burden, that of the role of being a poet and consequently a voice for the people. The balancing of this act against the oppressions of the opposing social consciousness which ran contradictory to his entire ethos (he and his contemporaries such as Gary Snyder were strongly opposed to militarism and violence, indeed the very idea of confrontation) presented Ginsberg with the problem of having to at once engage with his past, present and future whilst at the same time trying to maintain the clarity and authenticity of a vision that was, and through his work remains, inherently beatific. Just as important - some would argue more so - as Ginsberg, was Jack Kerouac. His quintessential novel The Dharma Bums, detailing the spiritual journey of a group of writers (essentially Kerouac and his friends and contemporaries, Ginsberg included, thinly disguised by what are mostly easily decipherable pseudonyms) on a Buddhist inspired quest that is both metaphorical and literal. In it, he asserts at one point ‘I hadn’t yet digested the Lankavatara Scripture which eventually shows you that there’s nothing in the world but the mind itself, and therefore all’s possible including the suppression of suffering’#. Again, when looked at in conjunction with Kerouac’s background and in relation to the Beat vision, it is clear to see how important such a statement is - Kerouac actually coined the term ‘Beat’. He by and large thought the counterculture of the 1950’s and 60’s was disastrous and like Ginsberg wanted nothing more than to see an end to the suffering of man. He had something of a pre-occupation in his work with physical pain and suffering - as seen in the above quote - and this was no doubt as a result of his tumultuous family life, in particular the very physically painful death of his 9 year old brother Gerard, which haunted Kerouac ever after and inspired the book Visions of Gerard. The final poet I will look at in this essay (strictly speaking, Bob Dylan and Lennon/McCartney were songwriters) is Gary Snyder. Snyder can be linked closely with both Kerouac and Ginsberg - all three men were contemporaries and tended to move in the same circles. Snyder was most definitely a disciple of Zen, well versed in the art of Buddha nature. In his famous poem ‘RIPRAP’ he writes:

Crystal and Sediment linked hot
All change, in thoughts
As well as things#

An interesting point must be made here. With poets such as Kerouac and Ginsberg acting as figureheads for the Beat movement, it generally came to be thought of by many as bohemian, drug crazed and alcohol fuelled. Snyder however offered with his art a different perspective - that ecology was of great importance to the beats seen as according to Buddha, everything that lives is holy and comes from the earth, which is sacred. Bob Dylan is someone who would most likely agree. Dylan represents an altogether different (yet still in many ways curiously similar) facet to the Beat vision, that of the singer/songwriter. In ‘Chronicles’, Dylan sums up his role in that time thusly:
Passion and enthusiasm, which sometimes can be enough to sway a crowd, aren’t even necessary. You can manufacture faith out of nothing and there are an infinite number of patterns and lines that connect from key to key - all deceptively simple. You gain power with the least amount of effort, trust that the listeners make their own connections, and it’s very seldom that they don’t#

Bob Dylan is relating to the Beat vision here in a way that is interesting and unexpected; i.e. through prose rather than song. It is easy to see, however, where and how he is connecting with the Beat philosophy in his writing. Attaining power through the spiritual connection of music, self manufacturing faith and engaging in a practice that is, above all, deceptively simple - all of these are qualities that are found in the Beat vision ethos and, as Dylan was a crucial new figure in Greenwich Village during the early 1960’s, it is not surprising that he embraced and utilised such eastern philosophies in a largely western society. The final quote I will examine is a song lyric - not by Dylan, but from The Beatles. Although The Beatles were from Liverpool it did not stop them having an almost incalculable level of impact and resonance on popular culture all over the globe, particularly in America and with the poets and writers I have already looked at in this essay. With it’s themes of nostalgia and differing perspectives on the nature of time and space on the self, it seems only fitting to end with an undeniably Zen lyric from the band Dylan himself once claimed changed the universe:
Let me take you down, 'cause I'm going to Strawberry Fields.
Nothing is real and nothing to get hung about.
Strawberry Fields forever.

Living is easy with eyes closed, misunderstanding all you see.
It's getting hard to be someone but it all works out.
It doesn't matter much to me.

Let me take you down, 'cause I'm going to Strawberry Fields.
Nothing is real and nothing to get hung about.
Strawberry Fields forever.

No one I think is in my tree, I mean it must be high or low.
That is you can't you know tune in but it's all right.
That is I think it's not too bad#

Bibliography:
‘The Beat Vision: Snyder Handout’, Dept. of English, MMU, 2006, p. 289
Aldridge, Alan. The Beatles Illustrated Lyrics Little, Brown and Company, 1998.
Dylan, Bob. Chronicles Volume One Simon & Schuster UK Ltd, 2004
Ginsberg, Allen. Selected Poems 1947-1995 Penguin Books, 1997.
Kerouac, Jack. The Dharma Bums Penguin Books, 2000

Dissertation submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the degree Programme of BA(Hons) in English, or English and Creative Writing, Faculty of Humanities and Social Science, Manchester Metropolitan University (2/6/06)

As If Alive: A Collection of Poetry

By: Ciaran James Gilligan

The ghost of your company
Wish I could bring you here, and then
I’d close my eyes and count to ten
I’d do it over and over again
Just so I could see
Your face anew, looking back at me
Every time I opened them
But all you have to offer me
Is the ghost of your company
The ghost of your company
Haunts me separately
To you

Unforgiven
You will remain unforgiven
Like the love that hides inside
A ball of unrelenting and
Shining naivety,
Holding for me nothing but a shadow
In which a memory lies dead,
Yet perfectly preserved
Like a bird in the display case of a museum
With it’s eyes, shining
As if alive

Escaping
How can she escape
The self?
Do any of us actually understand
The insides inside
Our conscience ticking,

The past and present

Forever slipping

Like tectonic plates that jar our hearts

With our minds.

A monumental shift in time.

Being High
Down there it is black but up here
It is not. The muggy streets are far away,
Parted between me
By an expectant landscape of air,
And shapes, and flat sound.
The city is one I know well
For I dream of it often. Tonight though,
It twists and turns only half as much
as my insides. I stand looking over the edge and,
Feeling sick and dizzy. I remember being high.

Dreams
As the sun rises and the night subsides
Deep inside the walls of love
I remember you and the peace you brought
As I wake it leaves me
An ironically I am left with an imprint at the same moment
Of how affected I still am
By you and the presence you can no longer give to me
Except
Of course
Each night
In dreams

Rain
If the rain that comes will fall to you
And everything that you hold true
Is soaked to the skin
Then how can life begin
Ask him in six months
And feel the heat of this sin which
Spirals down and tumbles fast and without
Stopping to consider
Rain itself
Which is the thing that cools it

Body
Her body exists as a map inside my head,
Created a thousand days ago
Under the same stars
And borne of the same electricity
That finds us now changed.
I need no compass to traverse it;
Merely the memory which is instinctive,
And the hands which talk to my eyes of beauty,
Or inform my mind that it might now love.
The heart simply beats onward,
Waiting for sleep, and praying for a slower pace.

Time
The hands of time tick by and chime
And so to do his feet.
His eyes are darting back and forth
With the rhythm of a ball
Across a tennis court
He meets our dreams and as we sleep
He carries them steadily away.
To where he does not say
He leaves us by and by
To weep.

Language
Tiredness creeps in,
With only the language of words
In the library of the mind
Left with the job of expressing it.
Eyes can sag,
Fingers may stab,
And ink might expand slowly, like fog
Over the white landscape of an A4 desert,
But ultimately it will be left to the l e t t e r s
To make sense of all of this, and bring it to life in the eye’s mind

Land
As the metal train transports her
Fast across the land
The vast expanding night
Invites a change to enter
The parallel landscape of her mind
Too late perhaps,
For new mishaps,
But older ones renew then collapse
As the train speeds on
To leave what’s left behind

Missing
I have a plan I’d love for you to know about
But part of it is missing
Along with parts of me
So as flowers grow and bloom
Maybe both of us can grow
And you can search the sky for room
When I eventually get up there with you
For we are twinned, after all
Two halves of one hole, and I know
You will look after my friend. He is missing

Remembering
I remember as the rain comes down
And my stomach expands to let in new rollercoaster feelings
(though one has not been ridden)
That I have not remembered you in a while
Or how we used to be.
When I do, I am filled with a sadness, sickly sweet
And awash with memories that are impatient
For a future in which they may be forgotten,
Or at least locked away, contained to a single cell
That can be hidden, somewhere in the back.

The music
Listening to the music
Makes my ears sit up and take notice
Of something other than the insanity
Caught within the invisible traffic
Of the Earth and her airwaves.
Catching suddenly,
A turn of phrase or vocal arrangement
That one can recognise instantly
And know it’s history even from that inaugural beat
Is preciousness and pleasure objectified

The Sea
The sea has taken all that she wants,
All at once. She continues in the cold
And the salty breeze, to drown the lives
Of those that love her; and to sink
The grandest ships that dare sail her.
Vast, and tempered like a blanket
Of cool, warm and inviting death.
Intriguing and mysterious,
Unpredictable and defenceless…
The sea reminds me of you.

Last Day
Senseless doom forebodes
Along with a compounding fear of the appearance and
Inevitability of the End. A chest rises, falls and
Falls again, forgetting at last to rise once more.
The smell of the place he rests in,
He takes that laboured memory with him.
It’s ok though - there are many more memories
Gathered around him, and stored in his flesh and bone.
In another room a child is restless, just arriving. But for him
On this last day, the truth of his death lies in the life lived before it.

Drafts for ‘As If Alive’

The ghost of you (possibly change to ‘your company’s ghost)??

The ghost of you
Haunts me through and through until
I don’t know what
I am to do
But Still your ghost
Comes through and haunts
Me separately
To you

Not sure on language/structure - sounds more like the talking of an actual ghost, rather than conveying the sense that character is missing someone. Also needs to be longer if to fit in with the each poem at 10 lines idea!

Escaping
How do we escape each other?
A monumental shift in time
Never knowing when,
To draw the line.
Tectonic plates that draw our
Hearts and minds together forever
We do not know how.

BEING HIGH - make this one about new york!!
It was over a year ago, but I still
Remember being high. Down there the streets
Are muggy and
Up here my mind, is foggy
But now I still remember being high
As my insides twist and turn tonight

Good ideas but it needs definite reinvention for the final product!

Travelling through the body (probably shorten this title, sounds a bit airy fairy)
Her body exists as a map inside my head,
Routes not in what was done or what we said
But memories left in sheets and on the bed
Not sure about this at all, will have a re-draft (major) in terms of actual style and content of the piece…What am I tryin to saaay??

I want to write about R but I dunno how….here are a few ideas (title wise at least, the rest will SURELY follow):
Dead presumed missing
Cut off from the two
Just missing.
Wondering about you.
Actually scrap that, they all sound terrible

Commentary on As If Alive: A Collection of Poetry submitted as 3rd Year Dissertation

By: Ciaran James Gilligan

My intention with this collection was first and foremost to simply explore what the essence of poetry is to me - what it means to be a poet, and how far the accepted conventions and forms of poetry matter when the issue at hand is as simple as that of pure expressionism. In ‘Poetry: the basics’ author Jeffrey Wainwright asserts the following:

“There is now substantial evidence that poetry has more writers than readers…It is the most practically available literary space. It probably requires paper and certainly some time, but perhaps not as much of either as writing a novel…Moreover, the development of ‘free verse’ in the twentieth century has -for good and ill - had the effect of loosening convention, and this, together with the wider availability of knowledge…has expanded the long-standing practice of verse-making and given the developing poet a greater range of possibilities from which to proceed.”#

Wainwright’s proposition of the ‘developing poet’ who has effectively been given free reign over the language at his disposal thanks to the steady evolution of poetic form is undoubtedly the position I find myself in with this collection. From the off I will freely admit that I have written an infinitely larger number of poems than I have read - this is perhaps to my detriment with the work you see here. Conversely though, there is of course the possibility that this makes me as an author less bogged down in the bureaucracy of influence and generics, and therefore my work more fresh, original and compelling. The latter outcome is, of course, the one that I hope and have aimed for here - writing the collection has certainly been an enriching an eye opening experience for me, as well as being incredibly cathartic one at times. This point brings me to the first problem I encountered when first sitting down to begin a collection of poems - what exactly does a poet write about? The simple answer is, a poet writes about what a poet wants to write about. The difficulty of subject where poetry is concerned is that the choice remains almost perpetually unlimited. However, as is usually the case (one suspects)for a developing poet, the genesis for the work came ultimately from my personal, emotional, political and practical experiences I was undergoing at the time of writing. As a result, I will admit that much of the work here is highly personal. Where there is a ‘character’ voice (particularly an ‘I’) this is more often than not myself. However I do not believe that this detracts from the work necessarily. The form of the piece as a whole is particularly open ended - the only limitations I decided upon were that the collection should be comprised of 15 ten line poems. The reason for this format was simple - I wanted specifically to explore the idea of conciseness in poetry, and have each single poem be short but nonetheless filled with detail and able to leave a lasting impression, almost like the literary equivalent of an intensely busy and colourful photographic snapshot. Hopefully I have managed to achieve this effect (particularly with “Body” and “Unforgiven“) but even if I have failed, I am confident enough that this is what I set out to do. With regard to the style of the pieces and the actual physical layout of the language, again I have to confess that there was no real precedent or outline that I aimed for or set the task of deliberately engineering - with the exception of the deliberate spacing of the word ’letters’ in “Language”, I just let the words fall and be placed naturally where they felt right. I believe wholeheartedly that this approach has given my work an organic feel - because of the relative shortness of each poem being written around a certain theme, I made little alteration to each poem from the first draft (and in one or two cases, not at all). Whilst this may appear foolish and unthinkable to some - and it is a view, all possible things considered, which may be correct - I deliberately wanted to retain the ‘freshness’ of the moment of conception for each particular poem. To again use a photographic analogy, I wanted to keep as clear a picture as possible of the moment of the ‘birth’ of each poem. It is often said that Shakespeare did not indulge too much in the art of re-writing for fear of killing the artistic freshness his work through by labouring over it too long, and certainly from my own experiences of writing (and reading) this is a concern that I can all too well appreciate. Indeed, in ‘The Making of a Poem’ the introductory statement makes the following observation:

“The fascination of poetic form, however, goes well beyond the answer to questions about structure and origin. Once these are answered, another door opens, another labyrinth waits…Perhaps the chief problem is that form is a powerful filter, but not an inclusive one”#.

And so now allow me to go into the details of my form - particularly the piece as a whole - in a little more depth. I chose the title ‘As If Alive’ for the collection because ultimately it seemed the most fitting moniker to express what poetry is, and in truth how to most honestly describe it. As I have said before, the genesis for all the poetry was personal experience - there was little outside influence in terms of subject. The period in which the collection was written was for me a time of personal reflection and consideration, and the poems themselves all reflect this. The collection begins with ’The Ghost of Your Company’, a piece inspired - as a number of the works here are - by the breakdown of a relationship. I felt it was an appropriate piece to begin the collection with as it was the subject at the forefront of my mind at the time. The only thing I would say about this piece is that it is the only poem in the collection where the language may be considered a little clichéd in terms of the nature of the subject of the poem and its ruminations on love. However I decided in the end that the purity of the expression in the piece was the thing I wanted to retain the most. This is a re-occurring theme throughout the collection and I would like to think that overall, it adds to the uniqueness of my work. The collection ends with ‘Last Day’, which was a last minute addition about the death of a close friend. I chose deliberately to begin and end with the pieces that I did because the two themes explored in them - love and death respectively - are ones that permeate and punctuate (consciously) throughout the collection as a whole.

Bibliography:
Strand, Mark and Boland, Evan. The Making of a Poem: A Norton Anthology of
Poetic Forms Norton Paperback, 2001

Wainwright, Jeffrey. Poetry: The Basics Routledge, 2004

My Ouch! Student Diaries from 2003

2007-11-18T23:56:00.000Z

I've decided to post these here because I came across them the other day and they read a lot better than I remember. I'm gonna get together a bunch of my reviews over the past 4 years and post them here too, eventually. I'm also working on a short story which may or may not appear soon. NB - These diaries can also be found in their original format, complete with some fucking horrendous pictures of me, at http://www.bbc.co.uk/ouch/lifefiles/student/profiles/ciaran.shtml

Student Diaries 2003: Meet the students
Name: Ciaran
Age: 19
Studying: English and Creative Writing
Where: Manchester Metropolitan University
Interests: I'm really into indie rock music and go to lots of gigs and festivals, this summer I went to V and Carling. I read a lot too, currently liking Nick Hornby and am part way through The Divine Comedy (Dante). Socially, there's little better than drinking and larking with mates, and as far as humour is concerned I'm a big fan of The Office and The Simpsons. I've got tickets for Radiohead in November - have you?
School:I've just left Hereward College in Coventry, a residential college for disabled students, where I took English and Media A-levels. Before that, I was at an integrated high school in Cookridge, Leeds.
University:Student Services at Manchester Metropolitan provide learning support - people who will assist me taking notes and stuff in lectures - and have been helping me employ my own PAs for personal care. I've had to do a lot of pushing and ringing round to get funding to make this happen. It's been a pain in the arse. My Local Education Authority have provided me with a laptop already, but I'm still waiting on the scanner and printer.
I'm now living in halls on campus. My room is the same size as all the others, but I have an en suite adapted bathroom. The halls have catering, but I've brought along a wide variety of Pot Noodles just in case!
I've bought myself a hideously expensive Yamaha powerchair in preparation for uni. The motors are in the hubs, it's not at all bulky and you can switch between manual and electric easily.
My course is three years long. My ideal job would be working as a music journalist writing for publications like NME or Q magazine. NB: THEY wrote this 'introductory' bit from what I told them over the phone. I had no part in it, which is why I sound like a twat.

Sunday 28 September, 2003
I've been here for one week already, and thought I'd condense my experiences for you down into this one entry.
A week can seem really long, sometimes. Especially if, in that particular week, existence as you have known it for the past 19 years changes as completely as is humanly possible. It had occurred to me that this might happen, but nothing can, or ever will, prepare you for the realisation that this is it. For me at least, this is about as real as it gets.
The rest of my life has apparently arrived, introduced itself and moved in for good over the past seven days. Ladies and Gents, welcome to University Life.
As this is my first entry, I suppose I'd better begin with a CV of sorts. My name is Ciaran. I'm 19. I love music and most days I wish I was off somewhere being a rock star. I'm an ordinary, single bloke studying English and Creative Writing at Manchester Metropolitan University (although after having seen the size of my reading list, I think I'd rather be doing a degree in needlework. Ahem).
I also have Cerebral Palsy. I would say you can't win 'em all, but that would be stating the obvious and I'd rather just stick to being vague and cryptic. This writing is, as I'm sure you're aware, part of a weekly diary to document my first month of life as a Genuine Student.
At this early stage, I suppose it would be feasible for me to categorise the events and happenings of the past week into a good and bad, pros and cons type list. But that seems far too clinical to me. Consequently, if no one else has any objections I think I'll just ramble until my fingers get sore or I fall asleep. That seems fair enough.
First off, let me say that pretty much everything you hear about the first week of university is a lie. It is billed as a week long orgy of sex, drugs and booze - but if my student flat is any shining example of typicality, it's more like a week sitting in your room feeling homesick and wondering if you've done the right thing. It's about frequently asking yourself how the hell you could ever have thought that trading in all the comforts of home for a room the size of a shoebox, a stack of watery Pot Noodles and a house full of people who seem to deliberately avoid each other as much as possible was a good idea.
That's not to say things don't or won't pick up - I've been out a fair bit this week, drunk more than my fair share of recreational beverages and heard more names than I'll ever remember. For example, on Thursday night nobody in my flat was doing anything, so I went out with some people from the halls across the road (one of whom is my PA, but I'll come to that later). It was a good laugh.
As far as access in general goes, from what I've seen so far there are definitely some major improvements to be had. To start with, if I remember rightly my room is described by the University as "adapted accommodation". If this is true, then in this case adapted clearly does not mean accessible. In the end it comes down to the fact that there simply isn't enough space to function comfortably - I have to keep my en suite bathroom door open just to turn my chair around in the bedroom. Also many of the doorways aren't that wide.
There are other issues - such as shelves being in the wrong place and the fact that I'm the proud owner of what is possibly the world's smallest and most awkward wash basin - but to go into any more detail right now would just be depressing.
Going out is a 50/50 experience in that there's drop curbs almost everywhere, which means if you're on your own and you happen to encounter a non negotiable drop you're pretty screwed. It's the same with bars and pubs - of the main drinking holes I've visited this week, one had steps up and another had no steps but a disabled loo with a door so narrow I had to literally 'go' in the doorway.
The union bar had a loo that was on another floor entirely (according to the guy on the door anyway); turns out there is actually a big enough loo in the Men's. The Cornerhouse is fairly on the ball except you have to ask for a key and again it's pretty small once you get in.
Anyway, this portion of the tour of my mind is now ending. Lectures start tomorrow.

Monday 29 September, 2003
Had first seminar today. It was alright. My chair can't really fit under the tables though, which is very annoying.
The uni provides Learning Support assistants to help during lectures and seminars, but no help turned up for this seminar; luckily all I needed to do was scribble a few facts down on some handouts, which I managed. Met a few people, briefly.
Am having a meeting tomorrow with my stepdad and my two PA's to discuss how that whole situation is going. It's a very odd thing to have to do, to start organizing your own care after being used to having it done for you for so long. At the moment, I must admit it feels very strange trying to step up my independence levels and simultaneously paying two people vast amounts of cash to be at my disposal. It's almost isolating in a way. But I suppose it will become clear in the coming months what works and what doesn't. Early days, as they say.

Tuesday 30 September, 2003
Had meeting today with my stepdad about recruiting another PA. I met her today, her name is Jo. She has done this kind of thing before and seems to know what she's talking about. Seems cool.
Might go out to a place called The Zoo later tonight, with some people from halls - as everyone in my flat still seems pretty quiet. We'll see.
Had my second seminar today (as opposed to lecture). Seminars are the smaller classes where you sit and discuss stuff and make various attempts at sounding intelligent. It's nice, but this particular seminar is a straight three hours. Something I'm realising about uni is that you really have to love what you study, because pretty much all your energy is concentrated on that one subject for the entire time you're here, and there's really no time or way to do anything else academically. Once you're in, you're in.
My personal tutor is a nice guy too. He must be in his 50's, he's from Mexico and for some reason he's acknowledged on the inside sleeve of the edition of Dante's Divine Comedy that I have. But what's more impressive is that last week he went clubbing and met Jordan, the supermodel, and he's mates with Peter Hook (Joy Division/New Order bassist). Rock 'n' roll.

Wednesday 1 October, 2003
Today was my day off so I went and spent a load of cash on all the books I need for this course. Interesting. I felt a bit like Harry Potter in those first few days before Hogwart's, except I wasn't buying broomsticks and spell books and invisibility cloaks. It was more civilised and less exciting. I wish I had at least one evil wizard to defeat whilst I'm here, but it looks like I'll have to be content with using my powers to analyse and critique the insightful ramblings of Greek literature instead. Ah well.
Didn't go out last night either, as something slightly odd happened. I can't be bothered to go into great detail, but basically Matt (one of my PA's) and myself were going to go out to this place called The Zoo. He told a load of people that we were planning to go there and invited them along. They said they were all too skint and/or tired, and then promptly went anyway without telling us. It pissed me off, and I started to wonder if it was because they found it uncomfortable to be around a disabled person. I dunno. Maybe it's just coincidence and they genuinely all changed their minds about going out, but it still seems a bit off to me.
I have noticed that quite a few people I've met have obviously had NO real life experience of anyone with a disability, and are either extremely patronizing or just try and pretend you aren't there. Both are extremely annoying. I think I'm gonna have to work hard whilst I'm here to educate some people and get some opinions changed. I've certainly got my work cut out for me.

Thursday 2 October, 2003
Met up with my brother last night in the union bar. It was cool - I got him to buy most of the drinks! I also forgot to mention that yesterday I met up with a guy from BBC Manchester who took some photos of me in my natural surroundings (just outside the union bar). Hopefully these can replace the slightly goonish ones of me that are already up and floating around the Ouch website (They already have, Ciaran! - Ed) The Beeb guy also asked me to write a review of the Radiohead gig I'm off to next month, which is really cool and something I can't wait for. Radiohead rule.
Today was my busiest day, but in the few hours I had off I took a trip to the supermarket and did a fairly big shop. I don't mind admitting that it's the first time I've really done that sort of thing on my own (well, I say 'on my own', but Jo was with me) and it was quite an experience. There's a fair amount of unreachable shelves out there in the big world of corporate supermarkets. Also, a woman came up to me and asked me about where I got my wheelchair, as her husband wanted one of a similar style. Nice lady. I hope she finds what she's looking for.
Anyway I'm going to leave it here for now, as I'm supposedly going out in a bit. Hope it turns out better than my last attempt at social integration. Time will tell, I guess.

Friday 3 October, 2003
My head hurts, but it was worth it! For those of you unfamiliar with either the terms 'Pat Sharpe' or 'Fun House', I urge you to go and do some research before continuing to read this. It's for your own good and the story will make much more sense that way.
I went out to a 'School Disco' night at the union bar, where the head DJ was none other than Mr Pat Sharpe. There was a gang of twelve of us - which included me, Matt and (I presume) some of the people who were supposedly too tired to come out with us on Tuesday. We get in and of course it's packed - I would say between 1,000 and 1,500 people in total. After a few drinks one of our group decides we should do our best to get to the front in time for the arrival of Mr S. After a few minutes crowd negotiating this is, surprisingly, achieved and we are all pretty much at the foot of the stage, waiting in the heat and the sweat to see the man himself. Then all of a sudden, two bouncers on the other side of the stage spot my chair, amble over and simply lift me on stage. The main attraction has not arrived yet, you understand, so at this point I am literally the only person on stage apart from the bouncers. Naturally, the place goes wild. Then, when Pat arrives, I rush over to greet him and tell him what a legend he is. However, the greatest moment of all comes later in the evening when he hands me the mike and asks me what I think of his mullet wig. I tell him I think it looks beautiful and he turns to the entire crowd and says, "Everybody, Ciaran says it's beautiful!" Needless to say I got a lump in my throat and, as far as I can remember, I spent the rest of last night drinking vodka and apple juice in halls until about 4.00am. I must now go and drink some fluids.

Saturday 4 October, 2003
Today I went to see about joining the rowing club. It was all the way across town at Trafford Rowing Club. I think I'll give it a go as it would be a good way to meet some people. When the guy approached me at the Freshers' Fair he seemed pretty keen for me to do it, but I can't figure out if he wants me because he thinks I'll be a good coxer - steering the boat from the back and shouting commands at people - or because I'm disabled and it would look good for the team to have a token advert for the University being equal opportunists. Call me a cynic, but I'd put my money on the latter.
I was going to go meet my mate Mark tonight for a drink somewhere in Deansgate, but it turns out we are both as lazy as each other and can't really be bothered. I'm knackered anyway. Good night.

Sunday 5 October, 2003
I like Sunday. It is undoubtedly the laziest day of the week. Today I slept in, read some poetry, ate a little, drank a little and I'm just about to go back to bed. Before I do though, I thought I'd tell you something about Friday night that I forgot to mention.
One of my fave bands, Elbow, were playing at the Academy. I went down there with the intention of buying a ticket from a tout and getting in. I hadn't thought that the tout prices might be ridiculously expensive and so decided - after going up and down the road a few times and seeing that all tout prices were easily up to four times the original price of a tenner - to give it a miss. I was with one of my PA's, Peter, and we decided just to go for a few drinks. As we walked away from the venue and around the corner on to a quiet street, I noticed an open window and a very familiar sound. Stopping to listen, we realized we were hearing none other than Elbow practicing their harmonizing skills in their dressing room. Neither Peter or I recognised the song - but still, I thought it was pretty cool and that you guys should know. If you don't have any Elbow go and get Asleep In The Back and Cast Of Thousands now. I guarantee you'll thank me for it later.

Monday 6 October, 2003
Well, it's been an OK week really. Meeting Pat Sharpe was definitely the high point. I'm also starting to get to know people on my course a little better now - and in my flat - which is good. In fact, the girl in the room opposite me has great musical taste and an appreciation for the Official Greatest Band In The Entire History Of The Known Universe - Counting Crows, of course - that is similar to mine. Which is nice.
I'm going to head off and wrap things up soon, as my computer keeps shutting itself down for no apparent reason - which is very annoying, especially at this time of night. A few things first, though. First, I've had no support in any of my lectures or seminars yet. This isn't too bad right now as it's only the beginning, but as things pick up speed I will need notes taking. Access Summit in Manchester rung me up nearly a week and a half ago and told me they'd be in touch to sort something out. They lied. This is clearly crap.
Second, my room. They've put one grabbing bar in the bedroom that I needed; now they need to lower the bed so I can actually use the bar effectively, and they need to put another bar in so I can get up from the loo easier. Also, it would be much easier if the bathroom door was a sliding door. I'll get onto all of this.
Thirdly, my equipment hasn't arrived yet. I don't know what's going on, but apparently my LEA hasn't received confirmation that I've started uni yet. God knows why.
Lastly, some personal mentions for my friends at my old college who've started reading this diary (please don't edit these out). Joe, I know you aren't linked to any football related scams that might be going on right now. You're a wholesome chappy from Blackpool. Besides which you can't play football anyway. You're in a WHEELCHAIR. Patrick, you Geordie nutcase. If you're reading this I expect you need a piss. Stop reading and go. Russell, you are a good friend. You have an unusually large skull and a tendency to stroke the feet of all the wrong people. Hanrahanrahan, you're a tart. I'll see you all soon.

Tuesday 7 October, 2003
Didn't do much at all today, apart from another mammoth three hour creative writing seminar. Today we discussed Aristotle (again) and the fact that all the stuff supposedly written by Homer wasn't actually written by Homer at all. Homer is just a collective name for a bunch of stuff written around a certain period. Some of the text from The Illiad or The Odyssey was probably written by the same guy, but a lot of the other writings and poems had no traceable origin, so after the last major Greek writing was done (I think about 800 BC, but I could be wrong) these guys just bundled it all under the name Homer. He may never even have existed, apparently. It's all Greek to me ...

Wednesday 8 October, 2003
I'm more than a little bit drunk now and it's actually about one o'clock on Thursday morning, not Wednesday at all. I've had one of those days where complete and total randomness ensued. Up until about 5.30pm I was feeling pretty crap as I had a cough/cold/flu thing and it was my day off, so I was basically sitting around feeling ill. Then a fella from the Beeb rings up and says, "I know it's short notice, but do you fancy reviewing The Thrills at the Academy tonight? There's two tickets on the door reserved and waiting." Well, how could one refuse? It would just be rude, I thought to myself, not to capitalise on such an opportunity. So I rang my colleague and associate Peter, who was at this point partial to The Thrills, and he agreed to come along.
If you don't mind I'm going to leave this story here for now and continue it tomorrow evening - I know it's cheating slightly, but as I said before I really am rather smashed right now and I (technically) need to be in a lecture in about 8 hours. It might be a good idea to at least attempt to get some sleep. Maybe.

Thursday 9 October, 2003
Well, unsurprisingly I missed my nine o'clock lecture this morning. Woke up at 10.00am - but Mum, if you're reading this, don't worry, because I made it to my twelve o'clock, and my 3.00pm seminar, and I got someone from my class to give me notes from this morning.
That reminds me. When I first started here I was promised access support for my seminars and lectures for writing notes, etc; but I'm still getting no help whatsoever! It's getting stupid. I will ring the access provider company in Manchester at some point within the next week and scream at them. I have also decided to buy a dictaphone for lectures. It'll make things easier and that way I can actually take something away from them, rather than just sitting there. I may as well not bother going otherwise.
Before I continue with my Thrills story, I'd just like to note that today is John Lennon's birthday. He would be 63 now if he hadn't been killed. R.I.P. John - "Imagine all the people, sharing all the world."

Friday 10 October, 2003
Today was my other day off, so I did a bit of reading and attempted to start an essay that needs to be in for next Thursday. But it didn't work - I'll do it later. Went out earlier this evening at about nine with a few people from my halls. Started out at a pub called The Pub, which was great except for the huge step at the entrance. Then went on to the Springbok where I was (conveniently) not charged the staggeringly ridiculous entrance fee of a fiver. I thought it was rubbish in there anyway, full of nutters and idiots dancing to abysmal tunes. One fella who was walking past actually had the ignorance to ruffle and pat my head. That hasn't happened to me since I was about 9 years old, and if I hadn't been busy getting hammered I perhaps would have shot him.
After Springbok we went on to a slightly cooler but equally expensive place called M2. Again, I was neither searched at the door nor charged the entrance fee. I certainly hope this is going to happen regularly. That was quite a good bar, although I did feel slightly forgotten when everyone I was with decided to sit (or rather stand) around a high round table. It's hard to strike up conversations with people when you're sat down and they're stood up - and it's a bit more difficult when there's a chunk of table in your face. Eventually though, some seats freed up and everyone moved.
Had another complete stranger come up to me, shake my hand and tell me that his mate was in a wheelchair - so apparently that meant he was "feeling my vibe". Fair enough. Some people are weird.
It's nearly 5.00am on Saturday morning now, so I'm off to bed.

Monday 13 October, 2003
Didn't have much time to write at the weekend, but basically on Saturday I got up late and went to see a film called Spellbound (it's really cool, go see it if you can), then had a few beers - but nothing too exciting - in the evening. On Sunday I got up even later and did even less, really. Busy, as you can see ...
Today I went and got a dictaphone for lectures and spent much of the day saying stupid things into it, then playing it back at either faster or slower speed - a very productive afternoon. Tomorrow I've decided I may have to forgo my three hour seminar as I'm feeling a bit headachey and crap again. I'll see how I feel when I get up, I suppose.
By the way, my bed has been lowered and they've put another grab bar in the bathroom. Now I just need to get the door converted into a sliding one and my room will be pretty much sorted. I found out what's going on with my LEA equipment as well - my computer needs more RAM in it before they can install the stuff. So I'll sort that out for definite this week.
Oh yeah, I never finished the story about what happened at The Thrills gig, did I? I went with Peter, got there, and the access provisions at the Academy were, by all accounts, piss poor - despite what they had told me on the phone. So I ended up watching the entire thing from the sort of side/back area where all the equipment, amps etc are stored.
Afterwards, I had just bought a Thrills hoody and was coming away from the venue when we casually spotted what Peter thought could well be The Thrills' tourbus ... well, one thing led to another and we ended up backstage with the band. Actually, that's not strictly true - we were personally invited backstage to meet the band, and I can honestly say that The Thrills are all genuinely nice guys, especially Daniel and Padraic who bought me beer. You should all go out and buy their album So Much For The City, and I urge you to go see them live if you get the chance. I think my review of the show is still out there somewhere on the BBC Manchester website (yes, it's here - Ed)
Anyhoo, I'm off to bed, so I'll see you all next week. TTFN.

Tuesday 14 October, 2003
Didn't go to my three-hour seminar today - I felt ill, plus I'm working on an essay that needs doing by Thursday. They won't miss me, I'm sure.
One thing I did do was go and buy a dictaphone to help me in lectures - recording the entire thing will mean I have to go back and pick out the relevant notes, effectively twice the work, but I suppose I'll remember more stuff that way. Anyway, despite what sceptics may say I think you do pick up quite a lot from just being in the lectures in the first place, even if you don't take notes. Or maybe that's just something lazy people say. I think it's probably a healthy mix of both.

Wednesday 15 October, 2003
Still working on the essay. I have to admit I spent quite a lot of time yesterday playing with my new dictaphone. As a good way of breaking up essay writing and efficiently wasting loads of time, you can't beat saying stupid catchphrases from Bo Selecta into a dictaphone and then replaying them at either fast or slow speeds. I highly recommend it. (For those of you who've never seen Bo Selecta, it's a completely warped Channel 4 programme that has quickly, and quite rightly, developed cult status. There's no point in me trying to describe or sum it up - just go and buy the DVD).
Ended up going out last night to the Academy - there wasn't a gig there, just a 'night' on. Cheap beer (especially if you sneak some in), cheesy tunes - interspersed, thankfully, with a few classics - and a lot of drunk people dancing. A good time was had by all, although there was a slightly cringeworthy moment when the exceptionally pleasant female pushing me back to halls (she insisted) said, "This is a bit like pushing my four-year-old brother in his pram." It was, I'm sure, meant as a totally innocent and heartfelt comment that unfortunately came across as unintentionally patronising. However, in my book it is - and should be - classed as one of those things that you just don't say.
It made me realise that however hard you try to educate and inform, some people will never 'get it'. It was a bit of a conversation killer - the tumbleweeds rolled past - and I was slightly taken aback and disappointed.
Anyway, back to the grindstone - I'm off to see Travis at the Apollo tomorrow night and this essay needs doing tonight. The gig can be my reward for not missing my first major university deadline (hopefully).

Thursday 16 October, 2003
Not got time to write much as I'm off out to the aforementioned gig in about five minutes. I used the dictaphone for the first time in lectures today and it seemed to work out OK. My seminar tutor has said she'll try and get me notes for each lecture as well, which will be useful. Anyway, taxi's going to be here in a minute so I'm off - it'll be a bit of an adventure as I'm going on my own. Here goes.

Friday 17 October, 2003
The gig was good, the view was quite good and the venue was really good. Getting back was even reasonably straightforward. Getting there was, however, a complete nightmare. The taxi took an hour to arrive, and when it finally turned up the guy said, "Shall I get the ramps out?" Stupid question as I am, quite unmistakably, in a wheelchair.
So even though I told him that, yes, he would need to get the ramps out, he insisted on having a go just by tipping the chair up and trying to get me in that way. When this didn't work, he finally got the ramps out. I then tried to drive up the ramps, but because they were the crappy ones and my driving isn't exactly precision style at the best of times, I was a little off-centre and didn't quite make it. I prepared to reverse and give it another try, but the driver insisted that I wouldn't fit in and he would have to call a 'wider' cab that could accommodate my chair. This was clearly rubbish, as I have managed to get in the normal cabs before when someone else has been there with me to lend a hand - It's a bit of a squeeze but still manageable.
So I argued with this guy for as long as I could be bothered and eventually let him go, but not before I sat and watched him order another cab. I then sat in the freezing cold and waited another twenty minutes for a second taxi. This time, thankfully, both the driver and the cab were a lot more hospitable - and at least I've discovered that getting to the Apollo only takes 10 minutes from where I am. The whole thing was very frustrating, though.
Travis rocked, which made the whole fiasco (just about) worth it.

Saturday 18 October, 2003
Went to see Kill Bill last night. It is AMAZING. Go and see it. Today, I went on a music-buying spree with my PA, Peter. It was very therapeutic. Ended up going inside a church as well, which is something I've not done in a very long time. It came about as Peter was giving me a kind of mini tour of the city centre, and there was a sign outside a church advertising a free concert by some guy on a piano. We went in to have a look and found that we'd missed the piano thing, but there were rehearsals going on - a choir practicing really old religious songs from centuries ago. We stayed for about fifteen minutes. It was weird but cool at the same time - pretty intense.

Sunday 19 October, 2003
Well, last night was a success in so far as I got myself into bed without assistance for the first time ever whilst at uni. It might seem like a pretty small thing to write about, but really it's a pretty big development (for all the obvious and not so obvious reasons).
Today, I met up with Matt and a guy that he knows who is in his second year doing medicine. He wants to use me for some project or other he's doing, which involves interviewing me and asking me questions about the ol' Cerebral Palsy and how it affects my daily life. I've agreed to it as it seems like it would fit in quite well with this whole diary thing.

Monday 20 October, 2003
So then, I've come to the end of my first month at university - although it seems like a lot longer - and this is my final diary entry for Ouch! It's been a wild ride, without a doubt the longest and busiest four weeks of my life thus far.
Today I didn't do too much though, just a two-hour seminar on research methods. It dragged slightly, I have to admit. I also bought the new album by The Strokes earlier. First impressions are that it definitely equals its predecessor. Very cool.
Anyway, back to business. How would I sum up uni life so far? The answer is: I can't. There is no epitaph or concise, witty and memorable one liner that I can drum up to effectively describe or summarise the past month. What I will say is this: you just have to let it happen and dive in at the deep end, because if you spend too much time worrying about the situation you're in - rather than simply accepting it - you'll just go under. I've realised that over the past few weeks.
Without trying to sound sycophantic, keeping this diary has helped me to make sense of what's been going on, and understand more about my situation personally. Everything from getting PA's recruited, through sorting out my room, to meeting The Thrills and Pat Sharp, as well as just getting to know new people and being away from home - it's all been a huge bloody great learning curve. Bearing in mind what has happened in these first few weeks and all the stuff I've got up to, I think that the next three years are going to be very interesting indeed.
I've very much enjoyed writing this diary; I hope all you guys have enjoyed reading it. It's a hell of a journey so far and, as the main man Vinnie Jones put it at the end of Lock, Stock - it's been emotional. Over and out.

Student Diaries 2003: Ciaran's end of year report - Published June 2004

As I write, there are approximately 12 days left until I find out whether or not I've passed my first year of university.
At the moment I'm handling this rather life-altering fact by flitting between moments of complete self-confidence ("I only need 40% overall - of course I'll pass!") and absolute mind-numbing terror ("S*** - what if I've only managed 39%?"). It has certainly been an interesting nine months, and if I do manage to make it on to my second year, I have to admit I'll be most chuffed. Despite all my initial reservations - and there were quite a few - I would highly recommend this university lark to anyone.
Right, that's the quirky introductory bit out of the way - let me pick up where I left off. Back in September I was just starting to get settled into my whole new way of life - the biggest and most immediate change being the direct payments/sorting out my own care thing.
When I moved from home to uni, I suddenly had to take charge of any personal assistance I needed. If you receive Direct Payments you become an employer. Empowering, huh? That means I have to run the show like a business, update timesheets, keep accounts, pay my PAs, hire and fire, etc. In the beginning, it seemed to be extremely complicated and difficult, but to tell you the truth it's nearer the opposite ... it's dead simple and the more you do it, the easier it gets. Plus, it gives you tons of freedom. The only thing I would say if you are considering it is start sorting it out early - the sooner the better, really (although having said that, I left it to the last possible minute and didn't have any major disasters, so don't worry too much).

Social life
But of course, no self-respecting person, disabled or not, would come to university just so they can learn how to become an employer. That's right, folks - as exciting as signing timesheets and handing out payslips can be, there are actually many other enticing experiences on offer to you, The Average Disabled Uni Student.
Over the course of an academic year, these may include (but are not limited to): falling sideways a lot due to alcohol intake, being told you are a fire hazard, getting in to places for free and thus looking cool, strangers buying you drinks, not being able to get in to places 'cos of access, lots of useful extra time in exams and for coursework, trying (often unsuccessfully) to make progress with the opposite sex and last, but by no means least, making up amusing anecdotes with regards to your disability, e.g. "An angry magician did it" or "I was saving some kittens from a tree".
Socially, you may have your work cut out for you to begin with in terms of breaking the ice, becoming 'accepted' and seen as an equal by your peers. It might take a good few months and it can be very frustrating and upsetting, especially in the early stages. However, you shouldn't lose faith. Remember, most people you meet will have a very fixed, somewhat stereotypical notion of disability comprising of Stephen Hawking and Davros - that's one hell of a preconceived mess to clean up, but if you stick to your guns and don't say "I want that one" too often, people will come around.

Lecturers and lectures
The other thing you will have to watch out for is any major accommodation and/or lecture access issues. For me, the latter has gone really well, with lots of expert note-taking being provided, as well as additional typed notes directly from the lecturers and lots of brand new, shiny LEA equipment being delivered ... eventually.

Exams
The lecturers' helpful attitude thankfully spilled over into my exams as well - I was given plenty of extra time, my own room, and they even provided me with a university laptop to type it all out on.

Accommodation
However, the issue of accommodation has been something of an ongoing battle. Since last September, I have been trying to get the door to my bathroom converted to a sliding one, so as to make the room as a whole more maneuverable - they finally put one in last month. The strange thing is that , at the end of June, having been unable to find accessible living quarters anywhere else, I'm moving to the other Halls building (they're at opposite ends of the same courtyard). So after eight months waiting to get one sliding door put in, they're now going to move me, and then get one fitted in the new room within a matter of weeks! Talk about doing things the long way round! Ah well, maybe now they'll get the message and fit sliding doors in all the 'accessible' rooms. You never know ...
Anyway, summer is once again just round the corner, and I'm looking forward to spending it in Manchester. I'm also - barring a right royal screw-up by yours truly in the exam stakes - pretty optimistic about my second year. Fingers crossed, eh?

Ciaran's report card
Exams: 8/10 - I think they went well, but blind faith and a minimalist revision technique may have only taken me so far ...
Lectures: 6/10 - often boring by their very nature (although ample sleeping opportunity presents itself if you can position yourself at the back of the room), but the help I've received has been of an excellent standard.
Social life: 8/10 - the most hyped aspect of uni life by far. The start may be shaky, but follow your instinct and you'll be happy.

Ciaran's gig reviews
Keen gig-goer that he is, Ciaran has been out and about this year doing reviews for the BBC Manchester website. Check out his verdict on Depeche Mode's Dave Gahan, Welsh rockers Stereophonics and Spiritualized.