Holly’s Highlights: Week 6

Here at St Giles, we are beginning to think that our house is haunted by the ghost of an angry maintenance man. We suspect he drifts around the corridors, breaking our appliances maliciously, randomly and frequently, and laughing maniacally.

This week it’s the shower, which, perhaps outraged by the amount of body hair plastered on its walls, decided to start catastrophically leaking into my friend’s room on the floor below. The maintenance people have been trying to fix it for three days, the only result so far is that they have made the whole house smell of drains. Not that this has stopped me sticking my fingers into every cultural pie going! In fact, I now get a good square metre of space around me wherever I go. Every cloud…

Art

What? Spring Forth

When? 3rd-25th March

Where? Cambridge Contemporary Art, Trinity Street

Why? Forget god-awful Wordsworth poems (something which I would dearly love to say to my supervisor), go and see some fresh flora and fauna related prints by artists Niki Bowers, Angela Harding and Emerson Mayes. I will be skipping there in a floaty dress, possibly with my hair in a pigtail.

Film

What? A Dangerous Method

When? Showing now

Where? Arts Picturehouse

Why? Rumour has it that Keira Knightley gets spanked in it. Oh, and there’s some stuff about Jung and Freud and psychoanalysis, if you’re into that sort of thing.

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=664eq7BXQcM

TV

What? Supersize vs. Superskinny

When? 8pm, Tuesday 28th Feb

Where? In the terrifying hall of mirrors that is Channel 4.

Why? A friend of mine devised drinking rules for Supersize vs. Superskinny. These are:

1) Every time Dr. Christian looks smoulderingly at the screen, drink.

2) Every time the fatty expresses shock at how much food they eat, drink.

3) Every time the skinny eats haribo/fruit pastilles/etc for breakfast, or is basically living off diet coke, drink

4) Every time somebody cries, drink.

5) At the weigh-in, drink a shot for every half a stone the fatty loses, and for every pound the skinny gains.

This game was devised solely as a means to curb the self-loathing when we start to sober up from our 10.30am Jeremy Kyle drinking game session.

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BjaEdNsVxiY&feature=fvwrel

Fat people and West Country accents? Stop it, Channel 4. You’re spoiling us.

Food

What? Teri-Akis

When? The moment you realise Yo Sushi is overpriced and overcrowded.

Where? Quayside (behind Prezzo, just off Magdalene Bridge)

Why? Holidaying in Italy a couple of years ago, I developed an all-consuming passion for octopus salad, which up until a couple of weeks ago only brought me strange looks from fishmongers. But then I discovered that Teri-Akis, as well as serving excellent noodles, having lovely views over the river and friendly service, serves octopus sashimi. Oh, frabjous day!

Music

What? Laura Marling

When? 7.30pm, Thursday 1st March

Where? The Junction

Why? Since The Junction seems to have forgotten to book any bands for this term, and the Corn Exchange seems to have forgotten that Cambridge has a few students in it, pop along to Laura Marling’s gig to remind yourself that, if we’re lucky, sublime folk singers do occasionally grace our halls.

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-TMl5oCRjk

Something different

What? Go to Ely

When? Look out of the window, you fool. It’s gorgeous out there.

Where? Put your index finger on Cambridge on a map. Move said finger an inch upwards and a little bit to the right.

Why? I discovered Ely by accident. On a family trip out, we discovered that King’s Lynn was a town equivalent to semolina (grey, boring, makes you want to retch slightly, nothing in the world you can do to it to make it any more interesting). So we stopped off at Ely on a whim.  The cathedral is breathtaking, you can take a spin around Oliver Cromwell’s house, the pubs are friendly, and the view over the canal is fantastic. Best of all, it’s five minutes on the train and, unlike Granchester, not full of tea rooms and Rupert Brooke poetry.