Harry Potter and The Never-Ending Corridor

The first time I walked through the stunningly beautiful Cloisters of Durham Cathedral I was being anything but studious, despite my surroundings. I wasn’t contemplating the meaning of life, debating Locke’s Political Theory with my fellow students or even reading Alexander Wells’ thriller on Structural Inorganic Chemistry. I was in a gown, waving a stick at other people and shouting in Latin.

It’s not because I had gone completely mad (although I’m almost there) but because of Harry Potter. Sections of the first two films were filmed in the Cloisters and other locations within the jaw-dropping Cathedral. According to the Dean of the Cathedral, the popularity of Harry Potter has made not only me and a few friends pretend to be in Hogwarts, but hundreds of students, who each year attempt to recreate the films.

My photograph illustrates why they must have chosen this location for the film because, even without CGI or Alan Rickman, it is still completely magical.

My 12-song soundtrack to 2010

For as long as I can remember I have always complied a list of 12 songs at this time of year. The songs embody the concluding year, the places I’ve been, the people I’ve met and the events that filled it. Usually, however, the list is scribbled on a scrap of paper and swiftly lost in my Bermuda Triangle of a draw, to remedy this I thought I would upload it onto the blogosphere so you can all take a read and hopefully try it yourself. I find the act of scrolling through your iTunes and selecting the songs oddly therapeutic, a way to conclude a year if -like me- you define points in your life by songs.

So anyway on with the show and in no particular order….

1. Brett Dennen – Ain’t No Reason
This song has been my favourite song for many years because of its incredibly poignant lyrics, including, “It could be a bomb or a bullet of a pin, or a thought or a word or a sentence” and “slavery is stitched to the fabric of my clothes”. The song reminds me of India where I first heard it.

2. Jamie Cullum – Twenty Something
Anyone who has graduated this year must listen to it, sums up the feeling of not having a clue what to do very well, set to jazz.
“I’m an expert on Shakespeare and that’s a hell of a lot
But the world don’t need scholars as much as I though”

3. One Republic – Good Life
This is the song I would always play as I walked up the road from my hotel to the main square in Dharamsala. When the sun was pouring through the mountains and everyone waving at you as they past and this song playing I always had a spring in my step.

4. KT Tunstall – Still a Wierdo
The song title sums me up, plus it’s a good song. Simple as that.

5. Florence and The Machine – Cosmic Love
This hugely atmospheric and hauntingly brilliant song was my most played song of the year. It was on constant repeat while I was writing my dissertation, so now whenever I hear this song I think of Hadrian’s Wall in the 19th Century and probably the only person too.

6. Leddra Chapman – Wine Glass
A simple and emotive song that was on constant play thanks to my iTunes shuffle favouring it above the rest of my music. It has some beautiful lines in it.

7. Ke$ha – Your Love is My Drug
A bonkers song that finishes with the whispered line “I like your beard” which became a catchphrase for my friends in India mainly because I have a beard, in case you hadn’t realised.

8. Dabangg Soundtrack – Tere Mast Mast Do Nain
Dabangg was the first film I watched when I arrived in India, the song then followed me like a virus where ever I went. I still get it stuck in my head in England.

9. Glen Hansard – Say it to me now
The song comes from an independent film from Ireland and the music is as good as the film. I took the DVD with me to India and watched it far too many times and this song would constantly be on repeat in the hotel.

10. Joshua Radin – I’d rather be with you
Another India soundtrack song courtesy of my travelling companions.

11. The Cinematic Orchestra – Breathe
This song is actually what I had on repeat while I wrote this list simply because it evokes memories in the listener, youtube it and I’m sure you’ll find yourself lost in the music.

12. Newton Faulkner – People Should Smile More
“I can’t change the world

Cos tryin’ to make a difference makes things worse

It’s just an observation I can’t ignore

That people could smile more
People should smile more”

Something to think about.

Happy New Year Everyone.

My best photograph of Durham

The Beauty of Coffee

“I have measured out my life with coffee spoons”.
This line from T.S Elliot’s The Love Song of J.Alfred Prufrock, sums up my life exactly, I am a colossal coffee addict, especially now with dissertation and summative deadlines building up, coffee is the saviour that galvanises me into action. My days are dictated by my coffee consumption, whether it’s the last heavy-duty cup to keep me eyes open at 4am or the first wonderful wake up sip, caffeine is always coursing through my veins. Nothing in this world is quite as sweet as that first sip, nothing as warm as that mug against your hands. Though many, many more cups will undoubtedly follow, that first sip of dissertation fuel is quite simply, heaven.

I’m not embarrassed to say I have a coffeemaker in my room, I have it rigged up to a timer so in the morning I am woken not by the droning of an alarm clock but by the gurgling of my marker (I aptly named Jeeves, in the picture next to my mantra mug) and the incredible smell of coffee. For me coffee is an escape, a chance to simply shut off for a few minutes and let all my senses be engulfed by it, I am often caught simply staring into the distance as the coffee whisks me away from the bubble.

I am not the only one with a coffee craving, in America on average people are drinking 3.2 cups of coffee a day and in Britain, we on average we consume 500g of coffee per person, per year. Starbucks dominates the coffee business with 16,000 shops across the globe, recording a profit of £148 million last in the last quarter, which during a recession and coffee being a luxury good is astounding. Within Durham alone we have a staggering amount of coffee shops, from the YUM cafes, the multitude of chain coffee shops to the more unique and far better coffees of Vennels and Saddlers, we are students under the firm grip of caffeine.

It’s not just us who rely on coffee to keep functioning, Heat magazine and other gossip drivel photograph celebrities drinking their coffee, between making tabloid headlines and actually working, most stars need a caffeine fix or two to get through. Famously David Letterman –host of Late Show with David Letterman- said, “If it weren’t for the coffee, I’d have no identifiable personality whatsoever”.

One of my favourite past-times is to grab a coffee at the University Library Café at 8:30 and simply watch as the rest of the unlucky student body with 9ams slump to lectures. They struggle with toothpaste as their only sustenance to assist them function though another hour of 18th Century Archaeologists or the finer details of fluid engineering. That’s where coffee thrives, at ridiculous hours of the day, whether it is a 9am lecture or at the failing moments of an all nighter it shoves your brain into motion, to squeeze some life into those hung-over or knackered out grey cells. People search for the answer at the bottom of a beer bottle or a wine glass, when in actuality, it comes from those last potent gulps of coffee slipping down your throat, warming your body and fuelling your brain.

Without a doubt Café culture is everywhere, in every city and practically in every street. However, it has undoubtedly slipped from the chic 18th century coffeehouses when they were homes to artists and intellectuals where coffee acted as social lubricant by which great changes in the world could be hatched. Now it has fallen to be served in plastic cups from McDonald’s that alleges to be coffee and acts as something to wash down your Egg McMuffin as you sit in the car before work, rather than to be enjoyed. We may no longer be Che Guevara sitting in a coffee house in Bolivia pencilling our revolutionary plans, but with the comfortable sofas and muffins the size of small planets thousands of people still flock to coffee shops to enjoy a few minutes away from our busy modern world and simply escape.