Tap, tap, tap at the keyboard, ‘skills, blah, blah, relevant experience, blah, blah’. Jak tries her best to care about what she types into the Oxford Authority Job Portal.
‘Concentrate Jak! Concentrate! This is for mum. Do it properly, like an essay on a subject that really matters.’
Part-time would be better but if she needs to pause her course, she needs to pause her course. And it’s a good hourly rate. Full-time but temporary. She can give her mum half for rent and bills and stuff, and keep the rest for herself. Get a bike, better binoculars, some new clothes, maybe a nice meal for her and Tabs…
‘She’s going to hate you for this, Jak. But hey, let’s see if you get the job before worrying about Tabs. This is for mum. Worry about everything else later, babe.’
For now she just has to get the bloody application done. All the stupid questions written by AI, half of which don’t even make sense in English as spoken by actual humans. She just gets them done. At least she can say she’s tried. Mum will be pleased even if she doesn’t get the job. Fill up that final column with little ticks and press ‘submit’.
It’s done. She did what she had to do and now she can forget about it.
Jak feels a rush as soon as she steps outside. Air, sweet with the scent of newly opened flowers and a goldfinch’s song, flows into her lungs and fills her muscles with restless energy. To hell with her dodgy ankle, today she’s walking to college.
After walking through the estate and a small business park, then along a main road for a mile or so, she hops across a small stream and under a flapping wire fence to enter East Oxford Golf Course. The grass is lush beneath her feet and the sky is completely blue from here to Oxford’s medieval rooftops and, beyond, over the leafy, reclining form of Boar’s Hill on the horizon.
Jak feels like she’s walking through her dad’s favourite old song. He used to sing it to her, like his aunt sang it to him: ‘tum-ti-tum ti-tum, to rest my eyes in shades of green, tum-ti-tum-ti-tum, Itchycoo Park ti-tum-tum-tum…’
A muntjac deer skitters across her path. Jak looks left and right in case of golfers but there’s no sign of flying balls or angry shouts. Instead she can hear bees buzzing from clover to clover in the long grass and twittering of small birds in the bramble bushes, which are colonising the spaces between the mown, well-watered fairways.
Jak scans the trees for foxes. She has seen them in daylight here before, but they are not coming out to play today – probably too busy hunting for their little ones’ dinners.
“It’s all too beautifu-ul, it’s all too beautifu-ul.”
Jak walks nearly all the way with the limp almost gone from her step. It is still early, for most students, and the library is quiet. She’ll meet Dr Maddy Birch later but for now at least she can channel this burst of energy into her studies while she sits down to rest her ankle.
—
Carly knocks on the door of the Moonshine pub. A man in a well-fitting light suit and bright red brogues opens it wide.
“Hello there,” says the man in a friendly manner, “comrade Carly. Do come in. I’ll go and fetch Donny.”
“Hi Jazz, am I the first?”
She is indeed. The Moonshine is dark apart from a shaft of light between a pair of heavy green curtains. Carly perches on a stool. Jazz disappears through the door to the kitchen.
The bar seems asleep. Warm, sluggish air infused with the scent of sweet, stale beer. Chairs are stacked two at a time on tables, towels draped on pump handles, dust drifts through the beam of sunlight and back into shadow.
A sing-song voice comes from the other side of the door, “coffee and toast?”
“Yes please, thanks Donny.”
Carly has known Donny since she was small. He is a friend of her uncle but she has seen a lot more of him since he took over the management of the Moonshine, which for this morning’s meeting of the One Oxford People’s Alliance, is closed to the public.
Carly rehearses out loud what she plans to say to the others, “no time for half measures, direct action not just banners and chants, maximum disruption at Magdalen Gate to prevent work on the wall starting on Monday, a special Whats App group – not to be used for anything else, coded messages only to coordinate actions. Good luck comrades!”
“Sounding inspired comrade, if a little technical for an old timer like me,” smiles Donny, dressed in loose white chinos, a baggy paisley shirt and pink silk scarf, and carrying a breakfast tray, “there’s apricot or strawberry jam, sugar and milk for your coffee, and a cute little napkin, I was given a whole lot like this with little birds on. Rather nice but a bit fancy for a pub that only does Scotch Eggs and Mrs Mahmoud’s samosas so I tend not to waste them on the average customer. They can make do with cheap paper towels. But you my dear are special!”
“Ha, thank you Donny,” smiles Carly, “although I think Jak would like the napkin more than me. She’s the nature lover. Probably tell you what kind of bird it is while she’s at it.”
Jazz continues to act as doorman. And the pub, although still closed and curtained, fills with animated conversations. A small throng of community group representatives, trade unionists and committed activists gather expectantly, but also a little nervously.
“No Sticks?” asks an anxious seeming man.
“Not today I’m afraid, Sam,” confirms Donny.
“Still hiding out in Berinsfield,” snorts a scowling man in a donkey jacket, “waiting for the revolution to start so he can pick and choose when to join in.”
Donny shoots the man a glare, “as you know full well, Noel, Sticks has long-term mobility impairing injuries. I know, I’ve tried to get him to dance. And he can’t. However he is able to use his Land Rover if anyone needs emergency transport. And can provide a hideout if the Oxford Authority decides to get heavy. We are lucky to have him on our side.”
Donny instigates a group discussion, with everyone getting a turn to speak. It mostly focuses on which national politicians and global businesses are behind the Oxford Authority and bitterness over how they were allowed to divide Oxford. A long list of people and institutions are held to blame.
The conversation goes on and on, round and round.
“Look,” Carly stands up, “we all know the Wall is bad. Oxford Authority is bad…”
“We do yeah. But normal people need to be informed,” states Alice, clutching a placard that reads, ‘The future depends on what we do today’.
“We are normal people,” retorts Carly, “I’m sorry but we need to go beyond informing and debating and educating and all those things we love doing. That’s all just talking. The Oxford Authority don’t care about how much we talk…”
“Well, no, I disagree,” insists Sam, “they do care about us talking. They send spies to meetings and to this pub, and I’m certain, absolutely certain, that they’re listening to my phone calls and copying my messages. There’s always a delay at the other end, always this delay you see that can only be explained by phone tapping…”
“Thank you Sam,” interrupts Donny, “I’m sure the Oxford Authority while away many a long night reading your messages…”
“No but their A-Spy bots do,” objects Sam.
“Whatever,” shrugs Donny, “Carly, do continue.”
“Um, so I was saying,” Carly struggles for a second to find her train of thought.
“You were saying that talking doesn’t matter but quite a few of us, including some of us who have been campaigning since well before you were born, quite a few of us respectfully disagree on that point,” states Mick, whose Che Guevara style beret is adorned with badges calling for ‘Books not Bombs’ and ‘Fair pay for Teachers’, “we believe good arguments are our strongest weapons. That if we make the people of the Outers… no! I refuse to use that word. If we make the honest people of Oxford see sense then there’ll be no poor workers for their rich man’s wall!”
Carly shakes her head.
“Go on then,” challenges Mick, fiddling with his earrings, “we’re listening. What do you suggest?”
Carly takes a breath, “our strongest weapons here aren’t words but action. Put ourselves on the line. Chain ourselves to the fences, to the cranes, to the cement mixers, whatever. You might disagree but why should the Oxford Authority worry about what we say? Words never do anything. If we want to stop them, we have to stand in their way and not yield!”
Donny applauds, “here here, Carly. But Stop the Wall is a campaign for the whole community and I think only those who feel comfortable chaining themselves to cement mixers, as you put it, should do so. There is still a need for a verbal and visual presence so people know what the protest is about. Maybe you, Carly, could recruit some activists for the more physically demanding side of the protest. You seem more in touch with the younger generation than many of us.”
A murmur of assent goes round the room. Almost all the rest of the group gather around Alice who takes charge of planning a banner-making workshop on Saturday morning.
Carly gazes at the shaft of sunlight between the curtains, follows the slow drifting specks of dust with her eyes and tries to imagine how a direct action organiser should think.
“I agree with you,” says Noel in a conspiratorial half-whisper, “I’ll rustle up one or two old timers. Maybe I can persuade Mick, he wouldn’t have joined in the discussion if he wasn’t interested. We can target Folly Bridge as well as Magdalen. That’s where all the regular city jobbers are being sent and they might not be ready for us there. It’s really narrow so just one or two lock ons could bring the whole place to a standstill.”
“Thanks comrade,” Carly is relieved not to be all on her own, “you guys take Folly Bridge, I’ll find some young’uns to take Magdalen. Me and Alice met some students at the LR the other day. They seemed keen on direct action. We’ll do this, comrade. Stay in touch, yeah?”
“Agreed… and what I said about your uncle, well,” Noel pauses, thinking, trying to find the right words, “I meant it but I know he is a good man as well. We’ve all gotta stick together, all us good people.”
“Yeah, too right. Thank you Noel,” Carly bumps fists with him, turns round and walks out the door.
—
“Sorry I’m late,” Maddy sits down opposite Jak, smiling awkwardly, “I seem to be saying that a lot recently. Finish one thing and I’m already late for the next. Maybe I need to do one of those study planning courses, I mean they’re for students really, for you guys, but we can go on them as well. If only I can find the time, ha, ha. Anyway, enough of me gabbling, how are you Jak?”
“Fine,” lies Jak.
“Good,” Maddy is unconvinced but chooses to believe her, “you had something you wanted to talk about?”
Jak fiddles with a tassel on her sleeve. Maddy can sense there’s something up, “shall I get us both coffees? What would you like?”
“Latte. Two sugars.”
“Coming right up.”
Jak watches Dr Birch queue at the counter. She is struggling to use her phone to pay on the new ‘dynamic personalised’ scanner and apologises to the barista for not knowing how to leave a tip.
‘Come on, Jak, she’s not some kind of devious perv or sex trafficker working for Oxford Uni. I mean, look at her, she can’t even use her phone right. So ok, check out the Bodleian thing. But it’s nothing, you know it is. Pausing the course… that’s a proper reason for meeting her, won’t make it look, you know, like you’re too keen to see her… just get on with what you need to ask and get gone.’
“Right ho, here you are,” Maddy returns with the coffees, “one sweet latte for you, and a double espresso for me. God I need it, those machines are a nightmare – feel like that kid in class who still can’t work out how to tie their shoelaces.”
“Can I pause my course?” asks Jak abruptly.
“Well,” Maddy pauses for a moment’s thought, “yes, really at any time to be honest. We’d advise finishing any modules you’re halfway through but that’s just advice you can follow or ignore as you see fit. Everything you’ve already completed counts towards your overall result so in theory you can pause for a semester or a whole year and then, when you’re able to return, pick up where you left off.”
“So I can’t really pause now? I’d have to wait til the end of semester?”
“Oh no, you can pause if you want anytime. You’d have to restart the modules you’re halfway through…”
“Yeah, that would be a problem, wouldn’t it?”
“Well, there’d probably be an admin fee. I can double check with Student Finance for you but it won’t be that much, relatively speaking… I mean I know everything’s a lot for most people, I know that, but anyway,” she tentatively sips her hot coffee, “to be perfectly honest Jak, we can’t afford to lose good students like you. Even if you pause from tomorrow, we’ll find a way to make things work for you.”
“Okay, great,” says Jak quietly, stirring her coffee, “thank you. There’s something else.”
“First,” Maddy holds her hands out in a calming gesture, “are you sure you want to do this? Why do you want to? You’ve been doing really well. Is it something personal?”
“Not personal,” says Jak, “financial. My mum’s had her hours cut and I need to pull my weight. There’s a chance coming up to earn a good wage, temp but full-time, so I’ve applied.”
“Ah, I see,” Maddy nods, “okay then, well, it’s the same as I’ve said to quite a few students recently, ‘if you have to then you have to’. See how the application goes. Let me know. Was there another thing?”
“So,” Jak takes a deep breath, “like I said yesterday, I’m interested in your research, you know your PhD research on local production networks.”
“Oh yes,” Maddy takes another sip of coffee and leans forward.
“I’d like to find out more about it while I’m on a break, you know, to keep my eye in kinda thing. And I wondered about following up on some of your sources to read more around it. Is that possible?”
“For most of them, yes,” confirms Maddy, “you can access them through your student library account. I can make sure that stays live while you’re away from LRBS.”
“Most of them…” queries Jak.
“Well, there are some that I had to go down to the Bodleian for, like I think I said. But I don’t think you’d get access.”
“Do you still have a pass? Could you get books for me?”
Maddy laughs, “well, I do still have my Bodleian pass as it happens. It might still be valid. But I don’t have an up-to-date academic visa for City of Oxford. That expired. So I could pay for a tourist day pass… but it’s not worth the hassle to be honest. Anyway, I wouldn’t be able to take anything out. It’s reference access only.”
“Hassle?”
“Yeah,” Maddy pauses and lowers her voice, “to be honest Jak, central Oxford isn’t really a very nice place. I mean the buildings are pretty and historic and all that. But I’m not really that into history or architecture. It’s people I like. And people down the hill in Oxford are too often just arrogant and rude. The likes of us are made to feel unwelcome there. I found it all very stressful. Funnily enough the librarians in the Bodleian were nice. Once I was in there and working, it was fine. But everything else was just stress after stress. Never again.”
“Oh, I see, that’s a shame.”
“You won’t be missing much,” reassures Maddy, “the most interesting documents are those produced by independent producers themselves, with their own ideas, the unexpected problems, acts of generosity from others in the community. There’s no one-size-fits-all approach. Everywhere and everyone is different.
“The stuff in the Bodleian was more wider context stuff. If you want to get inspired about autonomous production networks then you don’t want to bother with that. I’ll make sure you can still get into your library account while you’re off. And Jak, thank you for being interested. If you want to meet up again, maybe in Moonies again? I’d be up for that.”
—
After Maddy leaves, Jak stays and stares into her empty cup.
‘What was you thinking? Dr Birch is just a nice person trying to help. And make friends with you. Maybe you should let her? It’s nice to be liked.
‘She doesn’t know about what happened to you, she hasn’t a clue. Maybe no one does, maybe you should just forget about it.’
Carly Marika Griffiths: You still at LR?
Jak Churchwell: Yes
Carly Marika Griffiths: Where?
Jak Churchwell: Cafe
Jak Churchwell: Why?
Jak waits for a reply. And works out what she’s going to say to Carly. Normally she’d be glad to meet up but everything feels too complicated at the moment.
Carly strides towards her, “hey Jax, there you are. Fancy a latte?”
“Already had one thanks. I need some air now.”
“Okay. Short stroll down to Moonies?”
Carly walks easily but purposefully, leading the way across the busy Headington Road and down a side lane with stone walls and gardens either side. Jak follows alongside, limping and stepping carefully with rigid shoulders.
Carly senses her tension, “through the park?”
The warm, rich smells of undergrowth and blossom relax Jak. She lets her arms swing as she walks and turns her face to the sun. For the second time today, she listens to the buzz of bees, wondering what they are saying and enjoying their sheer aliveness. They pass a scattered pile of fallen tree branches, the wood blotched with dark patches, slowly rotting.
“What a mess!” exclaims Carly, waving her arms vaguely at the logs, “they’d never let this mess lie for long if it was a college garden. If this was Christchurch there’d be a uniformed lackey along in a minute to tidy it all up. But us in the Outers just have to put up with all this rotten rubbish!”
“Rotting wood is good for biodiversity,” objects Jak, “essential for the cycle of life. I’m glad they leave it.”
She stoops down and pokes a finger into a soft piece of wood, “see, the fungus is in it now, turning it into food for beetles and that, and they pollinate the flowers and fruit trees. If they remove the dead wood at Christchurch they’re idiots.”
“Well, they probably are idiots,” protests a chastened Carly, “a lot of dead wood too… themselves!”
“Why did you come up to the LR today?” asks Jak.
“I was there to meet some students,” Carly’s confidence and assertiveness quickly return, “recruiting them for protesting the Wall. It went well. But we need as many as we can get. Once the Wall goes up, that’s it Jax, no going back. We’ll be forever cut off from our own city. It’s now or never to stop it.
“I know it’s not really your thing but you should join in with Stop the Wall. Get involved, Jax, it affects you just as much as anyone.”
“We’re already cut off from the centre of town, Tabs,” points out Jak, “that’s why Brookes Uni shut, no one wanted to come anymore. And I had to do a business course instead of environmental management. It just all seems too late already.”
“Yeah but fences, gates… we can pull ‘em down. Then build a new uni or whatever. It just needs a political shift, get some better so-called leaders,” she laughs, “I mean, they can hardly be any worse, can they?”
“Tabs.”
“Yeah?”
“I need to sit down for a bit. Too much walking.”
“That’s not like you,” responds Carly without thinking, her mind still energised by campaigning, “you’re the one who’s always wanting to go for walks. All your nature stuff, birds and bees…”
Jak snaps back, “hurt my ankle, remember?”
“Oh yeah, sorry Jax, sorry. I did forget for a second there.”
Jak rests her ankle. Carly sits next to her on the bench, stroking her hand.
It’s after lunchtime, when business school staff and students often come to the park, but there are still a few people around. A retired couple enjoying a walk, a young man cutting through the park on his way to the mosque on Marston Road, a young woman pushing a buggy and talking to her daughter about butterflies.
Carly stretches her legs out in front of her, “I like these boots. You do as well, don’t you? More people should have red boots in my opinion, what d’you reckon?”
Jak nods, “yeah they’re nice, really suit you. Don’t think boots suit me, not shiny ones anyway. Though they’d help support my ankle at the moment, it’s really sore.”
Carly kneels down on the path in front of Jak and, taking her injured foot in one hand, unties the lace on her canvas shoe, loosens it, and slowly, carefully, slides it off. She tenderly massages Jak’s ankle through her thin sock.
Raising Jak’s leg slightly, Carly runs her finger around the inside of her calf-length sock’s elastic cuff, delicately brushing her skin, and rolls the white cotton down her leg, gently over her ankle and round her heel. It hangs, dangling from her toes.
She bows her head and presses her pursed lips down on the top of Jak’s half-bare foot. Meticulously, Carly kisses every millimetre of the swelling around Jak’s ankle.
She looks up at Jak, smiling, “there you go, good as new.”
A smartly dressed man walks quickly by. Jak looks down, avoiding eye contact.
“Thank you Tabs,” she whispers, almost inaudibly but tingling inside.
“Drink? Moonies?” suggests Carly, springing to her feet.
“Okay, s’pose.”
But Jak’s ankle is still hurting. As they cross the busy road junction at the bottom of Headington Hill, the lights change and Carly breaks into a run, dragging Jak along behind her. A car sounds its horn as they labour to the pavement.
“No good, Tabs, I’m sorry.”
“Oh Jax, a few rum’n’cokes’ll sort you out. Deaden the pain, lighten the mood.”
Jak shakes her head, “sorry. I’m going to go for the bus. Get home, put peas on my ankle.”
“What?” Carly laughs, “Donny might have some peas you could have. Or beans anyway.”
“Sorry, Tabs. I just need to get home and rest.”