Blokes banish blues with baccy

By Abbas Panjwani

By Sarah-Louise Fernandez

Teddy Hall students have combated their exam stress with a healthy dose of water-filtered tobacco.

Alongside traditional anti-fifth week blues events, men’s officers Michael Rundle and Aleks Cvetkovic arranged a shisha session for Wednesday night. Shisha is a mixture of tobacco and fruit flavours smoked through a long pipe called a hookah.

Rundle and Cvetkovic booked the shisha garden at the Temple Lounge in East Oxford, which they understand to be “the best shisha bar there is locally”, according to popular demand. They used a portion of the men’s budget provided by Teddy Hall in order to pay for shisha pipes for “the chaps who turn up”.

Cvetkovic said before the event: “Michael and I have organised an event to provide what we hope will be a relaxed, civilised evening for the gentle- men of the Hall, to give us all a chance to indulge ourselves for a few hours of an evening and relieve the stress of the Trinity term workload and revision pressures.”

He continued: “That way, the guys can hopefully have a free evening, chatting with their fellow men and having a bit of a laugh! We’re very much looking forward to it. It’s always good to touch base with the men of the Hall [...] It’s nice when they take a few hours out to treat themselves and socialise – it also lets us know that we’re doing a good job!”

Other events organised by peer supporters and the JCR Exec include free massages, Zumba classes, cake decorating, a special Monday morning breakfast, a fish and chips/ice skating trip, morning runs, a film night and a dodgeball session.

On top of this, the Cookie Fairy has been delivering cookies to people throughout the week to anyone who “is looking a bit down and would like a treat”. In addition, the Arts and Culture officers are putting on an “Anti-Fifth Week Blues Blues Concert” tonight, which will feature “home-grown talent” and a prize for the best blues song about Teddy Hall.

The week will be rounded off with Summer VIIIs and viewing of the Eurovision song contest in the JCR. “Anti-Fifth Week Blues” has become a tradition at the College and is subsidised by a designated fifth week budget.

Hannah Coleridge, Welfare Officer, said: “This was introduced by the last Welfare Officer, Matt Bell, and has been a fantastic way of helping to stave off the boredom and ‘blues’ that tend to set in towards the middle of term.”

She said that the week is particularly relevant in Trinity term, with both finalists and freshers preparing for exams and often stuck in the library for many hours.

Angela Dudley, the JCR President, commented that “the Anti-Fifth Week blues programme is a fun scheme [and] everyone in the JCR is looking forward to a great week!”

Other colleges also organised various welfare events to combat fifth week blues.

St Hugh’s welfare committee and peer supporters arranged a “DIY Cream Tea” in the JCR, entailing taking a break to talk with the team over a cream tea put together by attendees. At Univ, students were greeted with Haribo and other treats in their pidges, courtesy of the welfare team, and cake has been provided in hall.