There’s an old hymn I remember singing in primary school: “He’s got the whole world in His hands”. While questions may have arisen as I have grown up regarding the nature or existence of this "Him", recent events have served to remind me that the writer of the song was on to something when he spoke of the “whole world”. A volcano with an unpronounceable name is currently causing unspeakable havoc across Europe: a volcano on a glacier in Iceland. Arbitrary national divides which keep British laws in and French beef out mean nothing to an explosive mountain that has bubbled since before nations existed. The ash, though it has placed a shadow over the plans of thousands of travellers, has illuminated a fact that we often overlook: that we really are just one world, and what happens in one part of it will have an effect on the rest. And, immensely exasperating and distressing though it is, the "travel chaos" has led to a pragmatic pattern of everyone in eve ...

One of my first thoughts when snow started to fall across the south of England a week before Christmas was how tremendously pretty Oxford would look in such weather, with the Bodleian frosted over and the college quads carpeted in white (and probably full of over-excited, snowball-wielding students). It wasn’t until a little while later that I thought vaguely of the Big Issue seller who I passed on my way to lectures, standing by Blackwell’s every day during term that I considered the fact that, for those without a roof over their heads, Oxford in snow is probably the first definition of downright grim. The massive homelessness problem was one thing which I – perhaps naïvely – was not prepared to find in Oxford. Over the Christmas vacation, my first time back at home, people kept asking me “was it how you expected?” and I suppose, for the most part, it actually was. I had known there would be slightly quirky traditions, I came with some expectation of tourists (although ...