Tea-time: In Conversation with Skye McAlpine
“A good cook is like a sorceress who dispenses happiness.” Elsa Schiaparelli’s words are certainly true of Skye McAlpine, the Venice-based cookery writer behind the hit blog From My Dining Table (and graduate of University College, Oxford). In A Table in Venice and A Table for Friends –
Infestation
“Even now as the latest mealy-mouthed apology stumbles out of one side of his mouth, a new set of deflections and distortions pour from the other.” – Keir Starmer, April 2022 Flea sits beside Cockroach and fingers his ’tash, Discussing fiscal matters of raising cash. He’s scheming t
Trifling
A village fete. Bunting. The air is sticky like marmalade. The scorched grass as crunchy as a brandy snap. Light up on Winnie, seventy-four, blouse the colour of stained wallpaper, standing behind a cake stall. WINNIE: “I don’t use clotted cream.” I knew I’d have to kill her when she sai
Swerfing the Net
Many so-called feminists argue in the same breath that sex workers are victims of exploitation, and propagators of the patriarchy. These feminists are SWERFs: Sex Worker Exclusionary Radical Feminists. They reject the argument that sex work is work, resist calls for its decriminalisation, and
Portraying
Hetta Garber had been his muse. She was sitting on a divan, watching him paint her. If she leant back far enough and looked in the mirror above her, she could see herself shimmering for a moment before the trick collapsed and she was swallowed up by the turquoise-green and shell-pink background. “
Eucharist
The profound blue of Mary’s shawl sweeps under the horizon just as the glass joins start looking like ant trails. Candles pretend to die, momentarily, as I stumble into the Psalm’s first verse. Then the songs are folded. The pastor reads “release them” from a book that says relieve th
Academics in Dog Collars
The University of Oxford is strange. Its structures are antiquated, its reputation disproportionate, and its influence unparalleled. For many prospective students, this is in large part the appeal of attending the University. And yet the preservation of such archaism for the sake of a conservative a
God Pities the Nursery Children
A Translation of Yehudah Amichai’s ‘God Pities the Nursery Children’ [אלוהים מרחם על ילדי הגן ] from Hebrew. God pities the nursery children, He pities school children even less As for the גדולים [big ones], He will pity no more – He’ll let them fend for the
Bosch: Hypnotic Degeneration
I have always called myself an atheist, but this spring I found myself on a pilgrimage. Desperate for cultural enrichment on my short holiday in Madrid, I stood in front of the neat white steps of the Prado. My friends and I, vaguely hungover, flinched at the packs of European schoolchildren queuing