The kindness tax
A customer recently asked me why the pint I had served him cost 10 quid. He leaned over the counter where I studied the freshly poured drink (head overlarge, incriminating tracts of lager streaming down the sides). A fiver because it’s alcohol. Another two pounds because it’s a pub in the
Makes me feel fine
A search for out-of-print children’s choral covers of pop songs on the internet, and for the spirit of childhood, if such a thing can be said to exist. I’m starting with a bona fide child I know in person. A few weeks ago, I stayed a night at my [&hellip
Musings on Charles Bukowski from a giant salamander farm in Japan
I discovered Charles Bukowski by chance when I was 19 in London last summer. I was peering through the front display books at Word on the Water, a charming little bookshop in a canal boat right by King’s Cross when I discovered Bukowski’s poem ‘that’s why f
Unsettling the dust
My first post-university summer has been subdued. If I imagine my footprints drawn on a large map, they would be mostly concentrated in an inky blot. Uninspiring though they may seem, my small pilgrimages to coffee shops and friends’ houses have left room for new observations. For ex
In Conversation with Charles Huettner, Co-Creator of MAX’s Scavengers Reign
I met with Charles Huettner, co-creator of the MAX twelve-episode series, Scavengers Reign which follows four crew members who are left to survive on a wild alien world. Light-years away from earth, their sole hope of salvation lies in their crashed ship The Demeter. The series explores how our grea
Heaven knows I’m miserable now
You have a nagging suspicion that you are a lazy, unmotivated woman who fancies herself a writer, but is too mauled by indecision to ever put pen to paper. Writing this down now, I realise the judgement is so harsh I wouldn’t even want to speak it aloud; I wouldn’t like to hear [&h
Window Seat: no lizards, just heart
In my first year living in Edinburgh, essentially a naive little tourist, I was handed a flyer to see a free show named Lizard Boy. The people pleaser in me could not say no. I walked myself to the small venue off the high street and sat on my own in the back. How […]
Quit whilst you’re ahead (and you still can)…
“Where do you plan on doing that then!’’ was my parents’ first response when I announced my plan to become a waiter. Unlike some of my friends – who had carefully rationed themselves two bagels per day, each with a slice of pre-cut Tesco’s cheese – my ninth week had become a financ
When grief finds us
I have a friend who lost her father when she was young who has always told me that her favourite book is Grief is a Thing With Feathers. I have never felt the need to read it—I have, luckily, never lost anyone close to me, anyone who has brought grief, with its feathers, to […]