The day after my brother Cameron reappeared in town and called me for the first time in six years, I went into my boss Caroline’s office to tell her I needed some time off. I closed the door and explained things to her.
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‘Feelings can be very obscure but numbers never lie.’
Kevin Brazil on metrics, obsession and fitness.
‘An intense workout is an ecstasy of punishment packaged as self-improvement.’
Mary Wellesley on exercise, ritual and Barry’s Bootcamp.
‘I was not good at sports because I would not do sports because I did not have the body for sports because I would not do sports.’
Saba Sams on girlhood, embodiment and avoiding sports.
‘Following United rarely brings me any great joy and most often it depresses me. If I could disengage, I would.’
Jonny Thakkar on Manchester United.
‘I deployed my body against an opponent like a blunt and effective instrument.’
John Patrick McHugh on playing Gaelic football.
‘I have no house, from time to time I dream of having one, not a holiday home but a house to bury myself in.’
Memoir by Yasmina Reza, translated by Alison L. Strayer.
‘I make a certain effort / to give my sister in Korea / the impression / that I am interested’
Poetry by Audun Mortensen.
‘They started out as fraternities, the cults. Poorer students wanted strong networks, like the ones boarding school pupils had already.’
Fiction by Toye Oladinni.
‘I promise you, the committee only looks at two things: how feasible a proposal is, and what it could actually do for the environment.’
A bureaucrat and an entrepreneur discuss environment-saving proposals in a short play by Si’an Chen, translated by Jeremy Tiang.
‘He had his hands deep in his pockets, and his face was lined with a frown deeply embedded with dust.’
