‘My mother’s brother was christened Cedric, but people always called him Joe.’
In 1986, Joe’s brother, my uncle Frank, offered to take me to see him. By then Joe was living in Wolverhampton, in a place called Penndale Lodge, which Frank gave me to understand was some sort of refuge for destitute old men. From Four Oaks, the private estate where Frank and my aunt Miriam lived…
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‘I think there should be a National Service of Hospitality. The best way to see the true face of humanity is to serve it a plate of chips.’
Camilla Grudova on bad-mannered customers.
‘Anyone who has ever worked night shifts will understand the vertiginous feeling that comes with staring down the day from the wrong end.’
A.K. Blakemore on working nights.
‘I was constantly reading job ads, trying to find my holy grail – a job I could stand to do, and someone foolish enough to hire me.’
Sandra Newman on learning how to play professional blackjack.
‘I loved being a receptionist. What I loved about it was playing the part of being a receptionist.’
Emily Berry on being a temporary office worker.
‘Every part of you would swell, including your eyeballs, and no matter how much water you drank, you were always dehydrated.’
Junot Díaz on working for a steel mill.
‘As the weeks went by, I began to realize that the park had its own unofficial and carefully calibrated infrastructure.’
‘The man on the other end told me he was looking for sexual fantasies that were about eleven sentences long.’
‘Ask anyone in Ayodhya, and they will say the city’s Hindu–Muslim harmony can withstand any test.’
Snigdha Poonam on the construction of a Hindu temple on the ruins of a mosque in Utter Pradesh.
‘The place we come from, the place we call home, is the home of our suffering.’
Jamaica Kincaid talks about finding her way to writing.
‘How do we perform our politics, our outrage and our grievances when we are among a group?’
Anthony Anaxagorou talks about his collection Heritage Aesthetics.
Granta editor Anne Meadows writes about Khirbet Khizeh, the great Israeli novel of war and doubt.
