We waited quietly for the Queen who wasn’t there, whose car –
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We waited quietly for the Queen who wasn’t there, whose car –
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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.
Gillian Allnutt is the author of numerous volume of poetry, including How the Bicycle Shone: New and Selected Poems, Sojourner and Lintel.
More about the author →
‘Your friends might never know you intimately. There are those that will know you intimately but never be your friend.’
Jia Pingwa on friendship.
‘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.
‘On the doorstep, in the glare of the security lamp, was a thin, bearded man holding a black, breathless terrier.’
Fiction by Joe Stretch.
‘Thanks to what Chetan had published, he and his parents were in trouble, and he was exiled from India.’
Fiction by Karan Mahajan.
‘The Institute was meeting at Yale, at a corner bar with a pool table and subpar beer. It was only a society at this point, attempting to build itself out.’
Fiction by Maia Siegel.
A selection of photographs from the Arctic archipelago Svarlbard.
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