‘A thing of colour and elemental contest and of beauty.’
We face south-west towards the Isles of Scilly. To our left is a coastal hill, Carn Gloose. On our right is Cape Cornwall and beyond, exactly a mile offshore, I’m told, is a series of rocky outcrops known as the Brisons. In Priest’s Cove we hop from boulder to boulder towards a series of larger,…
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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.
‘We hated the tourists, but they were the reason we had jobs.’
Rachael Allen on working in a fish and chip shop in Cornwall.
‘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.
Guy Gunaratne interviewed Margo Jefferson after the winner of the Rathbones Folio Prize was announced, and they discussed her prize-winning book, Constructing a Nervous System.
‘Grief has a warring logic; it always wants something impossible, something worse and something better.’
An extract from Biography of X by Catherine Lacey.
‘Ghost stories, then, are not always characterised by fear. Sometimes, they are stories of belief, comfort, faith.’
Laura Maw on the photography of Corinne May Botz.
‘I grew up in the semi-tropical south, dotted by wet paddy fields, but I always wanted to go to the north.’
