From an early age I stalked movies for clues to a life I didn’t understand. As a child growing up in the 1950s, cinema was more real than the everyday and I found meaning there. I didn’t know what I was looking for, but then, as now, it was predicated on the negative. Aged three I had to be remo…
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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.
‘If there were any sense of cultural justice in this country, the Westway – that chunk of concrete modernism – would be renamed after J.G. Ballard.’
‘How little one knows, really, about one’s parents.’
Memoir by Didier Eribon translated by Michael Lucey.
‘My Czech family’s house stands on a geopolitical rift: it occupies a place the political storms sweep through, uprooting everything that is settled.’
An essay by Anna Parker.
‘From a dish washer to an author who writes about washing dishes.’
Memoir by Ilija Matusko, translated by Jen Calleja.
Photographs from onboard the US Coast Guard Cutter Dallas.
