‘All that yearning spilling down amid the treetops and roof ridges, a shadow I’d never properly considered before.’
In 1995 veteran folk singer Loudon Wainwright III released a typically mordant song in which he catalogued the births, breakdowns, deaths and near misses of friends and family. Somehow all the health campuses of memory coalesce as a single monolithic entity, a site of inescapable mortality. That hos…
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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.
‘Stopping has become a mutual desire. The things we want to stop. Mostly sounds of other people.’
A poem by K Patrick.
‘There’s this paradoxical nostalgia where even though yi suffered, yi miss it.’
Memoir by Graeme Armstrong.
‘In clothes, I met strangeness with strangeness. They dressed me with a kind of distanced power.’
Rosie Findlay on fashion and religion.
‘It was 1 a.m., and it was Los Angeles; they were used to indiscretion.’
A story by Rhian Sasseen.
