Off your tuck this morning, aren’t you? That’s not like you. It’s the chill, perhaps. These March winds come straight from the Urals, up the Thames, or so they say. No, that’s not your favourite Horse Guards playing, can’t fool you; you never like it when they change the band. Fancy a bun…
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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.
‘Lib didn’t like to bang harder in case of disturbing the family. Brightness leaked from the door of the byre, off to her right. Ah, the women had to be milking. A trail of melody; was one of them singing to the cows?’
‘It was a commonplace / to enter the woods / with meat, lay it on the ground, then / wait for what might come.’
Poetry by Michael Bazzett.
‘You live at the track, your life is full.’
An excerpt from Kathryn Scanlan’s new work of fiction, Kick the Latch.
Ntsika Kota is the winner of the 2022 Commonwealth Short Story Prize for Africa.
‘Though I have had dogs all my life, Coco is my first real companion.’
Fatima Bhutto on grief.
‘Marx said the forest only echoes back what you shout into it – and this is very often true, perhaps more often than not, but I think the poet’s task is to suggest that it needn’t be.’
