Kellyanne crawled into my bedroom through the car door. Her face was puffy and pale and fuzzed-over. She just came in and said: ‘Ashmol! Pobby and Dingan are maybe-dead.’ That’s how she said it.
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“I’m looking for my daughter’s imaginary friends and you’d better bloody well believe it, mate!”
Kellyanne crawled into my bedroom through the car door. Her face was puffy and pale and fuzzed-over. She just came in and said: ‘Ashmol! Pobby and Dingan are maybe-dead.’ That’s how she said it.
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‘We meet at various points in the great swathes of the past that neither of us were alive to witness.’
Allen Bratton on a daytrip to a castle with his older boyfriend.
‘Listening to three white poets, whom I suspect are academics, talk about the state of poetry.’
Oluwaseun Olayiwola eavesdrops on an older generation.
‘I’d been dubious about his company at first.’
Sarah Moss on watching Shakespeare with her twelve-year-old son.
‘She didn’t trust us because, to her, tenants were like children.’
Kate Zambreno on negotiating with her older landlady.
‘A moment now swallowed in embarrassment, I asked a question only a young person might ask an older one.’
Lynne Tillman on trying to understand what makes a generation.
Ben Rice is the author of a Pobby and Dingan and Etiquette. He won the Somerset Maugham Award in 2001 and was named one of the Best of Young British Novelists by Granta in 2003.
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