What brings me to this place, this pass? It’s four-fifteen in the afternoon on Charlotte...
What brings me to this place, this pass? It’s four-fifteen in the afternoon on Charlotte Street and I’m thinking of ordering a third bottle of white wine. On the table in front of me I have copies of two books: War Like a Wasp by Andrew Sinclair and Under Siege by Robert Hewison, both studies of…
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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.
‘English football’s most precocious and precious talent is evaporating into the skies over Italy like the fading flares of a half-spent Roman candle.’
‘Did you know that a hundred-gram jar of Nescafe filled with 1p coins buys two packets of Benson and Hedges?’
‘My first sighting of Paul Gascoigne was in 1987, when he was playing for Newcastle.’
‘The antitheses had been there all along but in July 1990, after Gascoigne’s World Cup triumph, they were given a new formulation.’
‘It was also mainly Viennese Jews who, between 6 May and 10 October 1942, were murdered in Maly Trostinets. Tens of thousands of Jews from elsewhere died there too, together with Soviet soldiers, Belarusian citizens, both Jewish and Christian, and partisans.’
