‘Today it is usual—especially among those who have never faced conscription—to describe national service as time wasted, even an offence against civil liberties in some sinister way.’
Today it is usual—especially among those who have never faced conscription—to describe national service as time wasted, even an offence against civil liberties in some sinister way.
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‘Feelings can be very obscure but numbers never lie.’
Kevin Brazil on metrics, obsession and fitness.
‘An intense workout is an ecstasy of punishment packaged as self-improvement.’
Mary Wellesley on exercise, ritual and Barry’s Bootcamp.
‘I was not good at sports because I would not do sports because I did not have the body for sports because I would not do sports.’
Saba Sams on girlhood, embodiment and avoiding sports.
‘Following United rarely brings me any great joy and most often it depresses me. If I could disengage, I would.’
Jonny Thakkar on Manchester United.
‘I deployed my body against an opponent like a blunt and effective instrument.’
John Patrick McHugh on playing Gaelic football.
‘The islanders held him in a large dog cage under a banyan tree by the village square, awaiting the day when someone would convey him to a prison camp.’
Fiction by Tong Wei-Ger, translated by Tony Hao.
‘What to do as a photographer in a war where even simple family portraits have become trophies?’
Myriam Boulos photographs displaced workers in Beirut.
‘I don’t think much of the very silly, even gullible, person that I am.’
Fiction by Fleur Jaeggy, translated by Gini Alhadeff.
‘Against the backdrop of the Russian onslaught, all everyday concerns, the facts and things that make everyday life, literally life, seem like luxuries.’
Yevgenia Belorusets on conscription in Ukraine.
‘The people she longed to be understood by, the ones at whom her anxious hope was pinned, were her parents.’
Fiction by Vigdis Hjorth, translated by Charlotte Barslund.
‘And now there were four of them stepping out to look for a cow.’ 2016 Commonwealth Short Story Prize overall winner.
