Some men live to fly, and Captain John Wilkinson was one of them. His wife Marie tells a story from early in their relationship when Johnny, as his friends knew him, was a young South African Air Force pilot learning to fly the Hercules cargo plane. ‘I love you,’ he told Marie, knowing that what…
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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.
‘Apartheid had marked him, as it has marked all of us, in different ways. It made me hyper-aware of colour.’
‘The whole arc of the failed promise of development became legible in the traces of the gold rush.’
James Pogue reports from the gold mines of Mauritania.
‘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 town’s fate was tied to poor development and ecological disaster.’
Amitava Kumar visits a Himalayan town.
‘I am on the hunt for the Russian Empire, or what traces might still exist of its colonial enterprise.’
Bathsheba Demuth travels the Yukon river, following the history of the fur trade and the Nulato massacre.
‘Whether or not you think 23 June was a great day for Britain and Europe, it was a very bad one for freedom.’
