‘I was discovering this deep reserve of patience I never knew I had, and I was surprised at how rich it was.’
I live out on the point, at Whitland. It’s a lonely spot, I suppose: if you come by car, driving out along the high road, past Seahouses, skirting Sandhaven, then Coldhaven, you come to an odd configuration of telegraph poles, nothing else there but sky and the rise of the hill and, occasionally, …
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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.
‘I think of betrayal as a crack in the veneer of humanity, an act that reveals to us, and others, our base animal nature.’
'the trees / are slender in the way that things / are almost, though not quite / absent'
‘I was marking a stack of essays / on Frank O’Hara / and each had a Wiki- / paragraph to say / who Genet was.’
‘Shoeboxes lined with eggs and empty / pomegranates drying in a bowl, / mousebones and wicker, chess pieces, muddled coats.’
Home is makeshift. Everything we build, everything we name, everything we hold dear and would not have taken from us is temporary and in constant need of re-imagining.
‘Before I moved to Wyoming in 2005, I was – like a lot of people outside this region, it turns out – not quite sure just where it was.’
