‘Separation has been, perhaps, the single biggest determining influence in my life.’
My twin brother and I were separated at birth, even though we lived in the same house, with the same mother, for the first eighteen years of our lives. The separation was total, psychological, emotional and social; and it lasted until his death early in 2005. I heard only indirectly that he had died…
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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.
‘Love was no longer encoded in recognised behaviours, but became subject to private desires and idiosyncratic needs.’
‘My mother’s cry rang in my ears from infancy. ‘No child of mine is going into a shoe factory.’’
‘If provincial life still exists, it does so only residually and is doomed to eventual extinction.’
‘In our structures we South Africans tend to declare ourselves quite nakedly, sometimes eloquently, and rarely with dissimulation.’
