AK ’23 | Last Legs Pt 2

Shit. How deep had my sleep been?! Annie’s flight was 11am, and we’d been intent on staying awake all through the night ahead of it. We’d failed, obviously – and as an extra kicker, apparently I’d been irretrievably catatonic. After everything – our three week adventure – we hadn’t even been able to say goodbye. My stomach twisted with guilt and confusion. Surely not. How?! 

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AK ’23 | Last Legs Pt 1

On our final day together, Annie and I spent the afternoon in a relaxed fashion: we found a cafe near Leah’s place and sat down to write and eat cake. It was a trendy, young place, Scandi-chic, far less intimidating than the bistros of central Paris with their chalkboard menus covered in dense, illegible scrawl. On one of the cafe’s exterior walls, facing a sidestreet, somebody had spray painted a vaguely left-wing proclamation in French, translating roughly as ‘down with fascism!’. A little further down the street, someone else had written ‘hipsters fuck off’.

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AK ’23 | The Destroyer of Molluscs

We did Paris stuff on our second day in Paris; tourist bits, lots of walking. I love walking in big cities – doesn’t matter how far. I love walking anywhere, just trundling along chatting and looking at things. It might actually be my favourite thing to do, now that I think about it. I’m 30 years old and I’d genuinely rather take a one-hour stroll through a park than spend five hours in some swanky rooftop bar with a pool. Annie is not as fond of walking as me, which is why I always have to lie to her about the distances it says on the map.

“So how far is it to this cemetery?”

“It’s just, uhhhh…” I glanced at my phone: 43 minutes to Père-Lachaise. “Another twenty mins or so.”

“Ugh.”

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AK ’23 | A Grassy Hilltop in Paris

“So you do all the maps and navigating and stuff. What do I bring to the table in this travel duo?”

We were in a taxi on the way to the airport, for an 11am flight to Paris.

“Don’t be daft. You contribute loads. You make me do things I don’t want to do.”

“Yeah,” said Annie slowly, looking out of the window as Lisbon’s trams and tiles flicked by. “Yeah, I do. I introduce you to a wealth of interesting new experiences.”

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Paris | Reunion pt. 2

Too skint to enjoy a lunch at Les Deux Magots, Jeanne and I crossed the road in search of a cheaper alternative. We found a cute place around the corner, where for the price of a single sandwich in the first café, we were able to buy a pizza and a carafe of wine. I don’t know whether it’s the northerner in me or the millennial or just basic stinginess, but I get a giddy thrill from finding a good deal.

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Paris: Muggings and Riots and Notre Dame Engulfed in Flame

After Chiang Mai came two sweaty nights in Bangkok. After Bangkok came Paris.

Jeanne and Justine got an earlier flight out of Thailand, and I arrived in the city fourteen hours after them, in the evening. By the time I arrived Justine had already left the city for Orleans, an hour or two south. Won’t be seeing her for a long time now. After a year of perpetual company and a merry-go-round of familiar faces, suddenly Jeanne and I were all that remained. Weird. Continue reading

A Little Bit More Book

I am so excited about this one it’s unreal. I have high hopes that this will be my first published novel; I’ve been working hard on it night and day, making use of all my free time. I am in love with this world, the characters, the peril, the adventure. Writing every word has been a joy. I don’t want to give too much of the plot away, but if you’re a smart cookie, perhaps you’ll figure out where’s it’s heading. I hope you have as much fun reading this little segment as I had writing it today.

Cheers x

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