In Berlin at Ostbahnhof I step outside of the train station after slowing to give a longing look to the McDonalds within, above the little diorama of the alpine village in the window display and the sculpture made of oyster shells. My phone to my lips I hold the microphone symbol and I record a voice note for Ben. I tell him that Sonya has just got on the train to Warsaw and I’m alone now for the day, and I’m going to go back to my hotel and sit in the lobby and read and drink coffee for a few hours, and does he want to meet me later on?
Continue readingAuthor: Dan Hackett
London | Serious Writer
I’ve been consuming a lot of media recently about the 1960s. It wasn’t on purpose – it just sort of happened. It started a few weeks ago when I went to visit Vic in Bristol for a summery nostalgic weekend and on the way there on the three-hour bus I listened to a song in my headphones – I forget what it was exactly, maybe She’s So Heavy or Her Majesty or something – but it was a Beatles song, and I decided to look it up on Wikipedia.
Continue readingLondon | A Walk To Brixton Station
Open the door. Look down: see the ginger cat with sky-blue blue collar who makes a bed of the planter by the front step. She flees, hissing, down the garden path – follow her but watch your hair; the thorny arms of the rose bush are overgrown and reach overhead in a long arch. The postman caught his forehead on one last week and gave me a telling off, which I was determined not to feel guilty about because A) it’s not my fault that plants grow and B) he should watch where he’s going.
Continue readingLondon | Darth Vader Freaking Out in Hawaii
Thought I’d switch it up a bit – something new. I tutor a nine-year-old boy from China, now living in Melbourne, Australia. Every week we read a few pages of The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, because he is really into magical adventure stories and he’d never heard of Narnia. He speaks English at a level that’s close to native but his parents want me to help him with his writing.
Continue readingLondon | Philosophy Class
I must write something or I’ll explode. I have written articles yesterday and the day before and deleted them – rather uncinematic, I admit, if I had a typewriter I’d at least have had the satisfaction of ripping out the shite I’d typed, scrunching it up and hurling it into a little iron basket – and I’d determined to make something today, right now, even if it’s shit and meandering, whatever, whatever, fuck you, fuck me.
Continue readingFrance | Bad Times (You Know I’ve Had My Share) Pt 2
“Oh man, I feel really… whoa… okay. Not good.”
The walk back to the car was fifty metres and felt like a mile: time slowing, peripherals blurring, temperature rising. I got back wobbly and collapsed into a deck chair.
Continue readingFrance | Bad Times (You Know I’ve Had My Share) Pt 1
When Aurelle was tucked up in bed, Blanche went for a lie down as she was feeling tired – Aurelle had been poorly a couple of nights ago and Blanche seemed to have picked it up. To avoid waking them, Seth and I went out into Albi for a quiet drink and a catch up.
Continue readingFrance | Good Times
I was very careful, ahead of my hiking weekend with Seth in France, to avoid doing anything that might cause me injury. I took it easy in the gym, I skipped leg day (hiking’s no fun with sore thighs), I ate well, I rested. Acutely aware of my luck with such things, I took every precaution to preserve my bodily health; I didn’t want anything to spoil my big, restorative weekend away in the Occitanie countryside – and god, I needed it after so many months of solid work in London’s great metropolitan marsh. God must have a wicked sense of humour, however, because the evening before my flight, my phone rang. It was Seth.
“Mate, you’re not gonna believe this. I’ve smashed my feet up at work.”
Continue readingLondon | Crimped
I do not remember the last thing I wrote about on here. And I will not check! There doesn’t have to be any narrative consistency to these dairies. That’s not life! This is life! This! LOOK AT IT.
Alright I regret starting this article that way but I’m not going to delete it because that would mean I have to think of another intro and I just… don’t want to do that right now.
Continue readingLondon | Birthday Man
It was my birthday two days ago and I took the day off work to do nothing. It is not particularly rare that I do nothing, however it is exceedingly rare that I do nothing without suffering from monstrous guilt. The rules are different on birthdays, however: you can do whatever you want.
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