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 readingAuthor: Dan Hackett
London | 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.
Continue readingBerlin | Back in Town Pt 4
On our final full day in Berlin (Vic leaving that night, me early next morning), Vic and I met Bruna for brunch at a funky upbeat restaurant somewhere in Friedrichshain. I had a bacon sandwich and we talked about sex clubs in the city and how we’d all be far too prudish to join an orgy. I never knew I had a ‘line’ until I lived in Berlin. The city tests your limits – you can always go deeper, and nobody ever recommends you don’t. Sooner or later there comes a time when you’re faced with a situation you’ve never seen before, far beyond what you considered possible in the ‘real world’ beyond, and for the first time your mental green light switches to yellow then red – and you pause. And that’s it: you either turn back forever, or plunge in. Some people go to Kitkat and get their thighs spanked with a riding crop for the first time and think ‘Ow, get off’. And others – their irises turn to love hearts.
Continue readingBerlin | Back in Town Pt 3
The next morning Vic and I went for breakfast in a little German bakery that sold giant rectangular cakes the size of bricks. We walked to Moritzplatz and up the road past the infamous club Kitkat; I pondered aloud to Vic how, if one could invent some sort of gadget that detected historic orgasms per square metre, the machine would hit the roof when you passed the area. Further down the road we arrived at the giant industrial building that houses Tresor, Ohm (where I watched Annie play a set back in the day) and Kraftwerk – a gargantuan events space inside the gutted husk of a power station.
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