Things that are not ideal but we must persevere:
One: it’s been cloudy in London for a long time.
Two: I am redundant – I am without job. This happened seven days ago, on a Tuesday, at about 4pm.
Continue readingAuthor: Dan Hackett
Poland | Krakow
I didn’t go to Krakow to see Ralfi – not specifically – but I was glad to meet him outside the airport, glad I’d booked an extra day at the beginning of my trip to spend time with the Polish engineer, the friend I’d been tutoring in English for almost two years. A tall, handsome family-man in his 40s, Ralfi is the kind of man I’ve always enjoyed: someone with energy a little beyond himself, a streak of naughtiness and a heap of curiosity. His capacity for wonder in our lessons has always made me smile. Some students, you teach them a grammar rule and they nod and say ‘okay’. Others, they open their eyes and mouths wide and say ‘wow’. Moments like that are the reason I do what I do.
Continue readingLondon | Don’t Give Up! Submit!
New things:
I am reading Beloved by Toni Morrison. I avoided reading this book for several years, despite it being at the top of so many must-read lists, because of the title. I assumed it would be something dewy-eyed and soft, and on impulse I usually swerve those kinds of books (not that I know why, because whenever I’ve read dewy-eyed and soft novels I’ve invariably loved them). But Beloved is not in the least soft. It’s gorgeous and lyrical and absolutely fucking brutal. I can feel parts of me getting rearranged as I read it, shifting around like complex hydraulics on the door of a bank vault.
Continue readingLondon | 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.”
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