I’m always sheepish when I see friends for the first time in a while – and it wasn’t even that long of a while! But I don’t know; I’m not very good at hellos, and I’m atrocious at goodbyes. I think as I get older I’m increasingly wary of sentimentality. A cautious counter, I think, to the oversentimentality of years gone by – of alienating people, weirding people out with my emotional intensity. I’ve learned, quite subconsciously it seems, to say less. Maybe that’s what happens to a lot of boys when they’re little – maybe that’s why so many men are so stoic and silent and struggle to know what’s going on in their own heads. For some reason it happened to me much later on. I never know how much emotion is appropriate, so it’s safer to just be pragmatic.
Continue readingTravel
California Pt 1 | Scaredy Cat
Before I went to California there was a lot of to-ing and fro-ing over whether it was a good idea. There were a few factors: after Colombia I seem to have developed some sort of post-shitshow travel anxiety, plus at 31 I was unsure whether I’d be able to keep up with the debauchery I felt sure Annie would have planned for her birthday.
Continue readingItaly | Serenità
Italy in autumn – hills that roll with the regularity of those back home, but rise a little higher, sink a little lower. Tall cypress trees looming from the mist that sits in the mornings like water in a basin. A cemetery on a lone hilltop at night, flickering in orange candlelight. Deer in the fields, roaming in pairs. Hunters in camo gear, also in pairs, loading rifles onto quad bikes and sipping from flasks. Hares in the forest. Porcupines too – as big as a dog, fans of white quills like monsters.
Continue readingFrance | Ropes to the Sky
Next stop: Cordes-sur-Ciel.
Continue readingFrance | Cliff and Orcs and Bells Going ‘Dong’
When I (unsuccessfully) attempted to move to France last year, Seth and I spent each Sunday in his van, zooming around the countryside in search of interesting things. I like being in the van; it’s high up so you feel safe on the road, even though the closer you get to the Mediterranean, the nuttier everyone’s driving becomes.
Continue readingFrance | Well Albi Damned, The Table’s Ablaze
We’ve just left the museum, and I’m drinking a cherry Coke in a town square. Seth sits down beside me and places a weird fluffy tart on the table between us.
Continue readingAK ’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?!
Continue readingAK ’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’.
Continue readingAK ’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.”
Continue readingAK ’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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