Annie sleeps like a walrus. That’s not to say she’s an inelegant sleeper — she isn’t, she sleeps in this weirdly prim manner like Dracula, on her back, face up, mouth closed. It’s just that she sleeps forever. Whenever we hang out we always go to bed at the same time, of course, but my body clock simply refuses to allow me through the morning. Annie, if undisturbed, will sleep for 16 hours. It was for this reason that, on our second day in Manchester, I spent around four hours lying awake in my bed, looking at memes on my phone, awaiting the moment my friend would rise from her crypt.
Continue readingTravel
AK ’23 | Dr Knobhead, I Presume?
First thing she did was ruffle my hair, that incorrigible Yankee dickhead. I’d been extra careful that morning to get it just right. Now I was a mop-end scarecrow once again, angel-pube loofa head. God damn. I’d been thinking about how cool my entrance would be all the way there: I’d sweep up beside her, unseen, and I’d mutter some obscure literary reference, some fantastic quippy masterclass in British understatement – but no. She ruffled my hair, and after a year apart the first thing that escaped my mouth was something like:
“Dick!”
Continue readingAt Home | More Scheming, Less Steaming
You wouldn’t know it – I mean, how could you know it – but I write these diaries all the time. I just never publish them. What usually happens is that I begin doing some other thing, like working or reading a book, and at that instant I am struck by inspiration, and I throw everything aside and sit down and hammer out 2000 words in an insane blur that I barely even remember. Then I sit back and crack my knuckles and read what I’ve written, and while I read my jaw gently slackens, until finally I think ‘nobody must ever discover how shit a writer I am, how inane, how poundingly mediocre my thoughts are’ and I delete them all in an orgasm of self-loathing.
Continue readingAt Home | All A-Glow
I finished my book!
I finished my book this morning, the Australia one – rewrote the end, finally found the right words after weeks, months of sitting at my laptop and writing things and then deleting them over and over until I finally go ‘PRICK!’ at myself and slam it shut. But now it’s done.
Continue readingFrance | Deluge
France | Pickles
I turned 30 on Sunday. Wasn’t that big of a deal in the end. It’s sort of mad to think that I worried so grandly about it for like, ten years – and regularly made a right mess of things because of this mad looming fear of being Too Old for Stuff – and then it just happened regardless and it’s basically fine.
Continue readingAt Home | Chrysalis
Another writing. Go!
Continue readingAt Home | NUT HATCH!
Another speedy one. Not because I have a lesson. I do have lessons but they start at 12 today because I like to take Monday mornings to do creative stuff. Like this!
Continue readingAt Home | The Big 3-0
Wag’wan.
Only got 30 minutes to write this before my next class starts. I’ve been working like a nutter for the last two months, teaching English, and on the side I’m trying to get my novel published – editing it, sending it to folks – and I’m also trying to get in shape, and I’m also trying to do social life stuff, and I’m also trying to eat a balanced healthy diet, and I’m also trying to get enough sleep, and—
Continue readingColombia | Homeward Bound
I spent three weeks in Cali, in total. I didn’t leave for home on the 5th of February as planned; for reasons I can’t be bothered to get into (I’m a knob), I moved my flight home back a week, to the 12th of February out of Bogota.
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