I hadn’t expected Kerouac Alley and the bookshop to move me so much; the emotion of it all took me by surprise. Truth be told, I don’t often think about Kerouac these days. I read other authors, other genres, and when I write I don’t try to sound like him anymore; I feel I’ve found my own style, more or less. I had my phase and I moved on – left it behind, along with all the other stuff I left in my twenties, voluntary or otherwise. But despite all that, being there did something to me – something visceral. It felt exactly how watching the Lion King on TV feels, even after all these years: it felt like nostalgia, it felt like loss, it felt warm, it felt like a hug.
Continue readingtravel diary
California Pt 6 | City Lights
I’d written off the 25th of November long before I ever got the plane to California. The day after Annie’s birthday party, I’d imagined, would be an empty one: spinning heads and groaning and human duvet-mounds shuffling back and forth between sofa, bathroom and fridge.
Continue readingCalifornia Pt 5 | Stork
Because of my tendency to roam around, I have only celebrated one of Annie’s birthdays with her since we met: her 23rd. That birthday party – which involved acid tabs, public nudity, rooftop falls, a dildo covered in glitter, leather harnesses and quite a lot of blood – was, it’s safe to say, the reason for my anxiety on the morning of her 30th birthday party in Oakland.
Continue readingCalifornia Pt 4 | Collegiate
The USA is unlike France in every way but one: when you’re there, you can’t help but keep thinking about the fact that you’re there. You’re not just drinking a coffee – you’re drinking a coffee in Paris. You’re not just eating a burger – you’re eating a burger in America. This knowledge alone, with all its fabulous, glamorous connotations – those accumulated over a lifetime of books and stories and songs and late-night Wikipedia trawls – shunts the mundane towards the mythical. I’m blowing my nose – in America!
Continue readingFrance | Ropes to the Sky
Next stop: Cordes-sur-Ciel.
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 readingFrance | Albi, Baby
Nearly killed me, getting to Gatwick. I planned the route carefully-ish and gave myself time. It shouldn’t have been a big deal: the airport is only 22 miles from my house. When I set off, however, I discovered that trains were cancelled all over the shop.
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.”
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