I remember the moment of panic on the tube as it clattered towards Waterloo. Was I really going to go through with this? I was in my mid-fifties, a grandmother to two, and I had agreed to be part of a topless protest on Waterloo Bridge. What was I thinking? Let’s begin with the easy […]
The world is holding its breath. We are in lockdown, each of us caught somewhere along the spectrum between hell and heaven and the sense of waiting pushes down on my shoulders and steals my breath. If I go up the hill to ask What do you want of me? (I live on the […]
As I lay in the middle of the road outside Downing Street, surrounded by police, awaiting my imminent arrest, I looked up at a cloudless blue sky. It felt like a sign that the rain had finally stopped and, as I enjoyed the sun on my face, one of London’s famous parakeets flew overhead. […]
There was a meme circulating a few months ago which contrasted the competing virtues of Greta Thunberg and the Dutch inventor Boyan Slat as poster children for the climate movement. Both Greta and Boyan are young, idealistic and passionately committed to environmental causes. They were both still teenagers when they first came to public prominence. […]
When the sun started shining, earlier in the month, I couldn’t decide whether it made lockdown harder or easier to bear. To begin with, the answer seemed obvious: even people who don’t have a garden or a balcony could still get to a park for their daily exercise, and those that had to self-isolate could […]
I only went to a dog meat market once. If you don’t know what a dog meat market is, it’s exactly as it sounds. It’s where they slaughter and butcher dogs and sell their meat. You can find them throughout Asia – I went to Moran Market in South Korea. As the co-founder of an […]
Shoulder Season The creature lies still in the villa’s pool, waiting for the day the caretaker rolls back the tarp and the first wasps of the year thrash themselves to stillness. Then they come, writhing on their inflatables, the holidaymakers. It’s not until midweek that the family’s youngest, grown sufficiently bored and appalled, […]
ARE YOU HERE FOR THIS? < RANT WRITTEN TO BE READ LOUD WRITERS REBELLION, TRAFALGAR SQUARE, OCTOBER 2019 > THIS IS THE WRITERS REBELLION CALLING! I AM HERE FOR THIS! ARE YOU HERE FOR THIS? CALLING ALL MY BOOKISH COMRADES. ALL THE INKY-FINGERED INTROVERTS, THE BESPECTACLED PEN PUSHERS, CALLING ALL WRITERS AND READERS, BOOK LOVERS […]
he says, whose preferred flag is a blank cheque. on mornings made pejorative with foxes. pissy macho stink of them on everything. the grim, diminished sting of drill, its glitchy phobic diss and bleat. stuck on repeat. like foxes. solja boys gekkering thin threat up from behind the wheelie bins. these, our russet buccaneers, sarcoptic […]