Contents

Pleaching

Last summer, belly full of unborn kid, I went for a plodding sort of walk with my mother round her neighbourhood. We circled the streets, the patch of London where she’s lived for nearly 50 years, w… Read article

Criminal Bodies

‘Did you just get engaged to break into an office?’ a scandalised Watson asks Sherlock in the latest episode of the BBC’s current adaptation of Conan Doyle’s stories. ‘His Last Vow’ ingeni… Read article

Somnambulations

We tell our dreams in an effort to interpret them. By voicing the visions that come to us in the night, we believe that we can begin to unravel the threads of fear and desire woven into nighttime enco… Read article

Talking Time

When I was in the ambivalent early stages of my love affair with Proust, wondering whether it was worth the commitment, well-meaning friends would advise that ʻlifeʼs too shortʼ. A year later and t… Read article

Pissing into the Wind

There is something particularly funereal in looking, as I am now, at Marcel Duchamp's urinal, or rather – since the original is lost – a 1964 replica placed reverently under a box of museum glass.… Read article

Six Views from a Window

I wonder how many hours I’ve spent looking out of windows. Stitched together, they would stretch into weeks, perhaps months. Into the human harmony Windows are points of connection between interio… Read article

Stig of the Dump

"If you went too near the edge of the chalk pit the ground would give way. Barney had been told this often enough. Everybody had told him. Barney had a feeling, somewhere in his middle, that it was pr… Read article

WORD / WORLD

When dwelling in the dark. The painfulness either ofa bear paw waving over a stuffed hump, or the audiomixing with the moan of a deceased childactor whose fearlessness was childish. Terrornot in explo… Read article

Movie Night

After Movie Night, my boyfriend and I do role-play. The first Movie Night was about a year ago at our friend Bill’s house. Bill’s theme was 70s sci-fi: we watched THX 1138, a pre-Star Wars George… Read article

Swimming in a Vanishing Sea

I live in the Autonomous Republic of Karakalpakstan. You probably will not have heard of Karakalpakstan. It is considered ‘the world’s most obscure ’Stan’. It took me about two months of livi… Read article

Window

The bird flew in through the half open window. It hopped from the bathroom sink to the taps, then back to the sink again, moving its head and neck mechanically. ‘Don’t’, I thought, ‘please don… Read article

X Please, We’re British

Growing up in America, I spent a good amount of my time reading British literature. Roald Dahl, E. Nesbit and Phillip Pullman were constant companions through my childhood, later replaced by Keats, El… Read article