Issue Two

Badaude and Kelley Swain

Sestina: Frimaire

There’s a cloven-hooved print dried into the mud, and it’s not Pan. They’ve gone topsy-turvy, wrecked the garden. What if they insisted on staying? Would it be any better than fly-by-night … Read article

Arthur House

Too Much Like Hard Work

When I was very young, the best footballer in the world – probably the best ever – played for my local team. My first set of colouring pencils bore his name; they were the only ones you could buy.… Read article

Kate Prentice

Are You Thinking What I’m Thinking You’re Thinking?

For this trick you will need: two children, aged three and four respectively; mini felt-tip pens; an empty tube of Smarties. Put the pens into the Smarties tube, close the lid, and find the four year-… Read article

Peter Scott

Chasing Shadows

Between the ideaAnd the realityBetween the motionAnd the act (‘The Hollow Men’, T.S. Eliot, 1925) Boxers are liars. They have to be, eventually. They lie about their condition, for promotion, … Read article

Hannah Rosefield

Galanthus

It takes a galanthophile to know the difference between Galanthus alpinus and Galanthus reginae-olegae, between Galanthus koeianus and Galanthus krasnovii. Galanthus, literally ‘milk flower’, is t… Read article

Ed Wethered

The Red Headed League

‘Every shade of color they were - straw, lemon, orange, brick, Irish-setter, liver, clay; but, as Spaulding said, there were not many who had the real vivid flame-colored tint.’ (‘The Red-Headed… Read article

Dan Stevens

Bloodlust on Safari

Funny the things one learns. I had always assumed that life in South Africa meant monkeys in the driveway and hippos in the pool, in the way that we, back in England, get squirrels on the fence and th… Read article

Thomas Marks

On Not Being Jewish

At school I was bullied for being Jewish. Sure, I didn’t have to put up with the animal noises that my father had to stomach at a minor boarding school in Hertfordshire in the 1960s. But ‘Jew’ o… Read article

Kat Sommers

What’s Hecuba to Him?

The trouble with telling if those mourners at Kim Jong-Il’s funeral were faking it is that real grief can look so damn fake. It is too sudden, too forced, too messy. There are not enough tears, too … Read article

James Purdon

At the Aq

On October 24, 1875, the New York Times published a notice on behalf of the Royal Aquarium Society, announcing the birth of a grand project – and seeking American investors. The Royal Aquarium… Read article

Editor’s Note

There are always gaps between what we mean and what others think we mean, just as there are gaps between what we expect of something and how it turns out. Several pieces in our second issue explore the spaces in understanding that frequently seem to interrupt our engagement with the world.

In ‘Too Much Like Hard Work’, Arthur House launches a passionate plea for the amateur, unpicking the fallacious ethos that equates hard work with virtue and proposing in its place a shared drive toward fulfilment.

Kat Sommers’ ‘What’s Hecuba to Him?’ takes grief as its subject, Hamlet’s line providing an opening into thinking about how and why people grieve, and, more importantly, who people might grieve for. Does the excruciating spectacle of weeping fans actually perform a more complex function than the mocking naysayers would have us believe?

Definitions of hard work, or of grief for that matter, tend to rely on shared social assumptions for their staying power. As Kate Prentice reminds us, however, the ability to understand that others may not see the world in the same way as we do is not something we’re born with. Yet that awareness is vital to a successful and cooperative society.

In ‘Bloodlust on Safari,’ Dan Stevens is caught unawares by an experience that isn’t quite what he expected, as deeply-felt instincts are uncovered by an encounter with wildness. James Purdon’s ‘At the Aq’ tells a very different story of failed expectations. In a modern era of grand London projects, it may be almost consoling to know that, 130 years ago, people poured money into a flagship aquarium, only for it to fail spectacularly in every regard. Almost a century earlier, France saw a grand project of its own: illustrator Badaude and poet Kelley Swain take the French Republican calendar as their starting point for a fascinating mixed-media collaboration.

If we retain a certain love of the large public gesture from our Victorian forbears, we also have to confront an older, more dubious inheritance. In a pointed, powerful recollection, Thomas Marks highlights the ‘chromatic memory’ that sometimes terribly colours our dealings with others. Ed Wethered is also interested in how we understand differences between people. ‘The Red Headed League’ is a riotous, playful riposte to ginger-baiters from the authors of The Bible to Harriet Harman.

And with spring slowly creeping up on us, Hannah Rosefield takes a look at the strange business of one of its harbingers, the snowdrop, asking whether the desire to possess something might diminish its inherent value.

Peter Scott

List of Contributors

Badaude

Writer, illustrator, Francophile, part-time insomniac, Oulipo padawan, Victorianist, sharp dresser, associate member of the London Institute of 'Pataphysics, amateur of historical pornography. @badaude

Arthur House

Arthur House is a writer based in London. @arthur_house

Thomas Marks

Thomas Marks is a writer, editor, and recovering academic. @Tomwmarks

Kate Prentice

Kate Prentice spends her time between literature and psychology, London and Cambridge. She used to be an English teacher and is now doing a PhD in experimental psychology, looking at how the sound and rhythm of poetry may help children’s reading development.

James Purdon

James Purdon is a founding editor of The Junket. He teaches Modern and Contemporary literature at the University of St Andr @jamespurdon

Hannah Rosefield

Hannah Rosefield lives in London. Her interests include long walks, birds and Victorians. @henrosefield

Peter Scott

Peter Scott is a magazine publisher who lives in London. @PeteJRScott

Kat Sommers

Kat Sommers is a freelance producer and copywriter who lives in London. She writes about fans, celebrity and her continuing effort to finish a novel at katsommers.com. @dogwinters

Dan Stevens

Dan Stevens is an actor and writer living in New York. He was one of the judges of the Man Booker prize 2012. @thatdanstevens

Kelley Swain

Kelley Swain is a freelance writer, poet, and writer-in-residence at the Whipple Museum of the History of Science in Cambridge. Usually based in London, she has spent the winter writing a verse play in Les Adrets de l'Esterel, a tiny village in the Var in the South of France. @thenakedmuse

Ed Wethered

Ed Wethered lives in London and works in feature film development. @edwethered

Issue Two

Contents

Badaude and Kelley Swain

Editor’s Note

List of Contributors