Category: Life
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I-love-you-and-also-do-you-have-cheese?
So I was going to post this longish essay on J.M. Coetzee, but I thought instead, I’d tell you about my dog. That’s him on the right there. Odie. He’s a seven-year-old rescue beagle who has fans in various places (I’ve come out of shops to find strangers taking selfies with him). And he’s hungry.…
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Tidings of comfort and … pause
Shortly after I had my first child, someone bought me flowers. Let’s say they were irises. For more than a week I shuffled past those flowers, bleary and joyous and confused. We had made a person. With eyes and ears and hair; who had hands that would grasp at cups and spoons and pens and…
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Running’s not about, um, running
When I was 14, my foster sisters told me they were going for a run. It’d only be about 1km, they said. Would I like to come? By the time I’d ‘jogged’ down the driveway and onto the road, the two of them were blurry, heat-affected smudges in the distance. My ankles were searing. My…
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You’ll be disappointed, I’m afraid
One of the trickiest things in life, is staying awake. I mean this literally – who, once they’ve reached the appropriate coffee-drinking age, isn’t in some way addicted to caffeine? Doesn’t wake, dough-eyed and creaky, unable to face the day without that sweet hit of stimulant? (Lots of people, I’m sure, but not too many…