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The grandiose way of telling this would be to say, I am flying back to Ghana for the premiere of a film in which I played a small role. The truth is, I fell in love. This happened before I ever went there, and on the first night of my first visit, in January, we […]

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Try to work out whether I can afford to get back over to Ghana to see my sweetheart, I asked a friend: how long will this pretty autumn weather last? We know all too soon it’s going to get misty and grey and damp and bitterly cold – but when? Oh well, he said: November […]

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Saturday night, home with the one I love. We cycled over to the Korean grocers’ in the freezing cold mist to get ingredients and I made soto ayam, my favourite Javanese chicken soup from childhood. He is nutting something out for himself on the guitar. I read him something I had written earlier, while he […]

Today my boyfriend discovered the illicit dried flower factory I have been running in his apartment. At first glance it looks as though a two-dimensional squirrel has made herself a nest out of private papers and unwanted official letters retrieved from the waste paper bin beside his desk. “What’s this?” he said, lifting away the […]

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Though I live in one of the grimiest areas of Berlin, and that’s pretty grimy, right now and for a few short blessed weeks I can walk – from my house – clear down to the UBahn station – under an alleyway of pink cherry blossom. It’s like a fairytale. All I have to do […]

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It’s a moonlit night and I am with my favourite person. I am lying on his chest. He lies propped up against the head of his bed whence I propelled him via my exhaustion and desire to be held. Over the water the moon is risen, sweet and fair. Stately and true as silver steel. […]

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For four weeks now, this terrible grief. It takes up residence in my throat, is heavy, slides into the sweet solar plexus where self-belief resides. Crushes back my breathing. Gives me the tired. It makes bed seem a dire, unavoidable residence, where I will spend my days: all of them. Though I enjoy so much […]

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One of the world’s sweetest men has been reading me snippets from the local paper. There is a photo of an activist dressed as Santa Claus holding up a sign towards unmoved Israeli soldiers at the checkpoint Bethlehem which says, “Jesus brought us one message: peace, freedom, and justice.” In the section International News comes […]

Two swains drifting like white roses on the dark canal. My Berliner swain calls them swains and I never correct him. Similarly I refrained for reasons of selfish enjoyment from pointing out to an earlier, South Australian swain, who though a native speaker was heartily dyslexic (he called our chimney ‘the chumley’), that the swans’ […]