We went out to the white people’s restaurant, as he calls it, which is a street stall on a dirt laneway behind the supermarket. There’s no street lighting, no cutlery. Collapsible plastic tables are set up between the parked cars. Vivid local tunes blast from the tiny bar across the road, which brings icy beers […]

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In an Italian cafe I saw two eight-year-olds locked in a passionate embrace. I had to blink. What on earth? On closer examination he had her locked, her neck was rigid, he had hold of her head in both his hands. Their lips were pressed on each other, hard and still. It was a Holywood […]

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Today a day of wheels and wings. On the high street I set myself an errand, which failed, as the Turkish woman who repairs garments has locked her shop and flown south for the summer, into a tide of incoming birds. Her storefront was locked like a little dark cage. On the street out front […]

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I saw three Spanish boys doing parkour in the gardens. I have run out of money and am hungry: it’s temporary. To a Spaniard gardens means a large, bare, gravelled expanse with formally clipped hedges and dark, clotting trees. The smell of the cyprus is familiar from home. I sat on a bench under the […]