Two boys scribbling either end of the dinner table. “What are you drawing?” 6yo: “It’s a diamond. With a rainbow inside it.” 4yo: “This is a machine for making everything dead.” Their mother, breastfeeding, laughs telling us how the 6yo asked her could they play “jumping over Amelia on the couch.” Amelia is three weeks […]
@………….. Sister-in-law: “Yeah that was my uncle who used to be a beekeeper. But then he lost all his bees.” Brother (mournfully): “Yeah. ‘I used to be a beekeeper but now I’m just… a keeper.’” Mum: “But he didn’t keep them, he didn’t keep them at all!” Brother: “‘I used to be a beekeeper, but […]
I must have lived in Berlin too long because it’s screeching hot on a Sunday afternoon, I am exhausted, and somehow the idea has crept into my head that I would like to drink a martini. It won’t dislodge. Opening my parents’ liquor cabinet is a dispiriting experience. It is a small, oval, glass-panelled thing […]
Christmas can be excruciating. All this talk of love and family throws heartache, loss and loneliness into relief. A woman I used to know killed herself this week, from sheer isolation it seems. In German it’s called self-murder. It happens sometimes that the people we love are not within reach, or they have died, or […]