friend

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A friend of mine took her own life, from herself and from the rest of us, a little while back, perhaps eighteen months. After a long time another of her friends whom I didn’t know wrote to me in Berlin saying she had left behind a painting for me. We met when he was in […]

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I saw a girl on the Underground travelling with the man she’s in love with and the girl he likes. They were Italian. Crisp faces. Hers, naturally, a little long and sad; the other girl’s, naturally, coquettish and confident. He had a lovely outlook, solid stance, good beard, and kind expression; compared to them he […]

A friend of mine driving her nephew and niece said, they were arguing in the back. One of them had a goldfish that had died. Girl, 3, asked, But why do we die? She kept asking. And if we die, why do we live? Finally her brother (4) said, exasperated, Joanna don’t you geddit? We’re […]

In 1999 I published my first book. A week later the girlfriend who used to live across the road returned to Brisbane from the desert and said, do you wanna make a road trip? We set off on retread tyres and with (it turned out) not enough tools to help out when things went wrong. […]

I feel tearful this morning and my chest is aching with grief. Luckily my housemate & host made us both laugh just now by describing, with infinite wryness, the ruthless player she is partnered with today (“I have to go all the way to Zurich & then it’s like the Olympics”) before leaving with her […]

At the top of a very high hill yesterday, what in Holland or Denmark would be called a mountain, with a view over all of Switzerland ~ so it seemed ~ my friend taught me to peel dandelion stalks so that they spring into pretty green silvery curls. Behind us a family with very young […]

Afternoon cycle ride down to the shops. I say down, but I really mean up: this is Switzerland. We set off up the side of a steep quarry and my host, who is in her seventies, left me so far behind that I had some trouble once I reached the crest working out which side […]