The courage… to get through life without this sense of home, without this refuge, whilst surviving a world which exploits our mothering kindness and assaults us for our femininity, is untold. But many many many women of my acquaintance will know exactly what I mean. I crave this home. Built with somebody who will not […]
Two people made fuck, out on the concreted area in front of the apartments. I recognised the act by her cries. He had her sprawled over a car bonnet with his hand around her throat, and for a few minutes I watched clenching my fists. Were those cries of despair? Is she ok? Do I […]
Last year and the year before that and four years ago too we went down on the train to West Germany, to a tiny village lying under the skirts of the old woods. This is where my sweetheart was born. His father was born in the same house and to me the village, the house, […]
I went to a strange and interesting event which was sentimental and yet truthful and moving. Afterwards we stood around in tiny groups and two men who had spoken out about crying in public put their heads together and let their voices drop low. A woman who is four weeks fresh in Berlin said to […]
My friend has died. She was very courageous and had cancer. She was a photographer, a maker of exquisite works. She was Dutch and chose euthanasia when the pain she was suffering became, after months, too unbearable. Now her partner is left alone to garden. She was wise and quiet in her mind, an insightful, […]
The hottest bath imaginable. Coconut oiled my hair. Wrapped head to hip in towels. New book and early to bed, ahhh thank you blissful alone time. I can hear people on the street outside cobbling and shouting, gearing up for their Friday night, and it just seems to drift by like leaves on the wind. […]
All my life I have been me. I didn’t realise it at first. Presumably, as we say of infants, I was an extension of the everything, was my mother, I was the flitting shadows of the leaves that made up the sky overhead. I was as wide as the ends of the world, as far […]
Oh, Germany. Sometimes I am just so grateful to you! I came three years ago, for a week, with a suitcase of summer clothes. Stayed on and stayed. Met a man. Made some friends. Found a Kiez, a barrio, a neighbourhood. Now I am back and the dense sweet piercing chill of this supposedly Spring […]
I saw a gorgeous black girl climbing off the train yesterday in this heatwave, her hair was intricately braided in pulpy masses and then the braids woven into a long plait, her cork soles were three inches high and a tiny skirt swished around her legs. Her shoulder bag said in huge letters, AFRICA IS […]
First date in a cafe. “They always play such excellent jazz here,” he is saying. “Try the cakes, they’re always good.” “Right,” the girl says lightly. He has over-ordered, wanting to induct her into his routines. “I think heaven must be an eternal breakfast,” he says. The girl is drinking coffee as though it were […]