Mirrors Are Murderers

Mr Markham died at 93. I watched him die during the middle of the night. It was an extraordinary experience to watch a man die ‘of natural causes’. In an ideal world that is how everyone would die; in their bed and in their sleep. The last coherent thing he said was, “All you can……

Silver anniversary

I do not believe in Good and Evil but I do believe in my favourite teaspoon. It has been with me for 25 years now, a faithful utensil and steadfast ally. Earlier today it got covered in a strange, nasty, sticky substance. I panicked. “Oh no…” I cleaned it you-could-say-lovingly until it was back to……

Last Tango in Karoliniškės

If this were a film, things would play out differently (betterly, beautifuller). The melancholy protagonist goes to Alaska where he says Eureka as a spear-shaped icicle strikes him on the head. The stubbly protagonist is woken by an alarm clocked scored by Víg Mihály (Víggety-Víg, Víggety-Víg). He makes coffee. He stares staringly. He glowers black-and-whitely.……

Knocking one out

For the sake of knocking one out, and in the cause of science, I never knew such heart-stopping, jaw-dropping sadness was possible. Socks in wash. Beans on boil. Liqueur in coffee. I decide to throw everything away, to shed all my things. It is strangely liberating. For some reason I cannot bring myself to throw……

Eminent Emissions

“You’ll have to clean that up. Just looking at it makes me want to be sick.” I was six or seven and had just vomited on the carpeted staircase… My mother, though a self-proclaimed feminist, did all the dirty work around the house. The toilet, for example, was often blocked, a foulness close to overflowing,……

Thank you for your lip service

I grew up in epistemologically stabler times – grass was greener, reality cleaner. The flux of contradictory impulses that we call history was safely contained within quaintly named decades: the Fabulous 50s, the Swinging 60s, the Splintered 70s, the Excruciating 80s (okay, I made that one up), the Naughty 90s, etc. History was anchored in……

Village People

I had secretly hoped that an agent or publisher would come a-knocking but now realise there is not much demand for my vein of niche misery. Misery unnerves (and frequently disturbs) people. When ingested in the form of “Nordic noir” (bleak, wintry, murdery) or classic Russian literature (grief-inflected logorrhoea), it is strangely comforting; an immunizing……

Boris Gets a Manicure

Boris holds out his hands, fan-like, and looks at them. He sees wonky picket fences, threads of worldwide webs, damning evidence of the digital age. He sees a cluster of quills, a bunch of bludgeons. Boris sighs. His hands are a pair of spindly glands secreting hieroglyphic secrets. With this filiform thought in mind, Boris……

85

“You are a good person.” “How can you tell?” It is 10:30am and I am in my local Maxima (XX) where I have come to purchase coffee liqueur (in reality it is 6:17am, having woken up at 5:22am, having slept terribly again). My drinking (I refuse to call it alcoholism, although that is what it……

Zugzwang

Zsa Zsa Gabor was a mystery to me when I was young. I didn’t know what she did, or who she was, other than hers was a starry name. She was frequently in the headlines – a Zsa here, a Zsa there – but she remained an unknown constellation in the dot-the-dot firmament of human……