Missing Person
She’ll be back one day.
Wearing Joy like a coat
I flew back to England last month wheeling an almost empty suitcase behind me. With the incipient change of the season I needed to supplement my wardrobe with a coat or two, hoodies, boots with a decent tread on them for when the Siberian winds start blowing in and the cobblestones freeze over. I spent…
Release
Sometimes it feels like everyone in Berlin is young and stylish and beautiful. That’s not the case, of course- but it’s a world city, notoriously hip and relatively wealthy, and I hang out in some of its wealthiest environs. In Mitte and Prenzlauerberg it seems the prevailing look is tall and lean and blonde,…
Destroyed
I’m pretty hard on my hosiery.
I have blinds, I don’t use them
I don’t look into their windows and assume they don’t look into mine. What are they going to see, anyway? A medium- sized, middle- aged woman rolling off her airbed and padding into the kitchen to shake oats into a pan, eat applesauce from the jar with a spoon as the porridge plaps quietly,…
Old bones
I’ve lost the ability to talk. I haven’t, that’s a nonsense. I’m talking for England, my old home, my home no longer- I sit outside cafes in Prenzlauerberg and Mitte, drink muddy coffee and talk. I sit in church halls and talk, sit on the UBahn and think before meeting up with new…
It’s gotta be done
It’s not like I’m incapable of enjoying my body unless it’s via the medium of the selfie… But it helps. Note to self: take more naked photos.
Is this thing still on?
Dance with the one that brung ya
Sometimes I love my tits. Sometimes? Most of the time? Much of the time, perhaps, most accurately. Sometimes, however, I absolutely don’t. Sometimes they don’t feel good and they’re too big for my bras. Sometimes they feel saggy and I am overly aware that their skin is doing an age- related wrinkling thing which I…
Mother’s day
I miss my mum. Let me tell you a little bit about my mum- and I would only ever be able to tell you a little bit, because she was so enormous that to tell you everything would take years. Not enormous in terms of stature: she was only 5 foot 6 but my…