Help! Nuclear meltdown! We’re all going to die!
Two rows of women sit either side of a small conveyor belt. I say women, but I don’t think of myself as ‘woman’ yet. I’m eighteen and a half. On each desk is a grey telephone console with a row of...
View ArticleFish and kiss
Have you heard of the Wars of the Roses? Hmm. I think you’ll need the gist of this bit of British history if you’re to understand what follows – which is actually, I’ll be honest, more about chips (the...
View ArticleTemples, ruins and too much information
Guisborough Priory, North Yorkshire, England Monasteries, abbeys, priories – they never look so good as when they’re ruined, don’t you think? I spent many a childhood holiday trotting behind a father...
View ArticleThere and back. A post-industrial journey, with cake
I used to love seeing labels that said ‘Empire Made’ – engraved on an old pair of scissors or a battered decorative tin. Such a feeling of immensity in that one word, ‘empire’. But I was a little girl...
View ArticleMy mum and Aunty Maureen. By way of being a paean to a very special supermarket
Every now and again I travel twelve miles to a supermarket. A long way to go, given there are two perfectly acceptable ones within two miles. And both morally acceptable places for me to shop – for...
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