Being in lockdown made me miss travelling, and reminisce about intimidating entrances to commercial galleries in Paris. So I ranked them.
ReadBollocks to Brexit - it’s gone beyond words, beyond a political strategy. It doesn’t relate to any future referendum. I’d argue it has gone beyond revoking article 50. It’s an incantation, and it's taken deep root in the minds of these people.
ReadI hadn’t swum for 20 years before joining the club a few months back. Now, I leave a brightly-lit council-run pool in Elephant and Castle each Wednesday night with a definite spring in my step.
ReadHere are some tips from the documentary movie I Hate New York, and via trans icon Amanda Lepore, that you might or might not want to try at home.
ReadI spend around 10 minutes a day on Duolingo and I’m not convinced it’s worth it. And the fact these doubts only started occurring to me after I completed a 100 day streak on this maddeningly well-designed and moreish app is… annoying.
ReadI went to a lot of art shows in 2017. I don’t really know why this obsession took hold.
ReadAs London’s super-rich make the city their playground, pushing the rest of us further and further to its social – and physical – margins, I think it’s becoming more and more important to remember stories like Miss Naysmith’s. She’s an example of somebody who refused to be pushed out. She lived on nobody else’s terms but her own.
ReadI’d arrived in Trieste on a Friday evening, and, having dropped my backpack off, I needed to walk. So I set off, towards the sea.
ReadOur evening flight had been delayed, and they’d finally given up for the night. We’d be on the first flight to Heathrow the next morning. An air traffic control failure in Brussels caused the original problem. Appropriately timed: it was June 24th, the night following the Brexit vote.
ReadThe cyclist was an easy urban type to spot: middle aged, black lycra, racing bike, pedal clips, a backpack with a fluorescent rain cover. Serious kit, maybe a lawyer on his way west from the Strand. The driver was clearly a type too: white BMW with a superfluous spoiler.
ReadEvery day in London, thousands of fingers tap a cute Kangaroo logo on their smartphone screens. As a result, every lunchtime and supper time, thousands of young men have a job to do.
ReadMy mum’s finally finished clearing out my grandparents’ house, and she’s brought back a few boxes of things: books, pieces of jewellery, notes. Nothing valuable, just mementoes.
ReadI read less than I used to, and I forget most of what I read. A fact brought home to me last year when, bored at Christmas time, back at my parents’ house, I rifled through some shelves in my childhood bedroom, and pulled out a plain blue hardcover notebook.
ReadI go to a lot of marketing conferences. Which means I sit through an awful lot of marketing pitches and presentations. But, until last month, I hadn’t sat through a single one that made me reassess how I lived my life.
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