culture

Chris Ames On my first day back from bereavement leave, my co-worker goes, “This’ll make you feel younger” and I go, “That’s what all drugs do, dummy” but they go, no, this is different, maybe you’ve seen it online, Time Machine, people type it out like ™,...

Elisabeth Knowles When Jillian was young, she was always falling in love. The first time she fell, she was in kindergarten. There she was, sitting cross-legged among a mid-sized ring of small students on a big reading rug. She was supposed to be listening to the...

Scott McCulloch “ Some days, most days, I forget we live on the sea ,” says the neighbour. Before walking out into the heat, Moura scissors the arms off his red flannel and wipes the sleeves as a rag across his face. It’s almost dark. Neons hang above the entrance...

Trent Jamieson Export I was in the export business, mainly eyes, blue if I could get them, and tiny silver shoes. Tears were good too and easy to come by; these were dark times, but bottling them was hell, particularly if you were a smaller player. That’s the...

Howard McKenzie-Murray I don’t exactly relish getting into what happened the day before with Penelope, but on the Friday I had a fat lip where her brother, Dave, cracked me one in the toilets. My right eye looked like hell too from where it caught the doorhandle. I just...

Romy Ash Clinical, you might call that light. There was nothing warm about it. Surgery is always freezing for the body on the slab. Course, I wasn’t dead. It just felt morgue-ish. I’m a scientist. I’m not emotional about this sort of thing. I don’t believe...