The gilded confines of the Beauty Hall were not my preferred habitat; like the chicken that had laid the eggs for my sandwich, I was more of a free-range creature.
HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2017 Jacket photography © Plain Picture / Hanka Steidle Extract of The Lonely City (2016) by Olivia Laing reproduced by permission from Canongate Books Ltd Gail Honeyman as...
He had the look of a gazelle or an impala, one of those boring beige animals with large, round eyes on the side of its face. The kind of animal that always gets eaten by a leopard in the end.
I had no idea how to respond, and opted for a smile, which serves me well on most occasions (not if it's something to do with death or illness, though -- I know that now.)
I pondered what else I should take for him. Flowers seemed wrong; they're a love token, after all. I looked in the fridge, and popped a packet of cheese slices into the bag. All men like cheese.
I was almost sad when we arrived a the squat, white clubhouse. It was halfway to dark by then, with both a moon and a sun sitting high in a sky that was sugar almond pink and shot with gold. The birds...
When people ask me what I do--taxi drivers, hairdressers--I tell them I work in an office.
I have yet to find a genre of music I enjoy; it’s basically audible physics, waves and energized particles, and, like most sane people, I have no interest in physics.
That palpable sense of Friday joy, everyone colluding with the lie that somehow the weekend would be amazing and that, next week, work would be different, better. They never learn.
Hamartia
The man who had served us was lounging at the counter, nodding his head in time with the music. It was a cacophonous din, with too many guitars and not enough melody. It was, I thought, the sound of m...
I do feel that tube tops are best suited to the under twenty-fives, if, indeed, they are suited to anyone.
Moments later, I received a response: Twenty-first-century communication. I fear for our nation’s standards of literacy.
And the office is largely staffed by shirkers and idiots, Raymond.
If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? And if a woman who’s wholly alone occasionally talks to a pot plant, is she certifiable?
Was reminded of a photograph that the Telegraph had featured some time ago, of a monkey which had grabbed a camera and taken its own grinning photograph (a ‘selfie’).
These days, loneliness is the new cancer - a shameful, embarrassing thing, brought upon yourself in some obscure way. A fearful, incurable thing thing, so horrifying that you dare not mention it; othe...
All of the people in the room seemed to take so much for granted: that they would be invited to social events, that they would have friends and family to talk to, that they would fall in love, be love...
Was this how it worked, then, successful social integration? Was it really that simple? Wear some lipstick, go to the hairdressers and alternate the clothes you wear? Someone ought to write a book, or...
Moments later, I received a response: :D Twenty-first-century communication. I fear for our nation’s standards of literacy.
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